For almost four years, Melissa Sklarz couldn’t find a job approaching the stature of her previous position as an executive at a city export-import firm.
She landed gigs through friends, moonlighting as a waitress or doing office work off the books. But job performance issues had nothing to do with her inability to find fulfilling work.
What stood in her way were gender issues: She’d recently undergone medical procedures transforming her from male to female, changing her body to match the sense she’d long had of her innate gender.
Overcoming years of discrimination – one person at an employment agency thought a colleague had referred Sklarz “as a joke,” she says – Sklarz is now happily employed as a manager at a Midtown collection agency, where she’s worked for more than a decade.
Sklarz’s story could be a metaphor for the progress of transgender employees, who are finding the workplace a more accepting environment, advocates say.
Part of the reason is a growing number of firms adding language to their anti-discrimination policies aimed at transgender workers. Nearly 150 Fortune 500 companies have done so, says Donna Cartwright of Pride at Work, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender constituency group at the AFL-CIO. And she expects more to follow.
“Sometimes it’s just inertia and it takes some persuasion to get them to do it,” says Cartwright, adding that some progress is being made to get companies to cover gender-transition procedures in health plans. “It used to be automatic that you couldn’t get it.”
Some pressure has come from City Comptroller Bill Thompson and the New York City Pension Funds, which for several years have issued resolutions calling on companies the city invests in to ban discrimination against gay and lesbian workers – and recently added transgender workers to the list.
And a congressional subcommittee just heard testimony in a case by a former Army colonel who sued the Library of Congress for rescinding a job offer after learning she was undergoing gender transition, a move hailed as a “historic” step for transgender rights.
Such progress aside, workplace discrimination remains a fact of life for many transgender employees.
“The issues transgender people face in the workplace are an offshoot of what they face in society,” says Ray Carannante, coordinator of the Gender Identity Project at the LGBT Community Center. “As professional as we all aspire to be, folks hiring us are human beings and they’re part of our culture. And our culture views transgender as weird.”
Employers have several rationales for avoiding transgender workers, he says. They may be deemed potentially disruptive, with co-workers objecting to their presence for ethical or religious reasons. Employers fear they’ll have to make special accommodations, with bathrooms being a particular bone of contention. And some employers worry about the mental health and judgment of transgender workers, or fear medical issues might hinder job performance.
Such discrimination stems from fear, says Selisse Berry of Out & Equal Workplace Advocates, who notes that gender transition doesn’t change a worker’s skills.
“People assume if they were an engineer before, they aren’t anymore – that they’re not the same.”
Ultimately, it will be increasing familiarity with transgender workers that will cool tensions, says Daryl Herrschaft, director of the Workplace Project at Human Rights Campaign.
“It takes some people time to understand what transgenderism is, so I think there’s an education curve that takes place,” he says.
For her part, Sklarz says her life has improved greatly over the years – and her professional life plays a significant role in that.
“The positive part is being taken seriously as an employee – where my voice is important and my ideas matter,” she says.