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The purpose of this study is to identify LGBTQ+ perceptions of and experiences with hazards, vulnerabilities and disasters in the San Francisco Bay Area in the USA and to co-develop applied projects to “queer” disaster knowledge production and risk reduction activities in the region.

This is a community science project in which we collaborate with community members to enhance both community and scientific knowledge with the goal of utilizing it to produce a positive change to pressing social issues and their underlying causes. We do this through a series of four focus group workshops to identify community priorities, hazards, vulnerabilities and local action. We follow this with further ethnographic research and projects to apply findings from phase one.

The authors have found that: LGBTQ+ people in the Bay Area have unique experiences with hazards, vulnerabilities and disasters; there are significant gaps in the representation of LGBTQ+ hazard exposure in local scientific models that we can address through alternative methodologies; and tabletop exercises, learning modules and podcasts help orient and train disaster response agencies and personnel on LGBTQ+ inclusive operations.

This initiative entails novel approaches to community science for disaster risk reduction and creative collaboration with community-based organizations to foster the development of LGBTQ+ inclusive disaster risk reduction and response.

LGBTQ+ spaces are often considered as safe havens for the LGBTQ+ community, as they can gather free from prejudice and fear. This research explores the effect that heterosexual people attending LGBTQ+ venues have on this community. This paper considers the impacts on the community, the importance of their safe spaces and identifies practical implications to be considered in protecting these spaces.

The study implemented a multi-method qualitative data collection approach with LGBTQ+ community venue attendees in the UK. Stage 1 utilised an online qualitative survey and collected data from 558 respondents. Stage 2 saw critical incident techniques (CITs) used with 12 participants. The data collected were analysed using a thematic system.

The LGBTQ+ community has experienced an increase in frustration and fear as a result of more heterosexual attendees infiltrating their safe spaces. Both participants and respondents discussed the importance that security personnel play in ensuring safe spaces. Finally, the findings demystified that not all attendees in LGBTQ+ venues are allies, and that there is a need for those outside the community to better understand the importance of these spaces for the LGBTQ+ community, as many heterosexuals do not consider how they should act.

Limitations associated with the implementation of the CIT were identified. Further training is advised for researchers employing this method to prepare them for dealing with the emotional impact of participants’ experiences.

This study highlighted the need for security and staff working at LGBTQ+ venues to undergo extensive inclusivity training, and for stricter door policies. Participants also argued for LGBTQ+ venues to educate heterosexual attendees about the community and their historical and present-day struggles and culture.

This paper is of practical value to those who organise and manage LGBTQ+ events, bars and nightclubs. An enhancement to the four types of space framework originated by Castilhos and Dolbec (2018) has been identified.

There is an emerging interest in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) inclusion among researchers and practitioners. However, the interplay of macro-, meso- and micro-level factors that influence the behavior of various agencies, systems, structures and practices in different national, cultural and social contexts still needs to be researched. This paper aims to examine how organizations meaningfully engage with the marginalized and underrepresented workforce, especially the LGBTQ community, to promote diversity and inclusion through comprehensive policies and practices, thereby developing a sustainable inclusivity culture.

Adopting a practice theory lens and using a case study design, including multilevel interviews with 28 different stakeholders, this study examines how organizations institutionalize LGBTQ inclusion practices in an emerging market context with a historically low acceptance of the LGBTQ community.

Findings indicate that macro influences, such as regulatory, societal and market pressures and adopting international standards and norms, impact meso-level structures and practices. At the organizational level, leadership evangelism and workforce allyship serve as relational mechanisms for institutionalizing LGBTQ-inclusive practices. Furthermore, collaboration, partnerships and enabling systems and processes provide the structural frameworks within which organizations build an LGBTQ-inclusive culture. Lastly, at the micro level, cisgender allyship and the LGBTQ micro work environments provide the necessary psychological safety to build trust for authentic LGBTQ self-expressions. This study also indicates that organizations evolve their LGBTQ inclusion practices along a trajectory, with multiple external and internal forces that work simultaneously and recursively to shape HRM policies and practices for building an inclusive culture.

This study addresses the significant gaps in diversity and inclusivity research on LGBTQ employees and contributes to the literature in three significant ways. First, this study examines the diversity management mechanisms at the organizational level and explicates their interplay at the micro, meso and macro levels to create congruence, both internally and externally, for engaging with LGBTQ talent. Second, this study adopts a practice theory lens to examine the behavior of various actors, their agencies, the “flow” of underlying and emerging structures and processes, the continuous interplay between structure and action and how they enable inclusive culture for the LGBTQ community as a whole. Last, it addresses the call by diversity researchers for context-specific multilevel research design, including qualitative research, focusing on national, cultural and institutional contexts, where socio-organizational and historical factors and interactions among them shape diversity practices. Much of the literature on LGBTQ inclusion has, thus far, been within the Western context. By examining the emergence of inclusion practices in emerging markets like India, this study contributes to diversity and inclusion research.

This study aimed to investigate the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) hotel selection criteria.

A thematic analysis was performed to explore 104 LGBTQ traveler comments based on TripAdvisor's top five LGBTQ hotels in Thailand.

The results indicated that tangible and intangible hotel attributes influence the LGBTQ community's hotel selection.

The results emphasize the need for hoteliers to understand the diversity of the LGBTQ community's hotel selection criteria and adjust or adopt different marketing strategies to engage and attract LGBTQ travelers.

This study contributes to the tourism literature by showing the importance of recognizing the LGBTQ community's hotel selection criteria and providing recommendations to improve product quality and services of hotels.

Joint Strategic Needs Assessments (JSNAs) are intended to help create evidence-based priorities for public health commissioning at local government level in the UK. They are supposed to consider the needs of people with protected characteristics, and this study aims to look at how the JSNAs for London are serving the city’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) population.

JSNAs are documentary data and are in the public domain. Each of the 31 JSNAs for London was individually assessed against a series of questions designed to test their inclusion of the local LGBTQ+ population.

Fewer than one in five of London’s JSNAs: had a dedicated LGBTQ+ section; cited bespoke research into, or engagement with, the local LGBTQ+ population; made recommendations for specialist services for people from this community; or considered intersectionality in the context of this population.

This study demonstrates that many of London’s JSNAs contain little information on the city’s local LGBTQ+ population and only minimal assessment of its health, care and wellbeing needs. Recommendations include conducting further research on this population at the local level, using available guidance and engaging best practice.

The inclusion of LGBTQ + persons (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and having other sexual orientations and gender identities) is a crucial step in improving gender diversity in the workplace; however, till date, it remains a significant challenge for human resource management professionals. The current study critically examines this issue of an inclusive workplace for LGBTQ + people through a systematic review of the existing research that has empirically studied their experiences at the workplace. It also examines the resistance and challenges organizations face in LGBTQ + diversity training and provides future research avenues.

For systematically reviewing the literature, Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) model has been used. A total of 101 empirical studies have been reviewed.

The result shows that LGBTQ + people encounter multiple negative workplace experiences, including proximal (hiring discrimination and housing discrimination) and distal workplace discrimination (unsafe work climate, microaggressions and harassment). These aversive experiences lead to work stress while also mandating that people manage their sexual identity and style of dressing. This stress, in turn, impacts their work–family outcomes, job satisfaction and decision-making with regard to their careers.

The paper provides a holistic understanding of the aversive workplace experiences encountered by sexual minorities.

Hospitality firms adopted diverse hiring policies and public declarations of support for LGBTQ+ causes through brand activism. The impact of activism on LGBTQ+ employees’ workplace experiences has been ambiguous. This study aims to examine the hospitality and tourism employees’ perceptions of gay and lesbian leaders as token-hires among hospitality employees and the spillover effect on company’s motives for hiring the leaders. This study further explores LGBTQ+ employees’ reactions to token-hiring as a form of activism, and how workplace interactions as passing/revealing LGBTQ+ individuals shaped their career development.

This research adopted a sequential mixed-methods design. An experiment examines how employees judge gay vs lesbian hospitality leaders as token hires, contingent on their own gender identity. It further tests the conditional mediation of tokenism on company’s egoistic motives for activism. A qualitative study explores the reactions to token-hiring as activism from the perspective of LGBTQ+ leaders who reflect on their own careers and workplace experiences.

Tokenism in the hospitality workplace is recognized as the phenomenon attributed to groups at the intersection of identities (e.g. gay men). Findings demonstrate the spillover effect of tokenism perceptions of gay male leaders by other men on company’s egoistic motives for activism. This effect is not observed for a lesbian female leader. Results from interviews suggest that hospitality and tourism LGBTQ+ employees predominantly take the post-gay vs political approach when managing their sexual identities at work and feel ambivalent toward token-hiring as LGBTQ+ brand activism.

This research contributes to understanding workplace challenges of LGBTQ+ employees and how they are perceived by others contingent on gender identity. It also explores the role of tokenism in their experiences.

Through investigating how Belgian LGBTQ people evaluate gay-themed print and television advertising in mainstream media, the purpose of this study is to explore how gay-themed advertising strategies are evaluated in relation to context.

Qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with 17 Flemish self-identified lesbian, gay male and bisexual people.

Findings of this research demonstrate the importance of the situated context in which LGBTQ people receive and evaluate gay-themed advertisements. By offering a common stock of social knowledge and experience, context creates a framework against which LGBTQ people evaluate gay-themed advertisements. In this specific research that was conducted in a Western-European LGBTQ-friendly society (Belgium), critical evaluations of gay-washing and the dirty laundry effect were found. The positive evaluations of explicit gay-themed and inclusive advertisements also highlighted the importance of advertising an inclusive society.

In considering how gay-themed advertising evaluations relate to context and lived experiences, this research contributes to current knowledge on gay-themed advertising and its reception within LGBTQ groups.

This research offers valuable insights to marketers on how to target sexual minorities in LGBTQ (un)friendly societies.

Findings highlight the social importance of minority-oriented advertising. Not only can such advertising promote civic inclusion and social recognition of minority groups, it also has the potential to play a key role in the construction and normalisation of identities.

In an effort to reinvigorate current marketing debates on gay-themed advertising, this study builds on theoretical insights gained via reception research and LGBTQ studies. In doing so, this research yields a more nuanced and contextualised understanding of LGBTQ people’s engagement with various gay-themed advertisements. Considering within a Western European society the relevance of context when researching gay-themed advertisement reception, the results add to primarily US-based research on this topic.

This paper aims to examine the use of coproduction to create a film “Do You See Me?”, to amplify the voices of a “hard to reach” group: older lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) victim-survivors of domestic abuse (DA).

Qualitative methods were used as part of the co-production, which included two practitioner focus groups and 14 narrative interviews with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning persons or the community (LGBTQ+) victim-survivors.

Despite differences in gender, sexualities, roles and “lived experiences” across stakeholders, there was a shared aim to ensure victim-survivors had a sense of ownership in this endeavour. Consequently, a positive reciprocity existed that helped to foster effective communication, allow for capacity building and subsequent knowledge exchange. The collaboration produced a nuanced meta-narrative making visible the “lived experiences” of LGB victim-survivors’ perceptions of perpetrator behaviours.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is original in two ways, firstly, providing insights into the “lived experiences” of an invisible group; older LGBTQ+ victim-survivors, and secondly, in involving them in the co-production of a film. The paper aims to reveal how interdependencies that developed between stakeholders helped to disrupt understandings, develop new ways of knowing and build levels of trust. Group interactions helped to dismantle hierarchies, so those with experiential knowledge: the survivors, had greater control throughout the research process. The paper is significant in providing a critical reflection on the ethical, methodological and resource challenges involved in co-production. It also makes recommendations for researchers and funders about the value of using co-production as a method to engage with hard-to-reach groups.

Health disparities affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) populations have been reported in many countries. For Singapore, no large quantitative studies on mental health and well-being in the local LGBTQ community have been published. The authors conducted a community-based survey (National LGBT Census Singapore, 2013; NLCS2013) that covered a comprehensive set of demographic, social and health indicators. Here, the authors investigated mental health status and its correlates in 2,350 LGBTQ individuals within the NLCS2013 sample.

The NLCS2013 was an anonymous online survey conducted amongst self-identified LGBTQ adults (aged ≥ 21 years) residing in Singapore. The survey included the World Health Organisation Well-being Index (WHO-5) as a measure of mental well-being, with low WHO 5 scores (<13/25) indicating poor mental well-being. The authors analysed relationships between low WHO-5 score and a range of respondent characteristics using multivariate logistic regression.

Strikingly, 40.9% of 2,350 respondents analysed had low WHO-5 scores, indicating poor mental well-being. Parental non-acceptance, experience of conflict at home and bullying/discrimination in the workplace or educational environments were all significantly associated with poor mental well-being. Conversely, community participation appeared protective for mental well-being, as respondents who participated in LGBTQ community organisations or events were less likely to have poor mental well-being than non-participants.

The NLCS2013 represents one of the first broad-based efforts to comprehensively and quantitatively capture the sociodemographic and health profile, including mental health status, within Singapore’s resident LGBTQ population. These findings affirm the need to address the mental health needs of LGBTQ individuals in Singapore and to foster safe spaces and allyship.