Doing transgender: Gender minorities in the organization

Abstract

In their review of this essay, a reviewer commented that "This editorial is situated at a crucial moment when transgender individuals are increasingly becoming the target of political, social, and legislative challenges across various global contexts. It leverages this timing to push forward an academic and practical discourse on transgender issues within organizations, highlighting the urgent need for awareness, research, and policy changes." While we must focus on this crucial moment, we note that in indigenous non-European cultures prior to mass religious and economically driven colonization, trans people could live and work naturally. Colonization and the imposition of "modern" western, Christian, and Islamic views on gender and sex changed trans lives by condemning them as evil and unnatural. Take the case of Pakistan, where here (and the rest of the Indian subcontinent), hijra were considered a third sex in Hindu scriptures, but became criminalized by British morality laws in the 1800s (Tabassum & Jamil, 2014). Now in Pakistan, laws must be enacted to protect this once accepted group (Redding, 2019) and studies have been conducted on their access to education (Tabassum & Jamil, 2014), health