Nearly half of LGBT+ people, or 49.7 percent, are concerned that their workplace relations would be affected if they came out at work, a survey released yesterday by two groups showed.
The respondents were also worried that disclosing their sexual orientation or gender identity at work could affect their chances at promotion or career development (38.2 percent), or that it could lead to bullying or harassment (35.5 percent), the survey conducted by Taiwan Tongzhi (LGBTQ) Hotline Association and Marriage Equality Coalition Taiwan showed.
Fifty-five percent of respondents said they came out to a “small number of colleagues,” while less than 30 percent said they came out to a direct supervisor or someone in a more senior position than themselves, the survey showed.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
One respondent, an engineer working for a technology firm in Hsinchu, said that he decided to come out at work because he was expecting to become a father and would have to ask for more time off.
Another respondent, a public servant from Kaohsiung, said that she came out at work so that she could “share the joy” with her colleagues if she marries one day and claim a financial aid that her employer offers to employees who marry.
According to the survey, 38.1 percent of respondents said there were employees at their workplace who were “openly out,” up from 27.3 percent in a similar survey conducted by the association in 2016.
Chiu Yu-fan (邱羽凡), an assistant professor of law at National Chiao Tung University, said that despite the increase, she believes there has not been much improvement in the daily lives of LGBT+ people, particularly in the workplace.
While there are legal protections against discriminatory practices in the workplace in Taiwan, their enforcement could be improved, she said.
According to the poll, 53.1 percent of respondents said their employers “do not have any gender-friendly measures or have never expressed LGBT-friendly views.”
About 70 percent of respondents said they hoped their employers would host “LGBT and gender-friendly courses, talks or educational training.”
Marriage Equality Coalition Taiwan chief coordinator Jennifer Lu (呂欣潔) called for cooperation to create work environments that are more friendly toward LGBT+ people.
Work is an important part of people’s lives, with some people spending more time with their colleagues than their family members, she said.
A majority of people who participated in the survey (84.3 percent) work full-time and more than half (58.7 percent) were aged 26 to 35.
Among the respondents, 74.5 percent identified as homosexual and 22.4 percent identified as bisexual, the groups said.
They said that 42.4 percent of respondents identified as cisgender male, 48.6 percent identified as cisgender female and 7.7 percent identified as transgender men or women.
The survey collected 2,121 valid responses online from Jan. 20 to March 2 and has a margin of error of 2.1 percentage points.
FATAL FIRE: The health department is trying to contact the inspector who visited the site of the illegal nursing home to ask why they did not advise follow-up checks The Taipei City Government yesterday said that a health department inspector last year had visited the site of a long-term care facility in Neihu District (內湖) after receiving a report questioning its status. A fire broke out at the facility on Tuesday afternoon, killing three people. The Taipei Fire Department said that it received a report about a fire on the first floor of a four-story residential building on Kangning Road Sec. 1 at 2:38pm on Tuesday, firefighters arrived at 2:43pm and the fire was put out by 3:07pm. The firefighters found three men in beds and rushed them to hospital for
Taipei City Councilor Wang Hao (王浩) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Monday called for security improvements to the MRT, as fare evasion has increased more than 13-fold on the metropolitan railway system over the past five years. Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) has spoken out against fare evasion and other contraventions of MRT regulations, but since he took office in 2015 the number of contraventions has more than doubled, Wang said, adding that there were 537 cases in 2015 compared with 959 last year. A video was posted to YouTube in June showing people how to evade paying a fare,
FEELING MISUNDERSTOOD: Media speculation has fueled confusion about the KMT’s reasons for skipping a Chinese forum and delaying an AIT meeting, party sources said The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Sunday said that it is not seeking to improve relations with the US or China at the expense of the other, and that its relations with the countries would be topic-based. The party has faced questions over its foreign policy after it on Monday last week announced its withdrawal from the annual Straits Forum and delayed planned talks with the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT). The party has also taken a tough stance on the importation of US meat containing ractopamine, while also lambasting China for increasing its military activity in and around the Taiwan Strait. Following
Yuchi Township (魚池) fishers have appealed to the Nantou County Government for help in dealing with an invasive fish species in Sun Moon Lake (日月潭), where it has devastated the local ecosystem. Fishers at Sun Moon Lake have been using electrofishing in an attempt to eliminate the giant snakehead fish — found in Africa and Southeast Asia — but they have struggled to keep up with the growing population of the species, which breeds during September and October, the county government said on Monday. The county has contacted researchers at National Tsing Hua University, saying it hoped they could come up