By Jaime Grant, Ph.D., Policy Institute Director, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
This week’s New York Times/CBS News poll on the anxiety and depression of unemployed workers made me think of Jacqui Charvet, a laid-off computer technician with 26 years of experience at her firm. Jacqui describes her stack of rejected job applications as "over a foot high." Prior to one recent interview, the staff took only one single hard look at her and said, "No."
According to the Times, there are thousands of unemployed workers like Jacqui in the current recession -- cutting back on doctor visits, afraid of losing their homes, feeling ashamed. But even an improved economy won’t change matters for Jacqui. Like thousands other well-qualified Americans seeking work, Jacqui Charvet is transgender.
Yesterday, New York’s Governor Paterson signed an Executive Order ensuring a level playing field for transgender state workers. The governor’s historic act ensures that gender identity will be included in the state’s anti-discrimination policies. But this act alone won’t turn things around for most transgender people. Only an act of Congress can do that.
The federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act would ban discrimination against transgender as well as and lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGBT) workers. This bill has more co-sponsors in the House than any LGBT bill ever has, yet has seemingly stalled in the House despite earlier predictions of passage by the end of the 2009.
In the meantime, for America's transgender workers, an unending Great Depression goes on. A recent study of 6,450 transgender people by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) found that transgender workers face rampant discrimination; 97% have been mistreated, harassed or discriminated against at work. Forty-seven percent (47%) have lost a job, been denied a promotion or been rejected in the hiring process as a direct result of being transgender. The study found transgender people to have twice the unemployment rate of the general population.
Americans who have lost jobs report that they are losing their homes, so are transgender people. One quarter of participants in the Task Force/NCTE study report moving back in with family and, despite that, still one fifth of all respondents were currently or formerly homeless because of being transgender.
Americans without jobs are not visiting the doctor when they need to; neither are transgender people, with 48% postponing care due to lack of affordability, and 30% postponing needed care due to disrespect or discrimination by providers.
Dylan Scholinski, who has written an award-winning memoir on being institutionalized as a teen for his gender expression, has been persistently unemployed his entire adult life. Now 40, Dylan notes that, "For most people, there is a pendulum with unemployment, there are hard times and better times. But for transgender people, we have no assets to sell off to weather a crisis. And the swing never swings back."
The Times poll underscores the serious mental health consequences of the current, short-term economic downturn on millions of American workers. Survey respondents described lives and families destabilized by depression and an overwhelming sense of worthlessness.
By contrast, respondents in the Task Force/NCTE poll are suffering from unrelenting joblessness and underemployment. Despite significant efforts to "retool" for the changing job market (88% have had "some college" education), there is no end in sight for workplace discrimination based on a characteristic unrelated to their aspirations and skills. Accordingly, a full 40% of respondents reported attempting suicide over the course of their lives.
Suicide statistics have long been used against LGBT people as evidence of something inherently wrong with our identities. Tuesday’s Times poll reveals that depression and worthlessness are a natural outcome of being pushed to the margins of the economy and our society, with over 50% of those polled reporting serious mental health issues.
The Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which simply outlaws workplace bias based on sexual orientation and gender identity, has languished at the federal level for two decades amidst cries of "special rights." Both the Times poll and the Task Force/NCTE study demonstrate the critical human importance of the legislation. LGBT workers don’t require anything "special" in the workplace. Like people of every orientation and identity, LGBT people simply want to work and care for our families. Congress must act.