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Aging workers are a diverse group yet research on aging infrequently examines the joint effects of age and gender upon various life domains and decisions. In order to fully understand the experience of a person, you must examine her/his roles and identities as they intersect. Intersectionality extends to the work setting, and the notion of intersectionality is presented as a paradigm that can yield significant insights into the joint consideration of age and gender in the workplace. These relationships have the potential to shape identities, which may in turn influence work perceptions and outcomes. As a result there are important considerations, consequences, solutions, and future research topics, as well as Human Resource practices that are discussed in this chapter.

In this paper, I show how a consideration of legitimacy processes is of theoretical use in addressing two current issues in status research. First, I investigate under what conditions the contrast between the sex composition of a work group and the sex composition of an organization’s authority structure may trigger the salience of gender status in task groups. I argue that this contrast will make gender status salient when an evaluation from an authority figure outside the group creates inconsistency and uncertainty in the current status structure within the group. Delegitimation of a superior is one such process that produces this inconsistency and uncertainty. Second, I examine under what conditions status position compared to identity will more likely stimulate behavior among work group members. I argue that the legitimation of the superior and the group’s status order reduce the likelihood that group members will pursue status inconsistent, identity behaviors. Delegitimation, however, increases opportunities for acting in identity consistent ways and reduces the costs for doing so, thus enhancing the likelihood of identity-based behaviors.

Despite the absence of federal legislation prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender identity and expression, many companies have adopted such policies in recent years. We examine the impact of several contextual factors thought to influence gender identity and expression nondiscrimination policy adoption among Fortune 500 firms from 1997 to 2007. Our findings suggest that city and state laws likely influence policy adoption, as do federal case rulings regarding gender nonconformity and the adoption of similar policies by companies in the same industry. We found little evidence that companies respond to state or city executive orders or to media coverage of gender identity issues in the workplace.

Purpose: This study examines the experiences and struggles of young women with breast cancer as they navigate the intersectionality of their illness and gender identity. Specifically, the research explores the construction and expression of gender identity as a core part of who they were prior to diagnosis and who they desire to be in the future.

Design and methodology: A phenomenological approach was used to investigate how women with breast cancer experience changes related to gender identity. Eighteen in-depth interviews were conducted with young women who have been diagnosed within the last five years.

Findings: Young women undergo gender identity disruptions and shifts as the result of breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. Informants expressed feelings that their resultant identities do not conform to cultural normative representations of gender, which profoundly impact their perceptions of the physical self, gender roles, and intimate relationships. At this acute stage, they struggled with the loss of important body markers of femininity (breasts, hair, etc.) and attempted through consumption to find alternative ways to enact gender expressions.

Originality and value: This research explores consumer experiences when bodies do not conform to idealized body images and cultural representations of gender. Informants revealed a complex portrait of women who experience the early, invasive stages of illness and body transformation.

Gender-diverse people experience unique cultural and interpersonal stigma in mainstream society and sometimes within their own communities; they face allegations of inauthenticity based on their nonconformity to either cisnormative or transnormative gender regimes. Based on 21 in-depth life history interviews, we unveil the intricate interactional process of negotiating identity and authenticity in the biographical work of gender-diverse individuals. In this study, gender-diverse people engaged in a “gender audit” with their gender-diverse interviewer. Gender audits yield verbal performances of gender with oneself and others. Ambiguity was “accounted for” or “embraced and created” in their biographical work to organize their life stories and undermine binary essentialism – a discourse that was “discursively constraining.” Gender audits took place in participants' day-to-day lives, either through self-audits, questioning from others, or both. In the final analysis, we assert that we all engage in gender auditing. Gender audits are intersubjective sites of domination, subordination, resistance, and social change. Gender diversity, then, can be viewed as a product of gender in flux.

Anyone who has recently watched television or movies can tell you that transgender, gender nonbinary or gender expansive people are becoming more visible in these media. This trend reflects the reality that younger generations are increasingly identifying with more fluid and nonbinary gender and sexual identities and are progressively expressing those identities in a more flexible and changing manner (Herman et al., 2022; Wilson & Meyer, 2021). Unsurprisingly then, those individuals are also more visible at work, including in workplaces with employer-mandated dress codes. Indeed, in 2020 the US Supreme Court decided a case involving a transgender woman, Aimee Stephens, who was fired because her employer, a funeral home, required her to conform to its gender-binary dress policy and wear clothing mandatory for people assigned male at birth, rather than appropriate for her female gender identity ( Bostock v. Clayton County, 2020).

However, as the description of Aimee Stephens's own experience illustrates, often these employer appearance codes are based on a binary and fixed conception of gender and gender identity and expression at odds with the increasing number of workers who do not identify within those rigid parameters. Moreover, even when an employee, like Aimee Stephens herself, could have fit within her employer's dress code, the improper application of that policy to her, or employer concerns about customer or co-worker discomfort with an employee's appearance under the policy may mean that a worker's identity and expression may still conflict with a workplace appearance code. For gender nonbinary or nonconforming individuals, these complications are magnified.

This chapter explores the practical problems and barriers that employer dress codes have on employees whose gender identity and/or presentation move beyond the traditional male/female binary. Using insights from queer theory, gender expansive employees serve to interrogate fundamental assumptions behind workplace dress policies and the formal and informal ways in which these policies are policed. The chapter will explore that discordance, examine possible employer resolutions, and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of those responses.

Perspectives on gender, gender expression, sexuality identity, and sexual orientation differ within and between generations given the great extent to which these concepts are embedded within social, cultural, and historical context. Across contexts, questions of authenticity are critical. This research compares generational perspectives about authenticity, gender and gender-related constructs, and sexuality. Through semi-structured interviews with a nonprobability, purposive sample of heterosexual and LGBTQ younger (aged 18–22) and older (aged 65+) adults, how a sense of authenticity is experienced and the degree to which individuals experience authenticity around sexual and gender identities are compared. Data were analyzed using the constant comparison method of analysis, and results indicate that while younger adult respondents held expansive terminology and knowledge related to sexual and gender identities, older adult participants lacked such fluidity, and that lack was an inhibiting factor in older adults being able to name and embody their authentic sexual selves. In conclusion, both position in one’s life course (age) and one’s generational cohort (historical, cultural, and social context) influence how individuals experience authenticity around gender and sexual identities.

Trans students at New College of Florida provide overwhelmingly positive assessments of their campus culture as related to issues of gender identity, a stark contrast to existing literature on gender-nonconforming collegians. This chapter examines the interactional processes that create a context supportive of all genders – the ways students are expected to act toward one another and how they hold each other accountable to these norms. I draw on interviews with 24 students with diverse identities to argue: (1) there is a trans-inclusive understanding of gender that is dominant on campus, (2) the students have norms that reflect the inclusive understanding and provide direction for when and how gender should enter interactions, and (3) swift responses to breaches of interactional norms serve to support gender-nonconforming students and affirm the identity of the community as unwilling to tolerate transphobia. This analysis demonstrates an alternative cultural context, one in which community members are held not to conventional expectations associated with assumed sex category, but to an understanding of gender that does not take identity for granted. In so doing, it highlights how shifts in shared understanding can create more inclusive interactional practices. Additionally, the focus on the meaning underlying social processes suggests that shifts in how people think about gender could similarly lead to alteration of organizational structures that would help trans students thrive.

The current study examines the strategies that nonbinary people use to communicate their gender identities across contexts, including an exploration of how they modify their gender presentations in response to situations perceived as risky or unsafe. Data were drawn from interviews with 19 nonbinary people, and a modified grounded theory approach was used to identify prevalent or recurring elements in the data. Nonbinary people struggled to communicate their genders to others and felt constrained by the knowledge that others would inevitably interpret their gender presentations within the context of a strict binary. Moreover, they often felt pressure to enact normative, binary presentations in order to feel safer or less visibly gender-nonconforming, particularly in contexts in which social norms were experienced as heightened, such as when engaging with institutions or navigating public spaces such as restrooms or transit systems. This study contributes to the limited literature on nonbinary identities and highlights how dominant transnormative narratives constrain presentation and communication.

Identity construction is a dynamic process that encompasses a variety of factors such as commonalities, loyalties, power struggles, and survival instincts (Lei, 2003). The complex dimensions of Black identity are influenced, in part, by community, comfort, and acceptance which at times imposes fixed categorizations, characteristics, and singular depictions. Recent research suggests that more attention be paid to the needs of Black adolescent girls and how their race and gender impact what happens in schools (Koonce, 2012). Moreover, it challenges and influences academic success, as it is challenging and difficult to excel in environments that fail to value every aspect of one's identity or identities (Rollock, 2007).

Black girls' interaction with each other, especially in urban schools, can also be problematic and resemble “relational aggression,” when in fact it is a form of posturing to increase their social status. Contextual factors (e.g., culture, school climate) can serve as risk or protective factors for involvement in posturing, relationship aggression, or increasing one's social status. Research focused on peer relationships has found differences in friendship patterns among ethnically and socioeconomically diverse youth, suggesting the importance of examining friendships within the context of ethnic and socioeconomic diversity (see Brown, Way, & Duff, 1999; Crothers, Field, & Kolbert, 2005). Sisterhood among Black girls can serve as a supportive network that enhances the “Black girl experience” as well as promote wellness and healthy identity.