What’s the situation for gay men and lesbians who work in resource industries? How does the workplace culture affect non-heterosexuals? Will they benefit from better policies? We have posted on this topic before. An article on this topic was also recently published in Corporate Knights. Here we provide some further ideas about this issue and propose some effective responses.
The issue is certainly more complex than simply telling people to “come out”. Here are some points that are often missing in the debate and which need to be considered when looking at how to address the broader issue of sexuality in the workplace:
• We can’t assume that every gay person dislikes the existing culture of resource industries. It is possible to be gay and to enjoy a hyper-masculine environment.
• The identities of people who experience same-sex attraction are complex. Not everybody who is in a same-sex relationship or who engages in sex with people of the same sex identifies as “gay”. And their reasons for rejecting the gay label are not always because they are “closeted”.
• If we encourage gay and lesbians to come out at work, can we be sure we have the skills and knowledge to respond adequately and appropriately? If the workplace doesn’t have the right support systems in place, or if human resource personnel haven’t studied the relationship between sexual identity and work, we may be placing people at risk of being bullied and further ostracized.
• Understandings of gender affect how gays and lesbians are treated in the workplace. The issues of gender and sexuality can’t be separated. A dislike or rejection of femininity is something that has been explored in the research on gender in male-dominated industries like mining. Gay men might have a hard time in these industries because it’s often assumed they are feminine. This assumption needs to be challenged, as does a dislike of femininity.
• It’s easy to introduce a policy to ensure discrimination doesn’t happen in the workplace. It’s also easy to run a training program to teach employees about discrimination based on sexual orientation. It’s not so easy for an organization to research how its workplace culture is already sexualized in such a way that might make it difficult for gays and lesbians to work comfortably.
• It’s not just gays and lesbians who are affected by cultural ideas about gender and sexuality that circulate in the workplace. We also need to consider the situation for transgender people, bisexuals, intersex people, and other “queer”-identifying people.
Here are some alternative approaches to this issue. From our experience, these have more of a long-term impact, and they help address the issue at the source:
• Focus groups with employees to explore how they understand sexuality and sexual identity.
• Workplace behavior observations to identify how workers construct their sexual identities in the everyday.
• Education for key personnel (managers, human resources personnel, safety professionals etc.) on what “sexual identity” is, how it impacts our lives, and what role it might play in the workplace. Get them reading and discussing. Get them really thinking about how this particular issues impacts their business and workplace culture.
• Research and discussions about how a workplace already preferences heterosexuality. Why do heterosexual men and women feel more comfortable than people who have a different sexual identity? How do assumptions about sexuality affect the business’ communications, policies, and operations? The focus now is on how the workplace defines what is “normal”, rather than always on those who are marginalized.
• Where we also need more high-level research into this topic is in exploring the links between specific male-dominated industries and human concepts of sexuality. For example, we need to think about how mining has developed as a particularly masculine industry within a wider human culture that has also created categories of sexuality and assumptions about what is “good” masculinity.
Dr. Dean Laplonge, Director, Factive:
“It’s not right that people have to be subjected to discrimination at work because of their sexuality. In adult workspaces, too often we see people acting out as if they were still in the school play area. It’s really disheartening and sometimes it can have devastating impacts on people’s lives. I have heard so many stories from gay, lesbian, and transgender people who work in the resources sector over the years. But let me tell a bit of my own. I can think of two specific examples when homophobia has impacted me directly in the workplace.
I was once heading up some leadership training for a group of senior managers who worked on site for a large, global mining company with operations in Western Australia. For whatever reason, they became obsessed with asking me questions about my sexuality. It took me a long time and a lot of patience to get them to refocus on what we were there to study. These were grown men, senior professionals working for a company that had clear policies about anti-discrimination and even some policies that actively supported gay employees. It was quite shocking.
The second time was when I was doing some consulting work for a Japanese oil and gas company which had recently started a new operation in Australia’s Northern Territory. There was one senior manager who couldn’t stand being around me. He went out of his way to undermine me and I received numerous reports back from others in the office about what he was saying about me and particularly his homophobic comments. I reported him to Human Resources and was told there was nothing that could be done. I reported him to his manager, and was told “he’s really a good guy who cares about safety”. I decided to quit what was a highly toxic and unpleasant culture. This same company has recently started to put its name to a range of very public diversity initiatives, even though (based on what I continue to hear from friends who work there) this particular manager and the workplace culture haven’t changed at all.
There’s a big difference between being a company that says it respects diversity and being a company that does diversity every day in the workplace. This is why I am more interested in looking at how diversity runs through a workplace’s entire culture rather than responding to the issue with a diversity policy or equal opportunities training.”
Later this year, Factive will be launching two new research projects to explore different aspects of what it means to be “queer” in the resources sector. Dr. Laplonge is also working on a new book which includes a number of chapters that discuss sexuality and mining using different approaches. If you have any questions about this issue, you can post a comment here or contact us through our website.