Boston Herald, MA, USA


Jobs program targets transgendered people

By Donna Goodison

Monday, January 24, 2011


The nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil
rights group has picked Boston to launch its inaugural “Back to Work”
seminars for transgender job-seekers.

The Washington, D.C.-based Human Rights Campaign hopes to help
highlight a proposed transgender equal rights bill that would add the
categories of gender identity and gender expression to Massachusetts’
non-discrimination and hate crimes laws.

“The goal of the Back to Work program is to equip transgender
job-seekers with essential skills to make the most of this job market
that’s very difficult for everyone, but especially so for them,” said
Allyson Robinson, the HRC’s associate director of diversity.

Transgender people experience unemployment at twice the rate of their
fellow citizens, according to a 2009 study by the National Gay and
Lesbian Task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality,
according to Robinson.

“This was prior to the very difficult downturn,” she said. “I know
that number is higher today.”

A full 26 percent of the 6,500 survey respondents reported having been
fired not because of their job performance but their gender identity.

“Put quite simply, we face a tremendous amount of bias and prejudice
in the workplace and in the hiring process,” Robinson said. “We’re
working to deal with that in a number of ways, including working for
laws and corporate policies that (prohibit) discrimination against
transgender people. But, until those laws are in place, we want to
meet it head on by making transgender people the most well-prepared
people who show up for job interviews.”

Participants in the free two-day Back to Work seminar will receive
instruction on preparing a resume, researching the job market,
building a professional network and interviewing techniques from the
Foundation for New Directions, a nonprofit, transgender-owned career
coaching organization based in Atlanta.

“These are the kinds of things that anyone in this job market would
benefit from,” Robinson said.

The first 30 people who sign up at hrc.org/backtowork will be assigned
their own career coach.

The seminars will be held Feb. 26-27 at the Boston office of the AIDS
Action Committee of Massachusetts.


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