HRC Throws Trans Health Equity Under the Bus - Again
Filed by: Kelley Winters
February 15, 2009 11:30 AM
http://www.bilerico.com/2009/02/hrc_throws_trans_health_equity_under_the.php (http://www.bilerico.com/2009/02/hrc_throws_trans_health_equity_under_the.php)
This week, the Human Rights Campaign released its 2009 State of the Workplace report and Corporate Equality Index (CEI) ratings of large US employers for GLBT inclusive policies and practices.[1] Perfect 100% ratings were awarded to a record 260 major companies, up from 195 in 2008. In a press release from Workplace Project Manager Samir Luther, the HRC boasted that 175 of the Fortune-500 businesses and 60 of the Fortune-100 firms now have gender identity protection in their employment policies.[2] True enough, the CEI has been influential in encouraging inclusion of gender identity in equal opportunity policies at major employers. However, health benefit equity for transitioning and transitioned employees requiring hormonal or surgical transition care was a very different story in the 2009 index.
Despite years of objection by health advocates for the trans-community, the HRC continues to omit medically necessary transition care as a requirement for a perfect 100% CEI score. Employees who suffer distress with their physical sex characteristics or ascribed gender role (often termed gender dysphoria) are singled out by many employers for exclusion from coverage for corrective procedures that are not excluded for other employees. By rewarding these employers with 100% scores, the HRC perpetuates this discrimination.
For many trans-employees, the HRC Corporate Equality Index has itself become a major barrier to equality.