Beyond the edge: a LGBT global perspective. Conference Out & Equal 2008
Selisse Berry founding executive director of Out & Equal was hired in December 1996 as director of the Building Bridges training program. She quickly recognized the synergy that could be created with other groups advocating LGBT-friendly workplaces, a principle she continues to uphold today. Selisse ran the program and built coalitions as a single-person staff working out of the Pacific Center in Berkeley, California, and by September 1997 she moved into the United Way Bay Area (UWBA) offices in San Francisco.
Out & Equal Workplace Advocates is the pre-eminent national organization devoted to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community in the workplace. Our mission is to educate and empower organizations, human resource professionals, Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) and individual employees through programs and services that result in equal policies, opportunities, practices, and benefits in the workplace regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, expression, or characteristics.
Austin Convention Center, Texas, celebrated from September 10 to 13 the Annual Conference of Out & Equal. The panel “Beyond the edge: a LGBT global perspective” show a vision of LGBT human rights situation in the voices of exponents of different regions of ILGA. Linda Baumam, Africa; Rosanna Flamer, General Secretariat of ILGA Asia; Belissa Andía, Trans Secretariat of ILGA, Latin American; Mark Bromley and Helen Kennedy, North America; and Akim Adé, Center American.
Topic of the discussion was responsibility of global companies in order to create support to LGBT in their work centers, especially in countries where relationships between people of the same sex are penalized.
In the development of the presentations were notorious differences between “development world” and third world. In North America, companies that have a numerous workers had managers of human resources and human rights that work directly with sexual diversity and gender diversity persons. Inside these companies they development meetings in which could say what problems are limited their work and efficiency. Many transsexual and trangender persons had already made their change of gender and keep working; they had been assisting by the company and their inclusive politics. There are not few successful cases but there are some cases that fail, as one in which a director made her gender transition but after that company had to close for broke because contracts were cancel.
Other reality is that lived for trangender people that assume their identity when they are teenagers, that limited their education, access to health services and options of employment so it is easy they become prostitutes.
Those speeches that talk about Africa and South America situation show this view. In Africa homosexuality is stigmatise and forbidden, the same as Central American and The Caribbean. South American doesn’t have laws against homosexuality but socially it is marginalized and become in violence from population and also public institutions that should guarantee personal protections (as policy and security guards). In these countries, work center is a space unfriendly, in which it is necessary, not be notice and hide real identity and sexual orientation, with the risk to become unemployed.
Transgender people see as a utopia access to employ. Most of them are in prostitution and a very important matter is to conquer the recognition to their gender identity in order to then fight for their human and civil rights.
Huge companies that had placed all over the world could development inclusive practices in employ, given opportunities and support to their workers. In this way they go to spread a culture of respect to those who don’t fit in the sexual binary. It is only necessary to ask for the respect to the laws that don’t allow any kind of discrimination that are accepted in all the countries in Latin American.
It is necessary to create bonds with this companies and ILGA. Because situation in North America is very different that those lived in the rest of the continent. Anyway this event conquered their solidarity through a company as Out & Equal that is interest in know about other realities and help other regions for respect of diversity.
This effort of Out & Equal should be talk with other companies that are able to support ILGA’s work all around the world. It is also necessary consider the globalization of the workers rights, as part of a social commitment that all enterprise had to share because workers are persons not objects, and contribute with the development of the company if his needs are satisfying.
More information: Out&Equal
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