The National Bank of Argentina will have a job quota for transvestite and transgender people.

The National Bank of Argentina will have a 1% job quota for transvestite, transsexual and transgender people.

August 5, 2020

Illustration: Flor Capella

The National Bank of Argentina will have a 1% job quota for transgender and transvestite people. This is established in the agreement signed between the bank's president, Eduardo Hecker, and the head of the Banking Association, Sergio Palazzo.

The signing ceremony this afternoon was attended by Chief of Staff Santiago Cafiero, Minister of Labor Claudio Moroni, President of Banco Nación Eduardo Hecker, Secretary General of the La Bancaria union Sergio Palazzo, Inadi head Victoria Donda, National Undersecretary of Diversity of the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity Alba Rueda, and Laura Marrazo, Secretary General of Justice and Human Rights.

"This joint initiative aims to implement specific measures to repair the structural exclusion and discrimination caused by ancestral prejudices against transvestite, transsexual and transgender people, and which requires urgent positive actions for its reversal," the spokespeople emphasized.

According to a 2014 report by ATTTA and Fundación Huésped (the latest available), only 18% of transvestite and transgender people have had access to formal employment. With no options, excluded from education early on and often from their families, many of them resort to sex work or prostitution to survive.

“The inclusion of transgender and transvestite people is a fundamental step in enriching, transforming, and democratizing our institutions,” Alba Rueda, Undersecretary of Diversity Policies for the Nation, told Presentes. She added, “From the Ministry of Women, Gender, and Diversity, we support and celebrate this important step within the public policies that define our government’s agenda regarding the priority of labor inclusion for transgender and transvestite people. It is a fundamental step because the National Bank not only adheres to guiding principles in economic policy, but also in social policies with a rights-based perspective.”

Affirmative action public policy

For years, trans and travesti activists have been fighting for a state-level employment quota, as well as for policies promoting workplace integration in both the public and private sectors. There are specific examples of these policies being implemented at the provincial and municipal levels, but these demands are far from being met at the national level.

The trans and travesti employment quota was an initiative of trans leader and human rights activist Diana Sacayán. She conceived it as a strategy to alleviate the exclusion of her peers: 95 percent of trans and travesti people are or have been involved in prostitution. Law 14783 was passed in the Buenos Aires Province Legislature on September 17, 2015. A month later, she was murdered in her apartment in the Flores neighborhood of Buenos Aires.

The management of the quota at Banco Nación "was also articulated with a personal action, since the registration data of Ornella Infante, the current official of INADI, were never modified (having been one of the trans people to whom Cristina herself gave the DNI) to which she has had to generate actions in 2016 and approach the institution (Banco Nación) so that they recognize her identity, reported from INADI.

“Only under this administration have I seen a genuine political commitment to inclusion, diverse perspectives, and an openness towards working-class communities, particularly transgender people. When I reported that my personal information at the bank was outdated and did not reflect my gender identity, they took up the matter and made the necessary changes. This sensitivity and commitment to respecting individuals led the bank's management to issue a circular so that transgender people enrolled in the Potenciar Trabajo program could access it while respecting their gender identity, using their ID number and surname,” said Ornella Infante.

“We see this as a very important affirmative action public policy for the inclusion of trans people. We know that we are in a context where the trans employment quota is being debated in Congress (in the Gender and Diversity Committee), and it is part of the struggle agenda of trans and travesti organizations and movements in Argentina. The life trajectories of trans and travesti people are marked by criminalization, stigmatization, and pathologization, not only by society but also by cis-heteropatriarchal institutions. There is a heteronormative system that causes these very institutions to generate gaps of inequality and historical exclusion for the trans and travesti population. It is a huge challenge for institutions like the Banco de la Nación Argentina to not only seek inclusion but to guarantee it, to provide support for this inclusion process for trans people,” Pía Ceballos, coordinator of employment promotion for trans and travesti people at the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity, told Presentes.

“From the Undersecretariat of Diversity Policies, we have been working on a specific program (Resolution 8320). This resolution, recently issued by the Ministry of Gender, Diversity and Diversity, establishes a program to strengthen access to rights for transgender and transvestite people, and includes a specific area focused on access to employment . It takes into account reports submitted by organizations that highlight not only situations of structural violence but also specific data related to precarious employment. This is reflected not only in the survey conducted with INDEC in La Matanza in 2012 but also in more recent reports, such as the IACHR report from December 2018, which states that trans people are trapped in cycles of exclusion and poverty that push them into the informal economy, criminal activity, and prostitution or sex work as means of survival,” Ceballos noted.

The Banking Association (AB), a union headed by Sergio Palazzo, emphasized in a statement that this is a "historic agreement reached today with the Banco de la Nación Argentina regarding a job quota for the trans community (...). Trans people suffer discrimination from an early age, along with brutal marginalization and unprecedented violence, affecting transvestites, transsexuals, and transgender people, and manifesting itself with almost absolute intensity in the workplace. The Banco Nación agreement is an example to follow. Today is a great day for human rights in our union."

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