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Understanding Labor Market Discrimination Against Transgender People

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View the page of Billur Aksoy

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Using a US nationally representative sample and a double list experiment designed to elicit views free from social desirability bias, Billur Aksoy finds that anti-transgender labor market attitudes are significantly underreported.

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 19, 2024

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The study discussed in the text aims to investigate Americans' views toward transgender individuals in managerial positions and their support for employment non-discrimination protections, particularly in light of the 2020 Supreme Court ruling (Bostock v. Clayton County) that prohibits employment discrimination based on gender and sexual identity. The authors, including Keep Carpenter and Daria San, note a lack of existing research on the economic experiences and well-being of transgender individuals.

To assess public sentiments, they employed a double list experiment method designed to minimize social desirability bias in responses. The study found that roughly 80% of survey respondents expressed comfort with having a transgender manager and also supported employment protections for transgender individuals. However, when compared to responses gathered through the double list method, there was evidence of social desirability bias, with actual support for these issues estimated at about 70%.

Further analysis revealed that respondents generally overestimated the level of comfort and support for transgender individuals, indicating a disconnect between perceived and actual public attitudes. The study concluded that while support for transgender individuals exists, it is less robust compared to that for lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals, suggesting that targeted interventions may be necessary to enhance support for transgender equality within the workplace. The authors emphasize the importance of correcting public misconceptions about support levels to potentially improve attitudes and behaviors toward transgender individuals. Future research may explore strategies to disseminate these findings to address the misconceptions observed.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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The context for this study is that there's

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actually very little economics research about the

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experiences and wellbeing of transgender individuals

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and knowing how important,

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labor market experiences could be for,

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general socioeconomic wellbeing of individuals.

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My coauthors keep carpenter Daria San,

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and I set out

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to study Americans views towards transgender managers and,

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and their support for employment,

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non-discrimination protection for transgender individuals.

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Our research questions were also motivated by the,

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recent 2020 Supreme Court ruling in Postoc

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versus Clayton County.

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The postdoc versus Clayton,

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county decision was a landmark Supreme Court decision

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that established that employment discrimination on the basis

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of sexual identity and gender identities prohibited.

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So before the Supreme Court ruling we had about health

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of the states in the United States

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provided this protection, on the basis of sexual and

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or gender identity.

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But since the Supreme Court ruling,

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we now have protection against employment,

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discrimination on the basis of both gender

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and sexual identity at the federal level.

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So our paper, in our paper, we wanted to see

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how much support there is for this legal protection

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that transgender individuals now enjoy at the federal level.

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And also one of the things

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that we study in the paper is whether

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or not people may be misreporting their support

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when asked directly in surveys.

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Uh, this might be

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because people may feel uncomfortable

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reporting their true views.

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Uh, they may feel like they, they may feel the need

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or the social pressure to respond in a way

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that they think is socially acceptable or social desirable.

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We call this effect the social desirable device.

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So we first wanted to see if there is misreporting,

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and second, we wanted to study the true level of support

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for transgender people in the workplace.

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In the absence of this social desirable device,

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it is important to study the true level of support,

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especially in the context

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of this 2020 US Supreme Court ruling that I just mentioned,

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which now protects sexual

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and gender minorities from employment discrimination.

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It is important to know how much support there is

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for this protection because that would have implications

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for, for its effectiveness and,

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and compliance at the same time.

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But of course, in general, it is important to study,

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general attitudes

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and we views towards transgender individuals

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because that could have, implications in terms

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of their health and economic, outcomes.

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So looking at the previous literature, there's some evidence

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that shows that gender minority individuals have worse

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economic outcomes compared to their cisgender peers.

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But there's no other research on how,

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transgender individuals are viewed or

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Supported with respect to labor market opportunities.

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This is where our research and our contributions come in.

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And, and the way that we study our research questions is

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by using a method called a double list experiment method.

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And, this is a method that allows us

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to elicit views free from social desirable device.

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And we run our double list experiment using an online sample

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that is representative of the US population with respect

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to race, sex, and age.

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So the way that we study our research questions is by,

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using a a double list experiment method.

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I'll talk about the list experiment method,

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and I'll target down a little bit,

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what a double list experiment is,

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but we don't need to talk about the details of that.

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It's a little bit technical. In a list experiment,

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it's a very simple and fascinating method.

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In a list experiment, we have two groups.

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We have a control group and a treatment group.

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In the control group, we randomly assign our participants

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to either control or, or the treatment group.

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Uh, in the control group,

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we show our participants four statements,

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and we ask them out of these four statements, how many

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of them are true for you?

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So some of these statements were politically in nature.

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For example, one of the statements we used was, I would vote

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for a political candidate who is pro-choice,

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but others were not political at all.

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For example, a statement that we used was, I own a car.

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So we have statements like this.

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There are four of them that are control participants see,

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and we ask them, out of these four, how many

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of them are true for you?

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We don't ask them to report which individual ones are true

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for them or agree.

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They agree with just how many of them.

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So this is the control group.

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We have close to a thousand people in the control group,

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and about, again, close to a thousand people,

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were randomly assigned into our treatment group.

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Now, in the treatment group, these people see a total

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of five statements.

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The four statements that we use in the

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control group are identical.

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So we use the same four statements

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that we use in the control group,

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but now we add an additional fifth statement.

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We call this statement the statement of interest

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or the key statement.

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This is what we are interested in actually measuring.

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This is what we want to see how people respond.

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So in our case, we had two key statements.

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Um, one of them was,

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I think the law should prohibit employment discrimination

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for transgender individuals.

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That was more of the key statements that we used.

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And the second key statement that we used was,

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I would be comfortable having a transgender manager at work.

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So the people see the five statements.

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Either they see either one of the key statements,

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so they either see, I think the law should prohibit

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employment discrimination against transgender individuals,

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or in other groups.

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Some people will see I would be comfortable having a

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transgender manager at work.

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So we get their responses.

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They tell us out of four, two are true, three are true, out

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Of five, three are true, so on and so forth.

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So how do we use this data to, understand

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how many people actually agree to this fifth key statement

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of interest, what we do is

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we calculate the average response in the control group.

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Suppose that in the control group, on average,

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people reported say two and a half,

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and now we calculate the average

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response in the control group.

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And it now suppose that in the control group,

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the average response was, 3.2.

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Now we take the difference in the average responses.

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So in the example that I have just given,

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the difference would be 0.7.

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The fact that the only difference between the control

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and the treatment group is this fi fifth key

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statement of interest.

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This difference in responses,

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the average responses in my example, it was 0.7, tells me

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that 70% of Americans in my sample agreed

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to this fit key statement of of interest.

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And one thing to notice here is

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that my participants never tell me which

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statements are true for them.

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So they just give me a number.

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This gives them a privacy kind of a veil

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for their responses.

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And this is how this method allows me to estimate

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at the sample level what proportion

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of my participants agree to the fifth statement.

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Without imposing any social desirable bias concerns, it kind

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of removes that concern.

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So we can estimate the true level of support that there is

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for the two key statements that we are we are investigating.

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So one thing that I would also mention is in our study

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toward the end of, the study,

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after the list experiment was done,

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we also had some survey questions.

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And as part of these survey questions,

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we asked our participants,

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directly the the three key statements

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of interest that we have.

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So specifically we asked them whether they think the law

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should prohibit employment discrimination against

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transgender individuals

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and whether they would be comfortable having a

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transgender major at work.

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The reason why we asked these questions directly as part

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of the survey is

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because we wanted to measure the magnitude

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of the social desirable device

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by comparing the estimates we get from the list experiment,

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which is free from social desirable device to the estimates

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that we get from the survey.

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Now we can see how big or

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or small the social desirable device is,

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and we had a few more questions that we for

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to explore in our data,

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but, it might make sense

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to talk about those when we discuss the results.

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Thinking about the results of our paper,

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we have two main findings that we discussed in the paper.

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First of all, when we look at our survey responses,

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so when we ask our participants directly as part

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of our survey, would you be comfortable having a

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transgender manager at work?

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What we find is that 80% of Americans say

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that they would be comfortable having a

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transgender manager at work.

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And we also find that, again, when we ask them directly

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as part of our survey, whether

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or not they support employment non-discrimination protection

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for transgender individuals.

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Um, again, about 80% says yes,

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I support employment non-discrimination protection

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for transgender individuals.

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However, when we compare these direct estimates

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to the estimates that we get from the double list method,

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we find evidence of social desirable bias.

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Specifically, we see that when we ask directly as part

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of the survey, Americans in our study,

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over report their support by about eight to two, eight

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to 10%.

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But once we account for this social desirable bias, meaning

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that once we focus on the, the results

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that we get from the double list experiment,

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we still find significant amount of support

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for transgender people in the workplace.

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Specifically, we estimate that over two thirds

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of Americans kind of hovering around 70%

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of Americans in our sample say that they, we find

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that about 70%

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of Americans would be comfortable having a

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transgender manager at work.

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And they also support employment non-discrimination

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protection, for transgender people.

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So these are the main findings of our paper.

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We also explore our data a little bit more

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and report additional findings.

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And, I would like to talk about a couple of them here.

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Uh, for example, as part

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of our survey when we asked direct questions about support

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for transgender people, we also ask the same questions,

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but for LGB individuals, lesbian, gay, bisexual individuals,

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and these survey responses allow us to compare whether

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or not support for transgender people is different than the

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support that we find or we see for lesbian, gay,

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and bisexual individuals.

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And we find notable differences there.

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Specifically, we find

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that on average people report being more comfortable

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with an lesbian, gay bisexual manager

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compared to a transgender manager.

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And similarly, people are more supportive

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of non-discrimination protection

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for transgender individuals.

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People are more supportive of employment,

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people are more supportive of

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non-discrimination protection in employment

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for LGB individuals, lesbian, gay, bisexual individuals

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relative to transgender individuals.

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Another interesting thing that we see in our data is

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that Americans are quite pessimistic about the actual level

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of support for, transgender people in the workplace.

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As part of our survey,

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we asked our participants about their general perceptions

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regarding the two statements of interest

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that we have in the paper.

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In other words, we elicited their beliefs about the share

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of Americans who would be comfortable having a

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transgender manager at work.

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And we also elicited their beliefs about

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The share of Americans

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who would support employment non-discrimination protection

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for transgender people.

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As I mentioned earlier, the true level of support

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that we get for these two items in our double list

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experiment is over two thirds is a little bit over 70% of

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of Americans in our sample

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are actually comfortable having a transgender manager,

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and they do support employment non-discrimination protection

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for transgender individuals.

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But when we look at the beliefs that that we collected

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as part of our survey, we see that Americans believe

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that only about 48%

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of Americans would be comfortable having a

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transgender major at work.

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They also believe that only about 58%

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of Americans would support employment non-discrimination

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protection for transgender individuals.

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So Americans are significantly underestimating the true

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level of support that we find in our sample.

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And this is actually an interesting,

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an important finding which could have significant,

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policy implications.

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So in conclusion, we find evidence of overreporting

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of support for transgender people in the workplace.

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But even after we control for this over reporting,

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we see that majority of Americans over two third, two thirds

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of Americans, over 70%

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of them support employment non-discrimination protection

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for transgender individuals.

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Thinking about the implications of our findings,

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the fact that support for lesbian, gay

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and bisexual individuals are higher than the support

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that we find for transgender individuals could mean

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that perhaps transgender specific labor market

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interventions may be necessary

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to achieve workplace equality.

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And also the fact that Americans significantly underestimate

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the level of support for transgender individuals

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is an important finding.

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Previous research shows that individuals beliefs about what

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what they think other people believe could actually have an

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impact on their own beliefs and behaviors.

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So thinking about our own research, what this means is that

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informing Americans about the level of support

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that we find in our research would help correct

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for these misperceptions

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and could help further increase the support

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for transgender people in the workplace.

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This is something that we are thinking about exploring

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further in our future research.

00:00 - The context for this study is that there's actually very little economics research about the experiences and wellbeing of transgender individuals and knowing how important, labor market experiences could be for, general socioeconomic wellbeing of individuals.

00:17 - My coauthors keep carpenter Daria San, and I set out to study Americans views towards transgender managers and, and their support for employment, non-discrimination protection for transgender individuals. Our research questions were also motivated by the, recent 2020 Supreme Court ruling in Postoc versus Clayton County. The postdoc versus Clayton, county decision was a landmark Supreme Court decision

00:44 - that established that employment discrimination on the basis of sexual identity and gender identities prohibited. So before the Supreme Court ruling we had about health of the states in the United States provided this protection, on the basis of sexual and or gender identity. But since the Supreme Court ruling, we now have protection against employment, discrimination on the basis of both gender and sexual identity at the federal level.

01:14 - So our paper, in our paper, we wanted to see how much support there is for this legal protection that transgender individuals now enjoy at the federal level. And also one of the things that we study in the paper is whether or not people may be misreporting their support when asked directly in surveys. this might be because people may feel uncomfortable reporting their true views.

01:40 - they may feel like they, they may feel the need or the social pressure to respond in a way that they think is socially acceptable or social desirable. We call this effect the social desirable device. So we first wanted to see if there is misreporting, and second, we wanted to study the true level of support for transgender people in the workplace. In the absence of this social desirable device, it is important to study the true level of support, especially in the context

02:09 - of this 2020 US Supreme Court ruling that I just mentioned, which now protects sexual and gender minorities from employment discrimination. It is important to know how much support there is for this protection because that would have implications for, for its effectiveness and, and compliance at the same time. But of course, in general, it is important to study, general attitudes and we views towards transgender individuals

02:35 - because that could have, implications in terms of their health and economic, outcomes. So looking at the previous literature, there's some evidence that shows that gender minority individuals have worse economic outcomes compared to their cisgender peers. But there's no other research on how, transgender individuals are viewed or Supported with respect to labor market opportunities. This is where our research and our contributions come in. And, and the way that we study our research questions is

03:08 - by using a method called a double list experiment method. And, this is a method that allows us to elicit views free from social desirable device. And we run our double list experiment using an online sample that is representative of the US population with respect to race, sex, and age. So the way that we study our research questions is by, using a a double list experiment method. I'll talk about the list experiment method, and I'll target down a little bit,

03:39 - what a double list experiment is, but we don't need to talk about the details of that. It's a little bit technical. In a list experiment, it's a very simple and fascinating method. In a list experiment, we have two groups. We have a control group and a treatment group. In the control group, we randomly assign our participants to either control or, or the treatment group. in the control group, we show our participants four statements,

04:03 - and we ask them out of these four statements, how many of them are true for you? So some of these statements were politically in nature. For example, one of the statements we used was, I would vote for a political candidate who is pro-choice, but others were not political at all. For example, a statement that we used was, I own a car. So we have statements like this. There are four of them that are control participants see, and we ask them, out of these four, how many

04:31 - of them are true for you? We don't ask them to report which individual ones are true for them or agree. They agree with just how many of them. So this is the control group. We have close to a thousand people in the control group, and about, again, close to a thousand people, were randomly assigned into our treatment group. Now, in the treatment group, these people see a total of five statements.

04:53 - The four statements that we use in the control group are identical. So we use the same four statements that we use in the control group, but now we add an additional fifth statement. We call this statement the statement of interest or the key statement. This is what we are interested in actually measuring. This is what we want to see how people respond. So in our case, we had two key statements.

05:16 - one of them was, I think the law should prohibit employment discrimination for transgender individuals. That was more of the key statements that we used. And the second key statement that we used was, I would be comfortable having a transgender manager at work. So the people see the five statements. Either they see either one of the key statements, so they either see, I think the law should prohibit employment discrimination against transgender individuals,

05:43 - or in other groups. Some people will see I would be comfortable having a transgender manager at work. So we get their responses. They tell us out of four, two are true, three are true, out Of five, three are true, so on and so forth. So how do we use this data to, understand how many people actually agree to this fifth key statement of interest, what we do is we calculate the average response in the control group.

06:12 - Suppose that in the control group, on average, people reported say two and a half, and now we calculate the average response in the control group. And it now suppose that in the control group, the average response was, 3.2. Now we take the difference in the average responses. So in the example that I have just given, the difference would be 0.7. The fact that the only difference between the control

06:39 - and the treatment group is this fi fifth key statement of interest. This difference in responses, the average responses in my example, it was 0.7, tells me that 70% of Americans in my sample agreed to this fit key statement of of interest. And one thing to notice here is that my participants never tell me which statements are true for them. So they just give me a number.

07:04 - This gives them a privacy kind of a veil for their responses. And this is how this method allows me to estimate at the sample level what proportion of my participants agree to the fifth statement. Without imposing any social desirable bias concerns, it kind of removes that concern. So we can estimate the true level of support that there is for the two key statements that we are we are investigating. So one thing that I would also mention is in our study

07:35 - toward the end of, the study, after the list experiment was done, we also had some survey questions. And as part of these survey questions, we asked our participants, directly the the three key statements of interest that we have. So specifically we asked them whether they think the law should prohibit employment discrimination against transgender individuals

07:56 - and whether they would be comfortable having a transgender major at work. The reason why we asked these questions directly as part of the survey is because we wanted to measure the magnitude of the social desirable device by comparing the estimates we get from the list experiment, which is free from social desirable device to the estimates that we get from the survey. Now we can see how big or

08:19 - or small the social desirable device is, and we had a few more questions that we for to explore in our data, but, it might make sense to talk about those when we discuss the results. Thinking about the results of our paper, we have two main findings that we discussed in the paper. First of all, when we look at our survey responses, so when we ask our participants directly as part of our survey, would you be comfortable having a

08:44 - transgender manager at work? What we find is that 80% of Americans say that they would be comfortable having a transgender manager at work. And we also find that, again, when we ask them directly as part of our survey, whether or not they support employment non-discrimination protection for transgender individuals. again, about 80% says yes, I support employment non-discrimination protection

09:07 - for transgender individuals. However, when we compare these direct estimates to the estimates that we get from the double list method, we find evidence of social desirable bias. Specifically, we see that when we ask directly as part of the survey, Americans in our study, over report their support by about eight to two, eight to 10%. But once we account for this social desirable bias, meaning that once we focus on the, the results

09:40 - that we get from the double list experiment, we still find significant amount of support for transgender people in the workplace. Specifically, we estimate that over two thirds of Americans kind of hovering around 70% of Americans in our sample say that they, we find that about 70% of Americans would be comfortable having a transgender manager at work. And they also support employment non-discrimination

10:05 - protection, for transgender people. So these are the main findings of our paper. We also explore our data a little bit more and report additional findings. And, I would like to talk about a couple of them here. for example, as part of our survey when we asked direct questions about support for transgender people, we also ask the same questions, but for LGB individuals, lesbian, gay, bisexual individuals, and these survey responses allow us to compare whether

10:39 - or not support for transgender people is different than the support that we find or we see for lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals. And we find notable differences there. Specifically, we find that on average people report being more comfortable with an lesbian, gay bisexual manager compared to a transgender manager. And similarly, people are more supportive of non-discrimination protection

11:08 - for transgender individuals. People are more supportive of employment, people are more supportive of non-discrimination protection in employment for LGB individuals, lesbian, gay, bisexual individuals relative to transgender individuals. Another interesting thing that we see in our data is that Americans are quite pessimistic about the actual level of support for, transgender people in the workplace. As part of our survey,

11:35 - we asked our participants about their general perceptions regarding the two statements of interest that we have in the paper. In other words, we elicited their beliefs about the share of Americans who would be comfortable having a transgender manager at work. And we also elicited their beliefs about The share of Americans who would support employment non-discrimination protection for transgender people.

11:59 - As I mentioned earlier, the true level of support that we get for these two items in our double list experiment is over two thirds is a little bit over 70% of of Americans in our sample are actually comfortable having a transgender manager, and they do support employment non-discrimination protection for transgender individuals. But when we look at the beliefs that that we collected as part of our survey, we see that Americans believe that only about 48%

12:30 - of Americans would be comfortable having a transgender major at work. They also believe that only about 58% of Americans would support employment non-discrimination protection for transgender individuals. So Americans are significantly underestimating the true level of support that we find in our sample. And this is actually an interesting, an important finding which could have significant, policy implications.

12:58 - So in conclusion, we find evidence of overreporting of support for transgender people in the workplace. But even after we control for this over reporting, we see that majority of Americans over two third, two thirds of Americans, over 70% of them support employment non-discrimination protection for transgender individuals. Thinking about the implications of our findings, the fact that support for lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals are higher than the support

13:25 - that we find for transgender individuals could mean that perhaps transgender specific labor market interventions may be necessary to achieve workplace equality. And also the fact that Americans significantly underestimate the level of support for transgender individuals is an important finding. Previous research shows that individuals beliefs about what what they think other people believe could actually have an impact on their own beliefs and behaviors.

13:54 - So thinking about our own research, what this means is that informing Americans about the level of support that we find in our research would help correct for these misperceptions and could help further increase the support for transgender people in the workplace. This is something that we are thinking about exploring further in our future research.

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