For most of us, our gender identity matches the sex we are assigned at birth but as we know, for some people it does not match, and of those, a number will decide to transition.  Inevitably, these decisions will need to be taken while a person is in the working world, and so logically, employers will become involved in this transition. Dublin Bus has just released one of Ireland's most comprehensive and advanced Workplace Gender Transition Policies.

On The Business, Richard Curran was joined by Vivienne Kavanagh, Employee Development and Equality Executive at Dublin Bus, and Sara Philips, Chair of the Transgender Equality Network in Ireland, who assisted Dublin Bus to draw up the guidelines.

Vivienne told Richard that Dublin Bus has been working on this strategy since 2001 and they have developed their diversity and inclusion plan each year with an action plan. She claimed that supporting transgender people transitioning was a part of their ethos at Dublin Bus. They wanted transitioning employees to feel comfortable in their workplace and feel supported by their employers.

'We wanted to have it there in place and embedded so if managers knew about it or employees knew about it they could come forward and feel comfortable supported by the companies.'

Sara claims that it's vital for a transitioning person to feel the support of their employers when undergoing this change of lifestyle. She said there has to be some sort of a policy in place for them comfortable to do so. Not only should a plan be put in place for the trans person themselves, but for the colleagues also so they can comprehend what they're going through.

It was in the 1990's when Sara first embarked on her journey of transition, while she was working at a construction site. She felt that she was being judged for who she was and decided to tone down her transitioning when looking for a job. In the workplace, she presented herself as male and at home, she transitioned into a female.

"I was living in one gender and working in another. Even I who was quite comfortable and quite sure of myself and my rights and my knowledge about that, I was still unsure that anybody would employ me. "

According to Sara, there was a survey done recently where 49% of transgender people are unemployed as they feel they couldn't seek work. They feel that they're continuously being judged while being interviewed or they terminate their employment to transition themselves at home because there aren't adequate guidelines and policies within the workplace to help them.

"Even at the first hurdle of the interview they were always going to be judged and they were always going to have a negative reaction to the fact that they were trans. "

Despite the hurdles transgender people face today, Sara conveyed that society is more accepting of transgender people than they were thirty years ago. She said that the age of transitioning has dropped dramatically and she's finding that more and more young people are coming out.

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