Gender Identity Issues and Workplace Discrimination: The Transgender Experience

Michelle Dietert
Dianne Dentice

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DOI: 10.2190/WR.14.1.g

Abstract

Mainstream social constructions of gender tend to demand conformity by adhering to only two choices of gender identity, male and female. Transgender individuals transgress this binary conception of gender by deviating from the societal gender norms associated with the sex assigned at birth. Using a combination of face-to-face and phone interviews to collect data, twenty-six interviews were conducted with male-identified transgender individuals aged 18 to 57 from throughout the United States. All participants were born female bodied but eventually expressed gender traits that align with male identity rather than female identity. The participants were recruited using purposive and snowball sampling techniques. Our findings reveal the workplace experiences of a sample of female-to-male (FTM) individuals and provide accounts of how male-identified transgender individuals negotiate their gender identities within the workplace and deal with the issues that arise as a result.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.