Ontario Human Rights Commission: The Problems Of Gender Identity
PROBLEMS OF GENDER IDENTITY
1
The Ontario Human Rights Commission defines gender identity as the “link to a person’s sense of self, and the sense of being male or female that is socially constructed and reinforced by puberty.” Gender identity is a very broad social issue in the world today that manifests itself in the society in different ways. The society functions on a system that depends on each gender and its attributed sexual orientation, usually heterosexual males and females, to play the role that the society has constructed for each gender type. This is how the society has functioned but the other sexual orientations, which are homosexuals, transgender and transsexuals do not know how they belong and should function in this system, …show more content…
which has created social stigmatization between both groups. Feeling prejudiced and unfairly treated, some of the homosexuals, transgender, and transsexuals are fighting the heterosexuals to be part of the system while others are in pretence to avoid being a stigma in the society and this is one part in the problem of gender identity.
The other part is more business-based, where the females are trying to break into the male-dominated jobs such as engineering, information technology, and management but there is a reason why these jobs have been male-dominated. These jobs are male-dominated because the constructs and decision-making nature of the job requires a strong sense of control and seared conscience of which many men have and the females in such positions are having gender identity problems because most lack those features.
Gender identity is a social issue rather than a private issue because of how each party affected by it interprets how the situation affects them and reacts accordingly. In the first case of gender identity, the latter group, which are the homosexuals, transgender, and transsexuals, feel unfairly treated in certain situations like when a worker admits to his supervisor that he is a transgender and later loses his job or when the management of a firm denies a worker promotion just because he is transsexual. Victims of these kinds of situations form groups with the interest
PROBLEMS OF GENDER …show more content…
IDENTITY
2
of creating awareness of such injustice and inequality witnessed by their kind and putting an end to it. In the second case of gender identity, women are finding it hard to act like females in jobs that demand male traits to function and the men feel threatened by the women who are trying to break into their male-dominated jobs because this inadvertently means that there will be lower rate of employment for men in the male-dominated jobs. If a group of women finding it hard to juggle work and personal belief in such jobs, they can come together to form interest groups to create awareness for other women who are going through the same issue so as to help one another. If these women gradually increase in number, then this private issue of gender identity among them will eventually become a social issue. The same goes for the men who feel threatened by the women and then carry out plans to block these women from entering their domain and the women notice the moves made by the men and start to fight back, this can amplifies the private issue among certain groups of men and women to a social issue. The keyword here is perception and each party has its own socially constructed viewpoint on gender.
The parties or groups directly affected by the problems of gender identity are in two cases. In the first case, there are the heterosexuals on the one hand and the homosexuals, transgender and transsexuals on the other hand. In the second case, there are the males on the one hand and the females on the other hand. The groups affected by gender identity in both cases are the firms, courts, and government. In the first case, the system with which the society runs, works with an environment of heterosexuals but when the homosexuals, transgender, and transsexuals try to work in that environment there is bound to be conflicts. A majority of the heterosexuals, mostly religious in nature, do not feel comfortable working with them because of their difference in sexual orientation with this being the basis of their prejudice against them and this majority has managed to ostracise them while the minority are not bothered. These
PROBLEMS OF GENDER IDENTITY
3
transgender, homosexuals, and transsexuals have been in pretence and hiding trying to mingle with the heterosexuals so as not to be cast out from the system but a few who got fed up of hiding, pretending and being treated unequally because of their sexual orientation is different from the generally accepted-heterosexual.
They were able to form groups to advocate for equality among all sexual orientations for example, the permission of same-sex marriage in some provinces in Canada, but some heterosexuals are still against such ideals and this is where the government and courts come in. The homosexuals and transsexuals appealed to the courts on several occasions to allow same-sex marriage due to the bans placed on it by the provincial governments, which consists of religious heterosexuals, and had no choice but to allow it throughout Canada because the courts claim that banning same-sex marriage was unconstitutional and was not too different from opposite-sex marriage. With this victory, the transgender, homosexuals, and transsexuals will continue to press on to make the system accept them as they are and the heterosexuals will continue to fight back for the purity of the
system.
The on-going battle between the heterosexuals and the homosexuals, transsexuals and transgender, will also affect the firms because they all comprise of the labor market from which these firms hires their workforce and the customers whose values do not support the latter group.
These firms will have three choices from which they can choose from and whichever any firm makes, they will have to convince their stakeholders that it is good for the business and its image and their workers and management will have to follow through until a higher authority says otherwise. The first will be to show that they view all sexual orientations equally by trying to adapt them into the hetero-gendered system and this will give such firm a good image among the homosexual, transsexual and transgender community but there is a potential for this choice to upset customers whose values are offended by this. Their second option will be to keep the
PROBLEMS OF GENDER IDENTITY
4
system clean by phasing out and preventing the entry all other sexual orientations other than heterosexuals to keep the system running as usual and risk making the homosexual, transsexual and transgender community enemies. The third option will be to do nothing, be indifferent to the whole situation, and keep making their profits with whatever sexual-oriented worker.
In the second case, the female-gendered of all sexual orientations are trying to break into the male dominated jobs and the gender identity problem here is that the females in these maledominated jobs are finding it difficult to remain feminine in such jobs that require masculine attributed traits to strive. The males feel threatened because not only do they feel that they have a much higher competition in the job market but they now have to start looking into alternative jobs, which are the female-dominated jobs such as retail and health (nurses), and this goes against the socially constructed concept of the male gender. The males begin to face a gender identity problem because they will have to settle that they are second fiddle to the females. With the males’ source of livelihood threatened, it is only reasonable that they try to eliminate their threat by showing the employers of labor the adverse effect hiring a woman to do a man’s job has on their business. The firms, who are the employers of labor, will also be in a dilemma and have just two choices to make that affect the firms either way. The firms can either support the men and be cautious about hiring women in the male-dominated jobs or support the women in their empowerment movement and hire women anyways. Again, whichever of the two any firm goes with, it must take into consideration how it affects the business, its image, and the economy at large. The government will be patronised by the females to create awareness to engage women to look into careering in the male-dominated jobs. This will make it harder for the men to convince the firms against the movement because the government will gradually fall in line with the idea and will have no choice but to put laws and regulations in place to support women
PROBLEMS OF GENDER IDENTITY
5
considering male-dominated jobs. If for any reason the males and females eventually confront themselves, the government will serve as a sovereign entity and pacify both parties with agreements and laws to avoid further complications. There is also a possibility of both males and females will use different factions of the government against each other to make their opinion superior to their oppositions’.
In both cases, the government was a means to reach the desired outcomes of the parties affected by the gender identity problem in the society. Apart from the government serving as a means to an end for the groups, it also has its responsibilities at separate levels of the government, which are the federal, provincial, and municipal government, to govern the affairs of the country, provinces and communities with respect to the gender identity because it is a social issue. The greater the power, the more the responsibilities and this applies to the governments. The municipal government is more or less the local government, which means its jurisdictions cover only the local communities. The provincial government as the name implies, is the government in charge of all provincial activities and the federal government governs the country as a whole. One of the municipal government responsibilities pertaining to the first case of gender identity among between the heterosexuals and the homosexuals, transgender and transsexuals is to hold meetings and information sessions within the communities to discuss what the people’s views are on the other sexual orientations and how to accept them into the community to avoid conflict. Another would be to frown against any form of discrimination from both groups and quickly act on it so as not to let the matter amplify and cause more problems in the community and influence firms to make changes to their hiring, working and promotion policies to accommodate the homosexuals, transgender, and transsexuals. For the second case of gender identity, the municipal government should support the women entering the
PROBLEMS OF GENDER IDENTITY
6
male-dominated jobs, which in turn changes the socially influenced ideas about women and should motivate firms to hire psychiatrists or clinical psychologists to help the women finding it hard to be feminine in the male-dominated jobs.
Since most of the Canadian provinces have accepted the homosexual, transsexual and transgender community into the society, the provincial government’s major responsibilities would be to keep on helping both parties to accept and accommodate each other of which the
“duty to accommodate” was made, which allows all sexual orientation to benefit equally from the society. Concerning the provinces’ economies, the firms both privately and provincial owned should try to show that they view and treat all sexual orientations equally to allow the smooth running of all businesses. The same goes for the second case, the privately and provincial owned firms should try to hire and promote as much women as they do with men to ease off tension.
The provincial government can also make available workshops for men affected by the women to aid transition into the female-dominated and change their idea of masculinity. As for the federal government, it should just supervise the municipal and provincial governments on the gender identity issue and should keep working towards Canadians know that laws have been put in effect to treat all sexual orientations equally and that men are valued just as much as women in the economy. Unfortunately, everyone is obliged to pay taxes by the government but these payers of tax have the right to know what is happening to their money and some of them would be the responsibilities stated earlier. One would argue that everybody’s taxes should not be used for the government’s activities with respect to gender identity issues and that only those affected, which are the homosexuals, transgender and transsexuals, should have their taxes used for such but that would be a form of discrimination against them, which is against the law. Since everybody is going to benefit from a peaceful co-existence between both parties then it is only
PROBLEMS OF GENDER IDENTITY
7
reasonable that everybody’s taxes should fund government activities on the problems of gender identity. Other institutions have responsibilities to help solve the problems of gender identity. One of such institutions is the schools, which have the responsibility of making the homosexuals, transgender, and transsexuals to accept being who they are by enabling them admit it early without fear of being ostracised and making the school environment comfortable for them; for example, making unisex washrooms on campus instead of the usual sex-separated one. The schools can also help by beginning to let women aspiring for the male-dominated jobs know the current issue with women already there and how they can deal with it. Since this is a social issue, another institution that would have a responsibility concerning this problem would be the social media. The social media should broadcast information on gender identity issues to enlighten people about accepting the homosexuals, transgender, transsexuals, and the females having problems with male-dominated jobs.
Gender identity issues have grown from individual problems to social problems in the past few years and plans to solve these problems both at the private and social stages are already in place and working. Although all the affected parties have, responsibilities to help resolve this issue but these responsibilities depend on every one of us. We, which means everyone who lives in Canada, all have the responsibility of making the institutions set in place to help resolve this issues work by acting and believing in change however, the religious ones will be much harder to convince but it is possible. With time, Canada will be a country of different ethnicities and sexual orientation and that is something every Canadian and immigrant should look forward to but is only be achievable through co-operation and one belief in the power of change.
PROBLEMS OF GENDER IDENTITY
8
Works Cited
Benschop, Y., Gremmen, I. (2009). “Walking the tightrope: Constructing gender and professional identities in account management.” Journal of Management & Organization,
15, 596–610.
Pringle, J., K. (2008). “Gender in Management: Theorizing Gender as Hetero-gender”. British
Journal of Management, Vol. 19, S110–S119.
“Gender Identity.” n.p. ohrc.on.ca. The Ontario Human Rights Commission, n.d. Web. 19 Nov.
2011.
1
The Ontario Human Rights Commission defines gender identity as the “link to a person’s sense of self, and the sense of being male or female that is socially constructed and reinforced by puberty.” Gender identity is a very broad social issue in the world today that manifests itself in the society in different ways. The society functions on a system that depends on each gender and its attributed sexual orientation, usually heterosexual males and females, to play the role that the society has constructed for each gender type. This is how the society has functioned but the other sexual orientations, which are homosexuals, transgender and transsexuals do not know how they belong and should function in this system, …show more content…
which has created social stigmatization between both groups. Feeling prejudiced and unfairly treated, some of the homosexuals, transgender, and transsexuals are fighting the heterosexuals to be part of the system while others are in pretence to avoid being a stigma in the society and this is one part in the problem of gender identity.
The other part is more business-based, where the females are trying to break into the male-dominated jobs such as engineering, information technology, and management but there is a reason why these jobs have been male-dominated. These jobs are male-dominated because the constructs and decision-making nature of the job requires a strong sense of control and seared conscience of which many men have and the females in such positions are having gender identity problems because most lack those features.
Gender identity is a social issue rather than a private issue because of how each party affected by it interprets how the situation affects them and reacts accordingly. In the first case of gender identity, the latter group, which are the homosexuals, transgender, and transsexuals, feel unfairly treated in certain situations like when a worker admits to his supervisor that he is a transgender and later loses his job or when the management of a firm denies a worker promotion just because he is transsexual. Victims of these kinds of situations form groups with the interest
PROBLEMS OF GENDER …show more content…
IDENTITY
2
of creating awareness of such injustice and inequality witnessed by their kind and putting an end to it. In the second case of gender identity, women are finding it hard to act like females in jobs that demand male traits to function and the men feel threatened by the women who are trying to break into their male-dominated jobs because this inadvertently means that there will be lower rate of employment for men in the male-dominated jobs. If a group of women finding it hard to juggle work and personal belief in such jobs, they can come together to form interest groups to create awareness for other women who are going through the same issue so as to help one another. If these women gradually increase in number, then this private issue of gender identity among them will eventually become a social issue. The same goes for the men who feel threatened by the women and then carry out plans to block these women from entering their domain and the women notice the moves made by the men and start to fight back, this can amplifies the private issue among certain groups of men and women to a social issue. The keyword here is perception and each party has its own socially constructed viewpoint on gender.
The parties or groups directly affected by the problems of gender identity are in two cases. In the first case, there are the heterosexuals on the one hand and the homosexuals, transgender and transsexuals on the other hand. In the second case, there are the males on the one hand and the females on the other hand. The groups affected by gender identity in both cases are the firms, courts, and government. In the first case, the system with which the society runs, works with an environment of heterosexuals but when the homosexuals, transgender, and transsexuals try to work in that environment there is bound to be conflicts. A majority of the heterosexuals, mostly religious in nature, do not feel comfortable working with them because of their difference in sexual orientation with this being the basis of their prejudice against them and this majority has managed to ostracise them while the minority are not bothered. These
PROBLEMS OF GENDER IDENTITY
3
transgender, homosexuals, and transsexuals have been in pretence and hiding trying to mingle with the heterosexuals so as not to be cast out from the system but a few who got fed up of hiding, pretending and being treated unequally because of their sexual orientation is different from the generally accepted-heterosexual.
They were able to form groups to advocate for equality among all sexual orientations for example, the permission of same-sex marriage in some provinces in Canada, but some heterosexuals are still against such ideals and this is where the government and courts come in. The homosexuals and transsexuals appealed to the courts on several occasions to allow same-sex marriage due to the bans placed on it by the provincial governments, which consists of religious heterosexuals, and had no choice but to allow it throughout Canada because the courts claim that banning same-sex marriage was unconstitutional and was not too different from opposite-sex marriage. With this victory, the transgender, homosexuals, and transsexuals will continue to press on to make the system accept them as they are and the heterosexuals will continue to fight back for the purity of the
system.
The on-going battle between the heterosexuals and the homosexuals, transsexuals and transgender, will also affect the firms because they all comprise of the labor market from which these firms hires their workforce and the customers whose values do not support the latter group.
These firms will have three choices from which they can choose from and whichever any firm makes, they will have to convince their stakeholders that it is good for the business and its image and their workers and management will have to follow through until a higher authority says otherwise. The first will be to show that they view all sexual orientations equally by trying to adapt them into the hetero-gendered system and this will give such firm a good image among the homosexual, transsexual and transgender community but there is a potential for this choice to upset customers whose values are offended by this. Their second option will be to keep the
PROBLEMS OF GENDER IDENTITY
4
system clean by phasing out and preventing the entry all other sexual orientations other than heterosexuals to keep the system running as usual and risk making the homosexual, transsexual and transgender community enemies. The third option will be to do nothing, be indifferent to the whole situation, and keep making their profits with whatever sexual-oriented worker.
In the second case, the female-gendered of all sexual orientations are trying to break into the male dominated jobs and the gender identity problem here is that the females in these maledominated jobs are finding it difficult to remain feminine in such jobs that require masculine attributed traits to strive. The males feel threatened because not only do they feel that they have a much higher competition in the job market but they now have to start looking into alternative jobs, which are the female-dominated jobs such as retail and health (nurses), and this goes against the socially constructed concept of the male gender. The males begin to face a gender identity problem because they will have to settle that they are second fiddle to the females. With the males’ source of livelihood threatened, it is only reasonable that they try to eliminate their threat by showing the employers of labor the adverse effect hiring a woman to do a man’s job has on their business. The firms, who are the employers of labor, will also be in a dilemma and have just two choices to make that affect the firms either way. The firms can either support the men and be cautious about hiring women in the male-dominated jobs or support the women in their empowerment movement and hire women anyways. Again, whichever of the two any firm goes with, it must take into consideration how it affects the business, its image, and the economy at large. The government will be patronised by the females to create awareness to engage women to look into careering in the male-dominated jobs. This will make it harder for the men to convince the firms against the movement because the government will gradually fall in line with the idea and will have no choice but to put laws and regulations in place to support women
PROBLEMS OF GENDER IDENTITY
5
considering male-dominated jobs. If for any reason the males and females eventually confront themselves, the government will serve as a sovereign entity and pacify both parties with agreements and laws to avoid further complications. There is also a possibility of both males and females will use different factions of the government against each other to make their opinion superior to their oppositions’.
In both cases, the government was a means to reach the desired outcomes of the parties affected by the gender identity problem in the society. Apart from the government serving as a means to an end for the groups, it also has its responsibilities at separate levels of the government, which are the federal, provincial, and municipal government, to govern the affairs of the country, provinces and communities with respect to the gender identity because it is a social issue. The greater the power, the more the responsibilities and this applies to the governments. The municipal government is more or less the local government, which means its jurisdictions cover only the local communities. The provincial government as the name implies, is the government in charge of all provincial activities and the federal government governs the country as a whole. One of the municipal government responsibilities pertaining to the first case of gender identity among between the heterosexuals and the homosexuals, transgender and transsexuals is to hold meetings and information sessions within the communities to discuss what the people’s views are on the other sexual orientations and how to accept them into the community to avoid conflict. Another would be to frown against any form of discrimination from both groups and quickly act on it so as not to let the matter amplify and cause more problems in the community and influence firms to make changes to their hiring, working and promotion policies to accommodate the homosexuals, transgender, and transsexuals. For the second case of gender identity, the municipal government should support the women entering the
PROBLEMS OF GENDER IDENTITY
6
male-dominated jobs, which in turn changes the socially influenced ideas about women and should motivate firms to hire psychiatrists or clinical psychologists to help the women finding it hard to be feminine in the male-dominated jobs.
Since most of the Canadian provinces have accepted the homosexual, transsexual and transgender community into the society, the provincial government’s major responsibilities would be to keep on helping both parties to accept and accommodate each other of which the
“duty to accommodate” was made, which allows all sexual orientation to benefit equally from the society. Concerning the provinces’ economies, the firms both privately and provincial owned should try to show that they view and treat all sexual orientations equally to allow the smooth running of all businesses. The same goes for the second case, the privately and provincial owned firms should try to hire and promote as much women as they do with men to ease off tension.
The provincial government can also make available workshops for men affected by the women to aid transition into the female-dominated and change their idea of masculinity. As for the federal government, it should just supervise the municipal and provincial governments on the gender identity issue and should keep working towards Canadians know that laws have been put in effect to treat all sexual orientations equally and that men are valued just as much as women in the economy. Unfortunately, everyone is obliged to pay taxes by the government but these payers of tax have the right to know what is happening to their money and some of them would be the responsibilities stated earlier. One would argue that everybody’s taxes should not be used for the government’s activities with respect to gender identity issues and that only those affected, which are the homosexuals, transgender and transsexuals, should have their taxes used for such but that would be a form of discrimination against them, which is against the law. Since everybody is going to benefit from a peaceful co-existence between both parties then it is only
PROBLEMS OF GENDER IDENTITY
7
reasonable that everybody’s taxes should fund government activities on the problems of gender identity. Other institutions have responsibilities to help solve the problems of gender identity. One of such institutions is the schools, which have the responsibility of making the homosexuals, transgender, and transsexuals to accept being who they are by enabling them admit it early without fear of being ostracised and making the school environment comfortable for them; for example, making unisex washrooms on campus instead of the usual sex-separated one. The schools can also help by beginning to let women aspiring for the male-dominated jobs know the current issue with women already there and how they can deal with it. Since this is a social issue, another institution that would have a responsibility concerning this problem would be the social media. The social media should broadcast information on gender identity issues to enlighten people about accepting the homosexuals, transgender, transsexuals, and the females having problems with male-dominated jobs.
Gender identity issues have grown from individual problems to social problems in the past few years and plans to solve these problems both at the private and social stages are already in place and working. Although all the affected parties have, responsibilities to help resolve this issue but these responsibilities depend on every one of us. We, which means everyone who lives in Canada, all have the responsibility of making the institutions set in place to help resolve this issues work by acting and believing in change however, the religious ones will be much harder to convince but it is possible. With time, Canada will be a country of different ethnicities and sexual orientation and that is something every Canadian and immigrant should look forward to but is only be achievable through co-operation and one belief in the power of change.
PROBLEMS OF GENDER IDENTITY
8
Works Cited
Benschop, Y., Gremmen, I. (2009). “Walking the tightrope: Constructing gender and professional identities in account management.” Journal of Management & Organization,
15, 596–610.
Pringle, J., K. (2008). “Gender in Management: Theorizing Gender as Hetero-gender”. British
Journal of Management, Vol. 19, S110–S119.
“Gender Identity.” n.p. ohrc.on.ca. The Ontario Human Rights Commission, n.d. Web. 19 Nov.
2011.