Fishing in murky waters - LGBT in the workplace
Zack Whittaker writes about “diversITy: can being gay hold your career back?” for ZD Net.
Duh.
If your boss has derogatory feelings about red hair, long hair, short hair, married people, single people — the list goes on.
What about when the company culture considers it to be a Christian family?
Zack points out that Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, and Transgender people are reaching higher places in management, in some companies. My thought is that this reflects a change in the laws that made LGBT illegal, a drop in general fear of alternate life styles, and how people have become more experienced with working with people with different labels.
Single men and single women, as well as married women, are also finding advancement to the top rungs of the corporate ladder more possible, but still trailing that of married men.
Married men have an advantage. A known, recognized person (a wife) to help manage personal affairs, to keep the exec emotionally balanced, and to help provide social exposure. Gossip between corporate wives can be invaluable to corporate careers. At least, that is the vestige of the prejudice still coloring many business cultures. The advantages, and assumptions of the role of wife, have divulged significantly since the explosions of business culture into business life in the 1950’s and 1960’s.
So women’s ‘glass ceiling’, LGBT, singles, people that prefer to wear their hair long - many people are at a disadvantage.
So, at work, who’s career do you choose to nurture? Can you see the aptitude through the labels?