Abstract
The focus of the chapter is the stories of non-heterosexual and trans youth, their career choices, and their experiences in the workplace. The chapter analyzes, what kind of meanings are given to gender identification, sexual orientation and gender. The analysis is based on the responses and stories of non-heterosexual and trans youth in a survey produced in 2013 by the Finnish gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans and intersexual (GLBTI) human rights organization Seta and the Finnish Youth Research Network. The survey data used for this chapter consists of 1861 responses, of which 994 were written by non-heterosexual women, 380 by non-heterosexual men, 404 by transmasculine respondents, and 83 by transfeminine respondents. Differences and similarities between these groups of respondents in relation to their experiences of work and career choice are described. The survey and stories reveal that trans youth experience their situation at work as more challenging than non-heterosexual youth. There are also gendered differences between non-heterosexual women and men, as well as between transfeminine and transmasculine respondents. Young people still have to face many challenges in heteronormative workplaces, and heteronormative expectations affect their career choices.
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Notes
- 1.
Similarly, I define “heterosexual” as a person who has sexual feelings towards a different gender, or who practices their different gender, or has self-definitions that refer to these feelings or practices (such as “straight” or “heterosexual”). This means that a person can be either non-heterosexual, heterosexual, both—or neither—in a case where she/he does not practice any of these deeds (feelings, practices or self-definitions) in her/his life at present.
- 2.
Katarina Alanko wrote the first report and Riikka Taavetti the second (Alanko 2013; Taavetti 2015). The survey was produced in 2013 with 2515 respondents, both young and adult, non-heterosexual, heterosexual, transgender and others. Alanko and Taavetti focused on 1623 participants between 15 and 25 years old. Alanko’s report was based on statistical analysis. Taavetti did qualitative analysis on the stories of young people in the survey. Both of them also wrote on work environment issues.
- 3.
My current research project is a part of the research collaboration projects Engaging South African and Finnish youth towards new traditions of non-violence, equality and social wellbeing (2013–2016) and Social and Economic Sustainability of Future Working Life: Policies, Equalities and Intersectionalities in Finland (2015–2017), which are funded by the Academy of Finland. My research focus is on non-heterosexual and transgender young people and the youth work done with them in Seta.
- 4.
I left some respondents out of my data to make it possible to create the four groups of respondents. Initially, I removed from both groups those responses, which did not mention their gender at the time of their birth. This also meant that I did not take into account, in my analysis, the experiences of intersexual respondents. Trans people may have various kinds of sexual orientations and non-heterosexual people may express their gender in different ways. I wanted to create four separate groups and I divided them mainly using the question “Are you trans?”. If respondents answered in the negative, they were grouped separately from the ones who answered either “yes” or “I don’t know”. The trans groups then included respondents who were either sure that they were trans, or unsure, if they were trans. Of the other group, I removed heterosexual respondents who defined themselves as heterosexual but did not report that they would have a sexual interest towards persons of their own gender. The survey was designed so that it was possible to express the diversity of both sexuality and gender in various ways. However, this also created problems in finding a way to group respondents based on gender (in this case the interpretation of gender at the time of their birth).
- 5.
In the non-heterosexual women’s group, most frequent definitions of their sexual orientation were bi/bisexual (47 %), lesbian (43 %), and sexual minority (37 %). Non-heterosexual male respondents found gay (in Finnish homo, 81 %), sexual minority (33 %), and bi/bisexual (24 %) the most popular definitions. Of these, they could choose from 12 different alternatives (or propose their own), and many chose more than one. Women were more likely than men to also choose queer and pansexual as their definitions, and many responded that they did not want to define their sexuality. In the trans groups, the most popular ways to define their relation to gender were: those who were unsure of their gender position (44 %), transsexual or transsexual background (26 %), transgendered, trans or other-gendered (28 %), genderless (24 %), and queer/genderblender (30 %). There were only a few respondents defining themselves as transvestites (6 %), and the majority of them were interpreted as women at the time of their birth.
- 6.
The data was balanced in many ways. There were relatively more responses from Southern Finland and the capital area of Helsinki than other parts of the country. More highly educated respondents were more active in responding to the survey. The majority of all respondents were still studying or at school: 64 % of non-heterosexual men and over 70 % in the other groups of respondents.
- 7.
In my earlier research (Lehtonen 2004a, b, 2010), the influence of attitudes related to sexuality and gender was also described by adult respondents. Non-heterosexual men were more likely to report the influence of attitudes than non-heterosexual women. Among trans responses there was a slightly different situation: many transvestites often chose male-dominated careers and did not experience the influence of attitudes as important, unlike other trans respondents (Lehtonen 2004b). This was partly related to the fact that most of the transvestites, responding to the survey in the early 2000’s, were older men who typically were hiding their transvestite status at work. In the current youth survey, only a few respondents defined themselves as transvestites, and the majority of those were women. In earlier research, transwomen reported being more influenced by attitudes to their career choices than transmen (Lehtonen 2004b). In the new survey of young people, there were found to be more similarities between transfeminine and transmasculine respondents, though transfeminine respondents felt more pressure, based on societal attitudes, than transmasculine respondents.
- 8.
These citations have been edited to increase their anonymity and clarity.
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Lehtonen, J. (2016). Experiences of Non-Heterosexual and Trans Youth on Career Choice and in the Workplace. In: Köllen, T. (eds) Sexual Orientation and Transgender Issues in Organizations. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29623-4_17
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