Employment

Employment was the first area in which trans people won any legal rights.  Legislation protecting transsexual people from employment discrimination has been in place since 1999.  However, the workplace remains one of the most likely locations for transphobic discrimination and harassment to occur and as a result many transgender people are unemployed or under-employed.  Many transgender people become self-employed in an effort to minimise their risk of experiencing transphobic discrimination from employers and colleagues.

A major issue for transgender people in employment is the risk of transphobic workplace gossip, bullying and harassment occurring if their work colleagues or managers find out they are transgender.  If a transsexual person transitions while remaining in the same job then it is impossible to avoid colleagues and managers working closest to them from knowing about their transition and it become crucial how these colleagues and managers handle this information.  It remains common for transsexual people to change job at the time of transition in order to try to avoid work colleagues knowing about their transition.  Other types of transgender people also often go to significant lengths in order to minimise the chance of colleagues and managers finding out they are transgender.

Another employment problem which transgender people face is discrimination during the recruitment process. It can be very difficult to get any offers of employment in the first place if a person appears visibly gender variant at interview.  The expectation that job candidates will wear clearly gendered formal clothing to interviews can leave some transgender people, especially androgyne people, worried that they may be discriminated against if they wear the clothes and accessories which feel most personally appropriate to them.

If a transsexual person is undergoing gender reassignment, another issue is arranging with their employer to get the necessary time off for medical appointments with their gender specialist and any transition-related medical procedures such as surgery.  Transsexual men in particular often struggle with this as many employers do not realise that a transsexual man may have been transitioned for several years prior to starting to undergo genital surgery and that phalloplasty to create a penis is not a single operation but rather a sequence of at least two, and more often around four, operation stages - each a number of months apart.