Transgender Employment Experience Case Study

Transgender Employment Experience is an inside look at what goes behind the doors of being transgender. The book is about transgender life experience at work by stories of discrimination and harassment and to know the policies that might work or not in having a healthy working environment. Kyla Bender-Baird focus on analyzing the experience of twenty transgender people around the United States. That includes both feminine and masculine spectrum in her sample and she carefully thought about her participant identity, confidentiality and diversity in regards of sexual Orientation, age, income, and Career or occupation. Every Book about the transgender study have limitations because of few data available on transgender especially in this book that

She Identify that in United States are lacking in baseline protections for transgender employees for discrimination and harassment. Because of this transgender only have few things to rely on, like the use of disability law to advocate for transgender employment protection. Bender- Baird specify that this strategy have two major obstacles. The first one is critism on transgender people as being disable or sick. Second is in federal they excludes transsexual and cross dressing people. Transgender people also rely on demand protection under Title VII of Civil Rights act of 1964. Which protect the workers from discrimination on the basis of sex. Bender- Baird Clearly written the strengths and Weknesses of each approach on this chapter to help the readers to know about the complicated and complex legal thing on the issues. Also in this chapter Bender-baired discussed the importance of equality act in transgender people which is putting a distinct category in discrimination law rather than expanding the Title VII that protecting transgender people through disability law. That fell under the ENDA or what they call Employment Non-Discrimination Act. That address the cases of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees that have been discriminated in work environment because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

It focus on the on experience of the 20 participant that happened to their lives while in the workplace. Bender-baird have done well made questions for 20 participants to have a comparable result like “what does employment discrimination look like for transgender people?” and what would policies and looks like on transgender people?. Bender-Baird attempts to explicity elaborate the success stories of the participants but discriminations still occurs and the most obvious form that happens among her participants is in the form of Harrasment. Under this chapter Bender-Baird discussed about Termination, unemployment and underemployment among transgender people. The lack of federal laws protecting her participants before makes them vulnerable in discrimination. Like, the example she gave at the first part of the book and stories of her participant that presented on this chapter. The data Bender-Baird presented on this chapter are well organized and gave an insight about the biases even with the limitation of data can gathered. The particular concerns of participants on this book are also the same problems on many study that have been conducted in regards of transgender discrimination in the work place and daily living. The particular concerns are the dress code on workplace, using bathrooms and identity documents. The author gives important of having a holistic approach trough out