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Issues
of an ignored minority Jillian Todd Weiss has spent much of her life studying. Law, public policy, sociology, Greek and Latin top the list. She has a J.D. and a Ph.D. She's practiced at prominent law firms, and is a consultant and a college professor. Still, she struggles to understand why so many minorities are sometimes loathed. Having studied workplace policies on transgender employees extensively, she works with businesses on how to address the issue so few understand. "If I could distill all the research I've done, it simply comes down to fear of the unknown," says Weiss, an assistant professor of law and society at Ramapo College in Mahwah. "When I look at the 200 corporations that have adopted policies that deal with transgender employees, the nightmare scenarios once feared haven't come to pass. They haven't found guys in dresses in the ladies room leering at employees." The first corporation in the nation to include transgender employees in its non-discrimination policy was Murray Hill-based Lucent Technologies in 1997. Since then, some 200 employers nationwide, in both the public and private sector, have adopted policies. Others in New Jersey include Chubb Corp., Prudential Financial, Avaya and AT&T. Weiss, who also owns Gender Diversity Consulting, a firm that specializes in organizational effectiveness around transgender human resource policies, recently talked with The Record about the issue. Q. What have you researched? I concentrated on the workplace and was specifically looking at human resource policies at U.S. employers that deal with transgender employees, because of my own personal interest, and to look at the broader view of workplace diversity. The number of employees in these companies is about 0.01 percent, so the question is, why are they adopting these policies? Q. What is your personal interest? I have personal interest because I am transgendered and the fundamental question motivating me is why do people hate us? Really, it's a question of why there is hate in the world and to understand ways in which our society regards certain people as lesser than. I'm not an activist type, I'm more a scientist type who believes you need understanding before you can make a change. Let other people decide what to do about it. Q. So why are companies embracing these policies if so few employees are impacted? Every time I spoke to a human resource director, one thing that came up was this was a business case. They're adopting these policies because it's good for business. Recruitment and retention are key. In the past, there were more candidates than jobs and demographics show that by 2012, the number will be the same, with about 1.4 million jobs and candidates, and many more of those minority candidates. Corporations hope to be competitive in terms of the best and the brightest and want to appeal to all of those minority candidates. These employers with policies have conferred a cultural legitimacy, saying "Here's a small group, we may not know what this group is, but we are on the forefront of diversity and value people so much that this small group of people, who we are not required by law to protect, we will protect." How do you define "transgender?" I like the Oxford English Dictionary definition, which says ... people whose identity does not conform unambiguously to conventional notions of male or female gender but combines or moves between these. There are a number of different identities. One is transsexual, one who changes sex from one to another. The term preferred now, "transgender," is complicated. It rose in the 1990s when people were dissatisfied with "transsexual" and its emphasis on sex and sexuality because that's not the reality of people's lives. ... At its core, it's more about identity. Another example is people who express their gender variance on a part-time basis. Why the need for workplace policies? There are all kinds of questions. Where does somebody go to the bathroom? What about insurance? ... A company has to really understand itself well enough to understand, "Listen, I was born as female, now I'm dressing as male." They might say "Use whatever bathroom you want." Or "We're worried about what employees think, just use the unisex bathroom." Others might say, "Well, what medical procedures have you undergone?" But that violates medical privacy rules. It is the central issue in regards to transgender employees because we do have a culture based on sex segregation. It's how the culture operates. I'm not saying eliminate the boys and girls locker rooms, but for us, it becomes a major concern. From the employee's standpoint, the wish is to be respected, as anyone would. E-mail: mcaleavy@northjersey.com |
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