Building on Research

The SEXUAL AND GENDER MINORITIES AT WORK project, governed by the University of Helsinki, focuses heavily on research. The project involves the design of a questionnaire on the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people in working life. There will also be interviews with several special groups in order to have an overview of the range of situations and problems, as well as to learn about existing good practices in working life for the purposes of mainstreaming.

The questionnaire will collect information from 500-1000 lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people. We will collect information on topics such as career and occupational choices, training, job-seeking situations, discrimination at work, interpersonal relations at work and workplace practices. The questionnaire form will be obtainable on the Internet.

On the basis of the questionnaire, we will choose special groups for theme interviews. Our preliminary plan is to interview, among others, unemployed lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people, and non-heterosexual adolescents. A special focus will also be on members of gender minorities so as to include their perspective on working life. Moreover, interviews with lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans teachers, as well as employees working in traditionally male-dominated fields, such as the police and military forces, and in traditionally female-dominated fields, such as nursing and care, will be conducted.

The number of interviewees in each special group will range from five to fifteen. The purpose of the theme interviews is to deepen the information provided by the questionnaire, and to help us to understand the experiences and meanings related to the daily working life situations of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people.

The project also aims to provide an overview on the stands, views and measures of labour market organisations, employers and other parties with respect to the status of sexual and gender minorities in the labour market.

Research results will be published as we progress in our analysis of the data, and the final analysis will be compiled in a book published both in Finnish and in English in 2004. The results will be used for purposes of training and information distribution within the project, and for developing a model for change in educational materials and working life. The research data will be analysed in collaboration with our transnational partners. The responsible leader of the research project is researcher Kati Mustola.