Transphobia report finds only a third of legal businesses would hire trans staff

Only a third of businesses in the legal sector are open to the idea of hiring transgender staff, according to a new report from an English law firm.

Crosslands Solicitors has surveyed 1,000 UK businesses across a range of sectors on their attitude towards transgender workers.

Nearly one in three employers admitted they are “less likely” to hire a transgender person and nearly half (43 per cent) said they were unsure if they would recruit a transgender worker.

Sectors least likely to employ a transgender person were retail (47 per cent), IT (45 per cent), leisure and hospitality (35 per cent), and manufacturing (34 per cent), the report found.

The sectors most open to the idea of hiring transgender workers were financial services (34 per cent), the legal sector (33 per cent), and construction and engineering (25 per cent).

Just three per cent of the 1,000 employers polled have an equal opportunities policy that openly welcomes transgender people to apply for jobs, and out of the third of employers that would consider hiring a transgender person, just eight per cent think they should have the same rights to be hired for a job as everyone else.

Crosslands Solicitors said the figures, alongside recent findings from LGBT charity Stonewall about transphobia in the general public, underlined the need for a change in British equality legislation to protect “not just those who are going through gender reassignment, but the wider transgender community such as non-binary workers”.

Managing director Beverley Sunderland said: “In 2016, the Women and Equalities Select Committee recommended amending the protected characteristic of gender reassignment in the Equality Act 2010 to read ‘gender identity’ which was rejected by government.

“But if we’re to encourage businesses to build a trans-inclusive workplace then we need the backing of the law together with greater support for employers to help understand the issues around transgender workers in the workplace. A business where everyone feels welcome and valued is by far a more productive one.”

The Equality Act 2010 does not apply to Northern Ireland.