eBar.com – Zak Szymanski
“I went into one job interview expecting to discuss my skills,” Macy Roberts, a transgender woman who recently lived in California, told the Bay Area Reporter. “Instead I was asked questions about my bathroom habits, and they wondered if I would have anything in common with the other female employees. I definitely felt like the criteria was different for me because of my transgender status.”
Trenton, a stealth FTM who lives in the Bay Area and asked that his last name not be used, agreed that his transgender status has hindered his career. Once, he said, an employer learned about his “former identity” and mistakenly equated Trenton’s nondisclosure with “fraud,” treating him as untrustworthy and thus not promotable within the company.
It’s no secret that the transgender population alone makes significantly less money than the LGBT community at large, and that employment discrimination ? even in liberal areas like San Francisco ? continues to occur in overt as well as more nuanced ways. A recent survey conducted by the Transgender Law Center in conjunction with the San Francisco Bay Guardian showed that 59 percent of transgender respondents made less than $15,299 annually, with only 8 percent earning above $45,000 annually. For many transgender people, according to TLC director Chris Daley, it’s not just a matter of being unemployed, but underemployed despite being qualified for a range of positions. Others simply are not reached by most employment recruitment strategies or job training programs.