Can Workplaces Work Better for Gender-Expansive Employees?

Sep 15, 2023

As GOP politicians bank on homophobic and transphobic rhetoric, policies, and laws in order to score political points and garner votes, a new study examines the impact such legislation has on gender-expansive workers. It turns out that the vast majority of such workers feel that anti-transgender laws affect their mental health. More than half say the increase in anti-LGBTQ laws impacts their ability to do their jobs.

Liz Giel, a human-centered design expert, and co-founder and partner at The Coven, spoke with YES! Racial Justice Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on YES Presents: Rising Up With Sonali about what workplaces can do to improve the environment for gender-expansive workers.

Sonali Kolhatkar joined YES! in summer 2021, building on a long and decorated career in broadcast and print journalism. She is an award-winning multimedia journalist, and host and creator of YES! Presents: Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. She is also Senior Correspondent with the Independent Media Institute’s Economy for All project where she writes a weekly column. She is the author of Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (2023) and Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (2005). Her forthcoming book is called Talking About Abolition (Seven Stories Press, 2025). Sonali is co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women’s Mission which she helped to co-found in 2000. She has a Master’s in Astronomy from the University of Hawai’i, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. Sonali reflects on “My Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host” in her 2014 TEDx talk of the same name.