NONBINARY PEOPLE GET A VOICE IN THE WORKPLACE

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which is an independent federal agency responsible for enforcing federal civil rights laws against workplace discrimination, recently changed its website to address how employers can report workers as nonbinary. This action is a result of more Americans informing people that their gender is under the nonbinary umbrella, which places a pressing need on employers to recognize their gender.

According to a Harris Poll done on behalf of GLAAD in 2017, 12% of millenials say they are transgender, agender, genderfluid, or bigender, which is double the percentage of Generation X who said the same. A few states allow nonbinary people to choose a marker other than “M” or “F” on government identification such as driver’s licenses and ID cards. California, Oregon, Minnesota, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Hawaii, and the District of Columbia allow nonbinary people to have this option such as an “X” designation. Washington, Oregon, and New Jersey allow nonbinary birth certificates.

Although this guidance for employers is not a long-term solution for nonbinary people, it is an improvement over completely erasing nonbinary people’s genders. It also defies the binary understanding of gender that the Trump administration has embraced from the beginning.

Source: Quinlan, Casey. "EEOC now gives nonbinary people a way to be counted in workplace." Think Progress, Aug. 20, 2019.