Holiday hiring in Brazil reaches out to transgender community

WASHINGTON: Brazilian LGBT+ rights activists hailed Dutch retailer C&A for directing a new hiring campaign at underrepresented minorities, including transgender people.

The company announced that it would be hiring for 5,000 temporary roles at more than 270 stores across the country, and encouraged both transgender people and refugees to apply.

An announcement directed specifically at transgender workers appeared last week on the Facebook page of local advocacy group, Transempregos, which collaborated with C&A to promote the vacancies among its followers.

“For C&A, fashion is a platform of expression that allows everyone to show who they are,” reads the job announcement.

“To be in touch with the times, C&A is offering a work environment that believes in the value and richness of differences.”

The C&A Foundation, affiliated with retailer C&A, is a funding partner of the Thomson Reuters Foundation on its coverage of human trafficking.

“It’s marvellous,” Symmy Larrat, president of the Brazilian Association of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transvestite and Transgender people, said.

“It sends a message that goes against the exclusion that people live day to day.” The hiring campaign draws attention to the difficulties confronting transgender Brazilians, who, despite recent decisions from the nation’s top court recognising trans rights, regularly face violence and discrimination.

Javier Corrales, professor of political science at Amherst College, said that workplace discrimination is also a daily reality for transgender people, both in Brazil and across Latin America.

“This is a very serious problem,” he said.