Queer Up Your Work: Adding Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity to Public and Nonprofit Research

Abstract

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual plus (LGBTQIA+) communities are underrepresented in public and nonprofit affairs research. This has led to an incomplete picture of how public and nonprofit organizations can better support LGBTQIA+ individuals and communities. In this article, we discuss how researchers can include the LGBTQIA+ community, why they should care about this community, and the appropriate terminology and distinctions within the LGBTQIA+ community. This article is a call to arms: LGBTQIA+ individuals are an important part of the work in the public and nonprofit sector; and as such the language used to describe their experiences should be supportive and affirming.

Protected, but Not Included? The Role of Workplace Inclusion for Sexual and Gender Minorities in the Federal Service

“…While this study's primary implications speak to the employee experience of employer inclusion efforts in the public service, it also serves as a modest stride forward in public administration research. Building on multiple important works (see, e.g., Federman & Elias, 2017;Lewis, 1997;Lewis & Pitts, 2011Hur, 2020;Sabharwal et al, 2019), this work continues to raise the visibility of LGBT individuals and their legitimacy as full members of the public service and responds to Meyer and Millesen's (2022) recent call to 'queer up' public administration research. While queer theory has not yet been widely applied in public administration scholarship, work in this area has increased in recent years, both in volume and in rigor, and the move of Generation Z-widely known to be the most diverse generation in the nation's history-into the workforce suggests that this body of knowledge must continue to grow.…”

“…The FEVS data utilized to investigate the primary research question are limited, as they treat lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender identities as monolithic within the LGBT variable. While this treatment protects the identities of those who self-identify as LGBT within the federal ranks, combining sexual and gender minorities under a single heading obscures the differences between those minority individuals' experiences, neglects other sexual and gender minority identities (see, Meyer & Millesen, 2022, for discussion of these identities), and fails to address the varying heterosexual attitudes and institutional treatment toward each of those minority identities (Herek & McLemore, 2013). Similarly, the FEVS data do not parse out different racial, ethnic, or other minority identities, so intersectional identity differences cannot be included in the analyses.…”

The Role of Leader and Subordinate Gender in the Leadership–Empowerment Relationship

“…Unfortunately, when the survey used in the current study was conducted in 2014, the survey design did not consider including more inclusive gender options in the survey design, and thus, we need to be cautious in interpreting the findings and generalizing the results of the study. Future gender research should use SOGIE survey questions in measuring gender-related variables (see Elias, 2022 andMillison, 2022 for challenges and recommendations regarding SOGIE survey design) so that gender-related research more appropriately reflects current practices and diverse populations in public administration research.…”

Social equity and LGBTQ populations in African public administration: A macro‐ and micro‐approach

“…Though this only scratches the surface of queerness and queer life in the continent of Africa, the unique issues that queer people face, both in Africa and al the world, make them a vulnerable population. Public administration should be concerned with homophobia because this is a population that tends to be stigmatized and marginalized (Meyer & Millison, 2022), which leads to transgender individuals avoiding public benefits because of this stigmatization (Butz & Gaynor, 2022). For the field of public administration, there are many unanswered questions on how homophobia in front-line workers impacts service delivery.…”