How Do You Deal With Hidden Prejudice?

“How do you cope with it?” said my colleague leaning forward so as keep his voice down. 

“Cope with what? I said.

“All the people staring at you, talking about you, sniggering... ?”

“Where?” I said, turning in my seat to survey the people sitting around in the hotel lounge, apparently getting on with their own meetings.

“Oh, they’ve stopped now you’ve looked,” replied my colleague.

“Who was making comments?” I asked, raising my voice a little.

“Leave it” he said quickly raising his hand a little, obviously mortified by the thought that I might make a scene and further embarrass him.

I relaxed.  “I cope with it because I don’t see it,” I said.  “People do it behind my back – they hide their prejudice.”

That was a real incident 10 years ago when I first changed my gender and started on my journey to change attitudes by delivering Transgender Awareness Training. Since then the law in the UK has changed beyond recognition and most public sector organisations have in place equality policies to ensure that everyone is treated fairly and protected from discrimination, harassment and victimisation.

People have learned over the past decade not to be seen to discriminate and rightly they will be disciplined if they behave inappropriately.  Unfortunately changing the law does not change attitudes and beliefs.  That is much more difficult and the challenge organisations face today is the unconscious and hidden bias and prejudice that is impacting the way people are treated every day.

My experience over the past decade has confirmed to me that the people hold prejudices mostly through ignorance. Many have never met and spoken to anyone who is trans or gay, and they have been hugely influenced by homophobic and transphobic comments from friends, family and the media.  They see and hear trans and gay people and their friends being humiliated and ridiculed, often behind their backs, and feel bullied into silence.

My voice is still very masculine so I always have challenges on the phone, but I also have problems day to day.  A few weeks ago I attended a workshop and had made a point of dressing in a way that was unmistakeably female.  Yet despite that the taxi driver referred to me as “sir”, as did the clerk at the rail information desk.

My partner also has a bad time. She sees people laughing behind my back; she sees staff in shops and offices making faces at each other when they hear my voice. A friend had to endure a transphobic rant from a cashier in a store who felt that I should not be allowed to use female changing cubicles and female toilets. She lost her job the following day.

Prejudice is often very subtle. I see people actively avoid me or not make eye contact, or make aside comments to a colleague and laugh. Often I find I am not given the same level of customer service, even refused service on the phone because my voice did not match the gender on my customer record.

And it’s not just me; often my friends and family find themselves being subtly treated with prejudice simply because they are with me.

I know some people talk about me behind my back, refer to me a “he” instead of “she”, point and snigger when I pass but I seldom see or hear any of it.  My friends, family and acquaintances do. Where people hide their deep prejudice from me, they openly show them to people who know me, even confronting them for being with me.

What they don’t understand is that my friends, family and acquaintances are just as hurt and upset by their behaviour and comments as I would be if they didn’t hide it from me.  And this could also be happening every day in your organisation.

Sometimes when people are the victims of this subtle discrimination and prejudice they complain – mostly we don’t.  We just don’t go back, and we tell our friends about it.

And remember that it is the organisation that gets a bad name for homophobic and transphobic behaviour, not the individual members of staff.

The solution is to make sure that everyone receives transgender awareness training – and as far as possible training delivered by people who have the protected characteristic being addressed. I have seen some amazingly entertaining trainers who are trans, gay, have cerebral palsy, are burns victims etc.

Just talking about prejudice is not enough – we have to confront our hidden prejudices in order to address them.

Lies, Damn Lies and the Gender Pay Gap

Popularised by author Mark Twain who attributed t to British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, the quote Lies, Damned Lies and statistics has never been more appropriate than when applied to the issue of the Gender Pay Gap as I will demonstrate in this article. But first this EU video is really excellent at highlighting the issue of gender inequality and the gender pay gap.

The definition of the gender pay gap statistic is the percentage by which the average hourly pay for women in full time employment is lower than the average hourly rate of pay for men in full time employment and for Europe generally that figure is 17%.  UK statistics show a lower figure 14.9% - those are across the board.

However term average means that about half the population are doing better than that and half are worse. Once we start to unravel the4 statistics we find a number of very disturbing facts. Some employment sectors like health and financial services are a lot worse.  In Financial services the gender pay gap is a staggering 55% - but even that figure has been massaged to make the problem seem better than it really is.

This statistic tells us that on average women working full time earn £450 for every £1000 earned by a man.  So in order to equalise pay we need to increase women's pay.  If we increased average pay for women by 100% ie another £450 in my example that would be £900 - still not equal to men.

In fact the hidden statistic is that in the financial services industry men in full time employment earn on average 122% more than women in full time employment. And this all gets a lot worse when you look at part time earnings where the gender pay gap is higher and is made worse by the fact that 78% of part time workers are woman.

So why after more than 40 years do we still have such an insurmountable problem with gender equality. I came across a very male oriented site today that might give a clue - unfortunately I have seen many of the same views expressed.

the 22-cent “pay gap” is neither a result of gender bias nor workplace discrimination. It can be explained entirely by the fact that women as a group tend to make certain very logical and legitimateemployment-related choices which, while affording them a number of benefits that they value highly, tend to suppress incomes Male Matters USA

Women earn less because they choose work more suited to women which pays less. In fact women are socialised into expecting to work in female suitable work and to make caring and reproduction important. Check out this video and see how embedded gender roles become in our children

The choices we make are not made entirely free from bias. More importantly the recruiters are already biased in the same way and that unconscious bias means that women are encouraged away from higher paid jobs. If a man works long hours he is applauded, where a woman will be criticised. If a woman negotiates hard and is money orientated she will be viewed as unfriendly and selfish - where a man is considered dynamic and successful. 

It is very difficult for a man to see and understand that unconscious bias and hidden prejudice- I could not see it as a man - but when you are subjected to it that is a different story, especially when you lose the natural privileges granted to men. 

Imagine a world where most women did, as most men apparently do, seek work primarily for the purpose of accumulating wealth or refused to work in low paid industries like health care and education, or chose not to have children or handed them over to low paid child carers. The problem is that women are good at caring, and enjoy caring and without that function our society would be much poorer.  Unfortunately we don't value the work we expect women to do and until we change our values we will continue to have gender inequality.

Unconscious and Hidden Bias and Prejudice

“How do you cope with it?” said my colleague leaning forward so as keep his voice down.

“Cope with what? I said.

“All the people staring at you, talking about you, sniggering... ?”

“Where?” I said, turning in my seat to survey the people sitting around in the hotel lounge, apparently getting on with their own meetings.

“Oh, they’ve stopped now you’ve looked,” replied my colleague.

“Who was making comments?” I asked, raising my voice a little.

“Leave it” he said quickly raising his hand a little, obviously mortified by the thought that I might make a scene and further embarrass him.

I relaxed.  “I cope with it because I don’t see it,” I said.  

“People do it behind my back – they hide their prejudice.” 

That was a real incident 10 years ago when I first changed my gender and started on my journey to change attitudes towards people who break the unwritten rules of gender. Since then the law has changed beyond recognition and most organisations now have in place equality policies to ensure that everyone is treated fairly and protected from discrimination, harassment and victimisation.

People have learnt over the past decade not to be seen to discriminate and rightly they will be disciplined if they behave inappropriately.  But changing the law does not change attitudes and beliefs.  That is much more difficult and the challenge organisations face today is the unconscious and hidden bias and prejudice that is impacting the way people are treated every day.

People still talk about me behind my back, refer to me a “he” instead of “she”, point and snigger when I pass and I still seldom see or hear any of it.  But my friends, family and acquaintances do. Where people hide their deep prejudice from me, they openly show it to people to know me, even confronting them for being with me. 

What they don’t understand is that my friends, family and acquaintances are just as hurt and upset by their behaviour and comments as I would be if they didn’t hide it from me.  And this is happening every day in most organisations.

So how can the issue be addressed? 

Well my experience over the past decade has demonstrated to me to me that the most people hold prejudices through ignorance. Many have never met and spoken to anyone who is trans or gay, and they have been hugely influenced by homophobic and transphobic comments from friends, family and the media.  They see and hear trans and gay people and being humiliated and ridiculed, often behind their backs.  They see the friends of trans and gay people receiving the same treatment and fear that if they befriend or stand up for someone who is gay or trans they will get the same treatment and feel bullied into silence.

Feedback from my workshops indicates that participants are much more likely to challenge homophobic and transphobic comments, contribute to creating a more harmonious and supportive workplace and treat all service users more fairly and equally after attending an awareness workshop.

If organisations do not run regular awareness workshops on this topic the chances are that anyone who is or is perceived to be in anyway gender variant or is associated with someone who is gender variant in the organisation will be subject to unconscious or hidden bias or prejudice.  

I trans friend of mine Michelle was shopping in a large retail clothes shop some time ago and was standing in one queue for the tills while her female friend was being served in another queue. The check out clerk spotted Michelle and made some really offensive remarks about her. 

When she was told about the comments Michelle was upset and mentioned it to me so I suggested that she contact the store management and complain.  She did and all credit to the store, the staff member was sacked the following day. But when I told this story to a number of other trans people they all agreed that they would not have complained and some said that they would probably have used the store  again perceiving it to be transphobic. 

If you would like more information on Sex, Gender and Equality awareness training please check out my GenderNetwork web site  

As one of the UK’s leading motivational speakers and trainers, I have been delivering equality and diversity workshops and keynote presentations for nearly a decade and work with over 250 organisations, particularly local authorities, housing associations, educational, NHS and criminal justice organisations.

My workshops and presentations are always highly interactive and entertaining, exploring the impact of the Equality Act in regard to sex, gender, gender reassignment, sexual orientation and human rights, while demonstrating how the principles discussed apply equally across all protected characteristics.  I use a variety of presentation methods - video clips, music, lecture, discussion, groups exercises, questions and answer, case studies and where I use PowerPoint - it is a visual aid.  No death by slides presentations.

Most importantly my presentations are based on real life experience.  I take participants on a journey to help them to really understand what it’s like to grow up and cope with being trans or gay, and provide an open environment where they can ask any questions no matter how personal.