Transgender people at work
The findings from the Human Rights Commission Inquiry into Discrimination Experienced by Transgender People in 2008, confirmed that trans people face significant discrimination in day to day life.
The majority of submissions to the inquiry that described some form of discrimination focused on the area of employment1. A trans person has the right to be free of unlawful discrimination in the workplace.
This guide is designed to provide information about legal and employment rights, as well as different workplace issues that trans people may encounter in their working lives and best practice advice for employers of trans employees who are transitioning or intending to transition.
Definitions
Sex – A person’s biological and physical make-up, defined usually as either ‘male’ or ‘female’ and including indeterminate sex.
Gender – The social, and cultural construction of what it means to be a man or a woman, including roles, expectations and behaviour.
Gender Identity – A person’s internal, deeply felt sense of being male or female (or wherever they find themselves on the gender continuum). A person’s gender identity may or may not correspond with their sex.
Gender Expression – How someone expresses their sense of masculinity and/or femininity externally.
Trans People - People who refer to themselves, among other terms, as transsexual, male-to-female, female-to-male, transgender, whakawahine, fa’afafine or tangata ira tane.
Transgender – A person whose gender identity is different from their physical sex at birth.
Transsexual - A person who has changed, or is in the process of changing, their physical sex to conform to their gender identity.
Transitioning - Steps taken by trans people to live in their gender identity. These often involve medical treatment to change one’s sex through hormone therapy and may involve gender reassignment/realignment surgeries.
FtM/trans man – Female to Male – someone born with a female body who has a male gender identity.
MtF/trans woman – Male to Female – someone born with a male body who has a female gender identity.
Fa’afafine, Fakaleiti, Akava’ine, Mahu, Vaka sa lewa lewa, Rae rae, Fafafine – Pasifika terms describing someone born with a male body who does not have a male gender identity and often, but not always, lives as a woman. These terms are best understood within their cultural context.
Whakawahine – a Maori term describing someone born with a male body who has a female gender identity.
Tangata ira tane – a Maori term describing someone born with a female body who has a male gender identity.
1 Human Rights Commission “To Be Who I Am – Report of the Inquiry into Discrimination Experienced by Transgender People”, www.hrc.co.nz/transgenderinquiry
