Transparents: making transgender people’s labor barriers visible

Transparents is an initiative that seeks to make visible the barriers to social and labor insertion of transgender people in Spain and contribute to encourage their recruitment. This emblematic project has been developed by 32 volunteers of the Foundation in Madrid and Barcelona.

The Fundación José Antonio Llorente, in collaboration with REDI (Red Empresarial por la Diversidad e Inclusión LGTBI), has designed the Transparents campaign for the Ámbar Project of the Fundación 26 de diciembre, which aims to tackle the high unemployment rates of the trans community.

Transparents arose from the courageous and valuable collaboration of a group of 15 people who have suffered first-hand from job rejection because of their trans identity and who have decided to tell their story to stop being transparent to the working world.

The initiative was materialized with an installation composed of 15 transparent chairs that represent the personal challenge of each trans person in the search for employment and that was symbolically located in front of an employment office, in the Plaza Pablo Ruiz Picasso in Madrid, to raise awareness in the business sector about the value of betting on diverse work environments. Each of the chairs was engraved with the name of one of the participants and the length of time they had been unemployed to express that the figures hide stories and that their unemployment situation tends to drag on for many years, suffering discrimination and exclusion along the way.

It is estimated that 80% of people with trans identities in Spain are unemployed. In their job search process, 42% claim to have received discriminatory treatment. Likewise, 86.6% of the LGTBI collective considers it necessary to hide their sexual orientation and/or gender identity in a job interview.

This project has been designed with three main objectives:

• To make visible the barriers to the socio-labor insertion of the trans collective in Spain and to raise awareness of the serious consequences of this reality.
• To highlight the value of diverse work environments, based on open and inclusive cultures, which favor the well-being and development of all employees.
• To invite companies to facilitate the access of people with trans identities to the business world and encourage their actual hiring.