Transgender people encouraged to join workforce

BUENOS AIRES — Angeles Rojas strides down the hall of the Argentine state bank, passed portraits on the walls of past bank presidents who may have been shocked to see a young transgender person on its workforce.

The 23yearold joined the human resources department of Banco Nacion, Argentina’s leading state bank, this year. In September, President Alberto Fernandez signed a decree establishing a 1% employment quota for transgender people in the public sector.

Only neighboring Uruguay has a comparable quota law promoting the labor inclusion of transgender people, who face discrimination in the region. According to Argentina’s LGBT community, 95% of transgender people do not have formal employment, with many forced to work in the sex industry where they face violence.

“If all the institutions implemented the trans quota, it would change a lot for many of my colleagues. It would change the quality of their lives and they would not die at 34, or 40, which is their life expectancy today,” said Rojas.

There are no official figures on the size of the transgender community in Argentina. But LGBT organizations estimate there are 12,000 to 13,000 transgender adults in Argentina, which has a population topping 44 million.

Argentina, a pioneer in transgender rights, in 2010 enacted a marriage equality law and in 2012 it adopted an unprecedented gender identity law allowing transgender people to choose their self perceived identity regardless of their biological sex. The law also guarantees free access to sex change surgeries and hormonal treatments without prior legal or medical consent.

This year, Diana Zurco became the first transgender presenter of Argentine television news, Mara Gomez was authorized to play in the professional women’s soccer league and soprano Maria Castillo de Lima was the first transgender artist to go on stage at Teatro Colon.

A report by the Latin American and Caribbean Network of Trans People published in December said “the vast majority of trans women in the region have sex work as their sole economic and subsistence livelihood.” It goes on to say: In Latin America and the Caribbean transgender people have their right to work violated along with all their human rights, and this takes place “in a context of extreme violence.”