Transmen get increased income, and transwomen decreased income

[eridani]

http://www.alternet.org/story/145699/how_the_unconscious_mind_can_act_out_our_prejudices_


The sociologist Kristen Schilt has tracked this phenomenon. Between 2003 and 2005, she followed the lives of twenty-nine transmen in Southern California. The transmen were white-collar and bluecollar workers, professionals, and retail salesmen. They ranged in age from twenty to forty-eight. They included people who were white, black, Latino, Asian, and biracial. Eighteen of the twenty-nine were open, meaning their co-workers knew they had once been women. Eleven of them were “stealth” transmen.

Overwhelmingly, the men told Schilt that they were being treated better than they'd been treated as women. Some enjoyed their newfound privileges, others felt uncomfortable. One thirty-nine-year-old white man who worked in a blue-collar job told Schilt: “I swear they let the guys get away with so much stuff! Lazy-ass bastards get away with so much stuff, and the women who are working hard, they just get ignored. . . . I am really aware of it. And that is one of the reasons that I feel like I have become much more of a feminist since transition. I am just so aware of the difference that my experience has shown me.”

Carl, a thirty-four-year-old “stealth” transman, told Schilt about the hardware store where he worked after he made the transition: “Girls couldn't get their forklift license, or it would take them forever. They wouldn't make as much money. It was so pathetic. I would have never seen it if I was a regular guy. I would have just not seen it.” A Latino attorney told Schilt that an attorney at another law firm had complimented his boss for firing an incompetent woman and hiring a new lawyer who was “just delightful.” The attorney at the other firm did not know that the incompetent woman and the delightful new lawyer were the same person.

One transman told Schilt that he was not asked to do different work after the transition, but doing his work suddenly became much easier. He recalled that before the transition, he would often be told that crews and trucks were not available when he needed some help. “I swear it was like from one day to the next of me transitioning. 'I need this, this is what I want,' and-” The man snapped his fingers. “I have not had to fight about anything.”

Another study that Schilt conducted with Matthew Wiswall analyzed the salaries of forty-three transgendered people after the volunteers made transitions from male to female or female to male. Schilt and Wiswall found that men who became women reported a decline of 12 percent in their earnings. Women who became men reported an increase of 7.5 percent in their earnings.

[dsc]

1. very interesting

I do want to point out about the lawyer though, the lawyer may have changed. I would think that as a woman he might well have been personally unhappy but as a man personally happy. If he was someone who let his personal happiness affect his work then his work might well have improved.

[eridani]

2. That's a good point--but basic professional knowledge would have been the same, no? n/t

[dsc]

3. surely it would

but incompetent might mean not a lack of knowledge but a demeanor that made her appear not to know anything.

[noamnety]

9. That doesn't explain the consistent decrease in the women's pay

They would have presumably been happier after their transitions, and yet their salaries went down.

[nickinSTL]

4. I'm assuming that the differential

is consistent with the differential between men and women generally for the industries/companies involved?

I suspect that what is really being seen here is the general gender difference in pay, and that the fact that transpeople are affected by it is sort of secondary.

[Meeker Morgan]

7. That makes good sense, furthermore ...

... the sample in this study is too small to prove anything.

[eridani]

8. The point is that transgendered people are an excellent control

Comparing a the expereience of a man and a woman in the workplace takes on extra resonance when they are the SAME PERSON.

[localroger]

5. I once met an interesting lady

She had been a man until her early 50's, and she was a retired Army mechanic. She decided to celebrate her transition by getting a more appropriate vehicle; the GMC van she'd lived in at times and decorated with Army stickers she gave to me, and she found a white Town Car she felt better expressed her new persona. Of course she knew cars inside and out and so she went to the dealership with some idea of the deal she wanted to cut -- and to her surprise, the salesman was totally obstinate about the price, insisting that the car was worth several thousand dollars more than she knew it was, and refusing to yield.

As she was grousing about this another friend of hers explained it succinctly: "Honey, you're a woman now."

She solved the problem by buying a similar car out of state and travelling to pick it up. Her voice was still pretty deep and she simply didn't mention her gender as she haggled over the phone. She said the seller was quite surprised when she showed up to pick up her purchase, though...

[Nay]

6. What's funny is that in the cases described, the person is at the

SAME JOB and is treated differently after the transition even tho he/she is the SAME person! Are the coworkers so robotlike in how they react to the sex of a person that they can't see their contradictory behavior in such transparent cases?? If this is true, and I have no doubt it is, well, human beings aren't a whole lot different than worms who just react to stimuli mindlessly.

And men wonder why women are pissed off so often.