Over the past two years and with the support of the Fund for Gender Equality, an organizing group of feminist, gender equity seeking, and historically women-serving organizations – namely LEAF, West Coast LEAF, and the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, in partnership with Wisdom2Action – has been coordinating efforts to unpack the legacy and current impacts of transphobia and transmisogyny within the feminist and gender equity seeking sectors.
We have worked to:
↪ Challenge transphobia and transmisogyny within our organizations and sector;
↪ Collaborate with other feminist and gender equity seeking organizations to better serve, include, and advocate for trans and non-binary people; and
↪ Support each other in the current environment of escalating and organized trans hate.
To bring the perspectives of trans feminine people who work in feminist workplaces to the forefront of these conversations, we launched the Trans Feminine Inclusion in Feminist Workplaces (TFIW) Project, a community-based and qualitative research project.
The objectives of this research project were to:
1. Identify the challenges and structural barriers to trans feminine individuals’ employment and leadership in the gender equity seeking organizations and;
2. Recommend potential paths forward for these organizations to redress the issues of trans inclusion in feminist workplaces based on lived experience perspectives.
We hired researchers, Jammy Lo and Dr. Mary Vaccaro, to undertake the first part of this work, and to contribute to the development of recommendations as well. Jammy Lo is a community-based researcher, a harm reduction worker, and a community advocate located in Hamilton, Ontario. She is a Black, trans woman who has been working in feminist organizations since 2022. Mary Vaccaro is a community-based researcher, a consultant for feminist non-profit organizations and faculty member at McMaster University’s School of Social Work. She is a White, cis woman who has been working in feminist organizations since 2012.
Using qualitative semi-structured interviews, Ms. Lo and Dr. Vaccaro gathered detailed information regarding trans feminine perspectives on barriers to meaningful employment in the feminist sector. Twenty trans women participated in this project. Participants occupied a range of professional roles within the feminist sector, including (but not limited to) consultants, social workers, executive directors, lawyers, peer workers, and frontline service providers. The participants’ ages ranged from women in their twenties to those in their forties. Participants had a range of racial and ethnic identities and educational backgrounds.
In the TFIW Project’s Full Report, Dr. Vaccaro and Ms. Lo present their findings from a community-based, qualitative research project focused on developing a comprehensive understanding of the lived experiences of trans women working within (or wishing to work within) feminist organizations across Canada.
In this shorter, companion document, you will find the TFIW Project’s recommendations – Calls to Action as to how feminist organizations can action trans inclusion. You will also find a self-guided audit tool, which distills the Calls to Action down to a checklist form. The TFIW researchers developed the Calls to Action from the interviews that they conducted, as is clear from the direct quotes provided throughout the recommendations. We then organized the Calls to Action into themes and provided concrete tips as to how to implement them.