Sex & Gender Wellness

Sexual and gender harassment as well as discrimination has received a lot of attention in the past couple of years due to the #MeToo movement. However, these issues are not new and problems in this domain remains noticeably in place in spite of the spotlight. According to a major American study, workplace discrimination against employees based on race, gender or sexual orientation costs American businesses an estimated $64 billion a year in the cost of replacing more than 2 million American employees who leave their jobs each year due such discrimination. Fully 42% of gay employees say they have experienced some form of employment discrimination at some point in their lives while an astonishing 90% of transgender individuals report that they have experienced some form of harassment, mistreatment, or discrimination on the job. The study also estimates that hostile work environments cost companies $1.4 billion in lost output each year resulting from a reduction in gay and lesbian employees’ productivity.

Besides being illegal, discriminating on the basis of sex and gender can have detrimental and long-lasting implications for employees, which could include: increased depression and anxiety, increases level of stress levels, manifestation of physical illness, decreased productivity and job satisfaction, and increased turnover. The results of a 2018 survey of employees across the USA conducted by HRC Foundation found that LGBTQ employees face persistent, often-intangible, nuanced issues in the workplace that keep them “separate” form others, resulting in many feeling distracted, exhausted or depressed, and believing they have nowhere to turn for help. Many of these barriers exist within interpersonal workplace connections, including non-work conversations or outings among co-workers. With these challenges, it is not surprising to find that 46% of the LGBTQ respondents indicate that they remain closeted at work. Other critical findings from the survey include:

• 1-in-5 LGBTQ employees report having been told or had co-workers imply that they should dress in a more feminine or masculine manner;
• 53% of LGBTQ employees report hearing jokes about lesbian or gay people at least once in a while;
• 31% of LGBTQ employees say they have felt unhappy or depressed at work;
• and the top reason LGBTQ employees don’t report negative comments they hear about LGBTQ people to a supervisor or human resources is because they don’t think anything would be done about it and they don’t want to damage their relationships with co-workers.

Other significant gender and sexual discrimination comes in the form of gender inequality in various aspects of employment. According to Statistics Canada, Canadian women earn $0.87 for every dollar earned by men, largely as a result of wage inequality between women and men within occupations. They also work less hours than men due to childcare needs, and their careers are interrupted more frequently and longer than men’s. A 2017 study by the McKinsey Global Institute involving 69 large Canadian corporations who collectively employ more than a half a million people indicates that “at almost every stage of the pipeline, women’s likelihood of being promoted to the next level is smaller than men’s.” Women are 30 per cent less likely to get promoted out of an entry-level position, and 60 per cent less likely to move from middle management into the executive ranks. The report suggests that even incremental progress in getting more women into managerial positions, high-skill STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields, entrepreneurship, or just into the workforce in the first place, could boost the Canadian economy by $150 million by 2026, and if Canada could fully close the gender gap in terms of work hours and pay, the benefit would almost triple, to an extra $420 billion in the next 9 years.