Rep. Villarreal of San Antonio has filed a house bill (#538) protecting gender identity and expression in Texas labor law: http://www.legis.state.tx.us/BillLookup/History.aspx?LegSess=81R&Bill=HB538
Rep Villareall’s web page: http://www.house.state.tx.us/members/dist123/villarreal.php
The prestigious Harvard Business Review has developed a business case relating to the transition of an executive from Steven to Stephanie. This business case covers the situation where a sales executive, Steve, notifies her management that she will be transitioning to Stephanie. The case study revolves around the Human Resources Manager and how she acts upon this information. One of the company’s staff finds out about the transition and explodes
giving the HR manager a major headache. Stephanie is a top producer but what about the staff, the customers, the dreaded restroom problem, and what about Stephanie. The business case is responded to by three experts in the field, and executive, an HR manager, and a person who has transition in the work place and who has worked with others who have transitioned.
A teaser for the article can be found at
http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/ics/2008/10/when-steve-becomes-stephanie.html#experts. The full article can be found in the December 2008 issue of the Harvard Business Review or a reprint can be ordered at
http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b01/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=R0812A&referral=785
If you weren’t looking for it, you might have completely missed language on the Obama transition website (Change.Gov) pledging not to discriminate on the basis of gender identity, among other things. On the page regarding those who seek appointments to this administration, you’ll find the following language:
The Obama-Biden Transition Project does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or any other basis of discrimination prohibited by law. (emphasis added)
According to employment lawyer Daniel Schwartz, who was quoted in an NPR report, gender identity nondiscrimination has never been part of federal hiring policies before, and expects that this pledge by Obama will form the basis of an executive order when the new administration starts. The ACLU issued a statement praising this language, as well.
Our events in October (blogged below) received two printed letters to the editor in the days that followed, and those letters (if you read them online), prompt online reader comments, as well.
10-27, Jeff Ross
10-28, Mary Ruth Gossett
When Diane Schroer won her court case against the Library of Congress based on sex discrimination, it seemed to me that this was a perfect bit of logic to help solve the argument about the wage gap between men and women. Arguments about wage discrimination in the past have had to argue by an analogy: that a hypothetical man and a hypothetical woman, identically suited for the same hypothetical job, should receive equal preference, treatment, and salary. And it makes perfect sense.
However, argument-by-analogy always leaves open the stark fact that we don’t live in a hypothetical world and there are never identical people vying for jobs. There is always a bit of difference, and that difference is the loophole through which sex discrimination occurs.
But what if you didn’t have to argue by analogy? What if one minute, you had a man who was perfectly suited for a job, praised by all his references and drooled over by his employer, and then the next minute, after he explained he was transitioning into a woman because he is a transsexual, she was no longer perfectly suited for the job and was either fired or the job offer was withdrawn? That was precisely what happened to David Schroer, and 10 minutes later, Diane Schroer, in seeking employment at the Library of Congress.
I have talked to friends about this as a solution to not only transgender discrimination, but also plain old sex discrimination, and I am happily surprised to learn of an academic study in economics that takes this exact methodology. Kristen Schilt and Matthew Wiswall report in “Before and After: Gender Transitions, Human Capital, and Workplace Experiences,” from the The Berkeley Electronic Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, that “average earnings for female-to-male transgender workers increase slightly following their gender transitions, while average earnings for male-to-female transgender workers fall by nearly 1/3.”
Please take a minute to read their abstract and also the Time article, “If Women Were More Like Men: Why Females Earn Less,” which reports on their academic study.
My partner, a professor, has commented frequently that studying transsexuals represents an extremely clever approach to exploring sex-difference research problems like wages, cognition, and performance. She argues that researchers ought to work with their human subject review boards to ethically take advantage of the opportunity to study sex differences that transsexuals make literal by their experiences.
Tech lecture series helps shed light on transgender issues
By Marlena Hartz | AVALANCHE-JOURNAL
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Alone, the boy grabbed his mother’s lipstick from the bathroom counter. Clutched in his hand, it felt like a prize, one he knew his schoolmates in this tiny town in the Texas Panhandle, and his parents, who did manual labor to support he and his sister, would reject him, possibly hate him, for wanting.
Read the rest: http://www.lubbockonline.com/stories/101808/loc_345794858.shtml
