I Bet We Didn’t Know.

That we get discriminated against with employment?

Report: Transgender Job Applicants In D.C. Face Staggering Discrimination Rates
DCist
By Rachel Kurzius
November 3, 2015

A first-of-its-kind study of discrimination in hiring practices finds that nearly half of D.C. employers prefer a less-qualified applicant they perceive as cisgender to a more-qualified candidate they perceive as transgender.

Five employers will face director's inquiries from the Office of Human Rights for their results—two in the restaurant industry, two in the administrative sector, and one university. These investigations will determine whether the actions were discriminatory and could become public documents.
The Office of Human Rights conducted the first government-run test in the nation to figure out how being perceived as transgender affects a job applicant, submitting resumes to openings in various sectors from February to July 2015.

What the researchers did was,

To conduct the study, OHR signaled gender identity in four different ways. Two involved referring to an applicant's current or former legal name (one example from the report: a resume would state: "Worked under my former legal name, Clara Scott."). The other applications used work or volunteer history in the transgender community, emphasizing a personal stake in the cause, to demonstrate gender identity.

All of the transgender resumes demonstrated one or two years more work experience, or .1 to .3 higher GPAs than their cisgender counterparts.

Because existing resume testing already demonstrates discrimination based on a number of characteristics like race, age, gaps in employment, and more, the study isolates gender identity. All of the applicants had Anglo-American-sounding names, attended college, were around the same age, had no gaps in employment, and lived in Petworth.

You can read the full OHR report here.

# # # # #

Right now I am down in Norwalk doing training with CT Coalition to End Homelessness, CT Fair Housing Center, AIDS Connecticut, and HUD for homeless shelter staff and 211 operators.