Alison Ash Fogarty and Lily Zheng, Gender Ambiguity in the Workplace: Transgender and Gender-Diverse Discrimination (2018)

Anyone familiar with the issues facing transgender individuals in America knows that trans people face disproportionate levels of violence and discrimination. But advocates’ access to reliable evidence regarding the problems trans people face in the workplace is still sorely lacking.

In Gender Ambiguity in the Workplace: Transgender and Gender-Diverse Discrimination (2018), Alison Ash Fogarty and Lily Zheng provide detailed data about the experiences of transgender and gender nonconforming (“TGNC”) people working in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Drawing from narrative interviews conducted during a 2008 study led by Fogarty, Gender Ambiguity provides detailed summaries and quotations describing the experiences of TGNC Bay Area residents.[1] Rather than just leaving readers with a sense of righteous indignation at the horrible discrimination documented, however, Fogarty and Zheng put forth concrete solutions for making our workplaces more inclusive. The solutions section presents policy avenues for employers ranging from those “unwilling”[2] to be inclusive of TGNC employees to “inclusion in progress.”[3] Even the most progressive organizations could learn something new from Gender Ambiguity and be able to improve their institutional support for TGNC employees.

Zheng, who graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in Social Psychology in 2017 and a M.A. in Sociology in 2018, sat down with me to discuss Gender Ambiguity, her new business, and issues facing the TGNC community in the Bay Area.

[1] Alison Ash Fogarty and Lily Zheng, Gender Ambiguity in the Workplace: Transgender and Gender-Diverse Discrimination at 19 (2018).

[2] Id. at 147.

[3] Id. at 152.

To read the full interview , please click here.