Study: Queer people still not very visible and still face discrimination in the workplace

Although queer issues and concerns are increasingly moving into the mainstream of society, queer people tend to remain invisible in the workplace. The Friedrich Ebert Foundation took this as an opportunity to take a closer look at the situation of the LGBTQ community in the world of work. The results of the corresponding study have now been published. In order to gain insight into the experiences of queer people in their everyday working lives, the authors of the study conducted interviews with employees at two selected companies and evaluated them with reference to previous studies. This revealed various aspects: Similar to other marginalized groups, queer people are at greater risk of discrimination in the workplace. This is exacerbated when people tend to be cautious and reserved about their gender and/or sexual identity. What sounds paradoxical at first is due to the fact that these people “fall outside the scope of workplace communication” if the company in question has not (yet) established a culture of appreciation for queer people. Such discrimination can take the form of predominantly male management levels, rigidly binary gender-based work organization, or queerphobic communication. The interviews also made it clear that although there are initial efforts by companies to combat discrimination and queerphobia, these are still far from being sustainably anchored. In addition, they often stem from the initiative of queer people who organize themselves in networks. However, the problem with such individual initiatives is that individualization obscures the structural element of queerphobic mechanisms and can lead to discrimination being concealed. Queer people should therefore not be left alone by their companies in the fight against discriminatory structures, as the study authors argue.

We were also interested in these topics:

• Ministry of Defense: Extremely few top positions in the Federal Ministry of Defense are held by East Germans, according to an inquiry by Business Insider (€). However, the ministry still considers itself “discrimination-free.”

• German companies: What impact did Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine have on companies in Germany? This was one of the questions addressed by the 2022 Business Panel of the Institute for Employment Research, the results of which are now available here.

• Social media: For job seekers, the LinkedIn career portal offers the option of adding an “Open to Work” badge to their profile picture to send a clear signal to potential employers. However, t3n explains why this may give recruiters a rather negative impression.

• Migration package: The planned asylum reform has been the subject of heated debate for weeks. As part of the planned legislative changes, the labor market is to be made more accessible for asylum seekers, according to the federal government's plans.

Today, we were part of the People & Culture Festival in Berlin with politjobs: As exhibitors, we were able to present our offers for job seekers in politics and the political environment and show why politjobs is the first and best place to go when looking for a (political) job!

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