Article posted on Intive’s blog by Paula Becchetti
On July 18th we had the pleasure of receiving the visit of Vanesa Perelló and Luvia Montero Velandia, from Trans-TI. What’s Trans-TI? In this article we will tell you all about this organization, and how you can support it or become member.
Trans-TI draws on the following milestones in rights improvements:
Legal Improvements in Transgender People’s Rights
- 1958: the ILO includes the principle of no discrimination in its constitution.
- 2006: Argentina passes the Sexual Education Law.
- 2009: Argentina passes the Law for the Integral Protection of Women (including transvestites and trans women).
- 2010: Argentina passes the Same-Sex Marriage Law.
- 2012: Argentina passes the Gender Identity Law.
- 2015: the province of Buenos Aires passes the Job Quota for Transgender People Law (which hasn’t been implemented yet).
- 2018: the OMS removes transsexuality from its mental illnesses list.
- 2018: for the first time in Argentina, a sentence used the figure of transmurder.
As we can see, we’ve come a long way. Luckily, in countries like ours, society has begun to walk the path of deconstruction and to understand why all these rights are important. We have claimed them as our own and promoted more inclusive spaces, and Trans-TI has contributed to that progress.
The Transgender Reality in Latin America
Nevertheless, as with many other regulations, it’s hard for individuals to accept and for institutions to implement this kind of laws. Regrettably, discrimination and lack of consciousness remain rife. That’s the reason behind statistics like these:
- In Argentina, 90 % of transgender people cannot access the formal jobs market.
- For 79 % of trans women, the only source of income is sex work.
- 70 % of trans women has never had a job interview after coming out.
A small number of CEOs are transgender. Very few lucky trans women have achieved professional success leveraging the meager opportunities that society can offer them —one of them is Lana Wachowski. But one situation is still more urgent: the average lifespan of transgender people in Latin America is 35 years, making blatantly obvious that this group faces many difficulties once they assume their transgender identity or come out to society.
“For society, a trans woman means the death of a man. We’re not born men; rather, we’re assigned the male gender when we’re born. When you make the transition, you change completely and society starts looking at you differently,” explains Luvia. She goes on to tell that the process is hard both internally and externally, because “hormonal transition is like a second puberty. Transition is a trial and error process; you are trying things.” That’s why external support is essential.
How Does Trans-TI Work?
Trans-TI promotes inclusion in the tech industry. It’s a company that aims to make a social impact by hiring transvestite/transgender people from Argentina who, after a rigorous training, can be allocated to different work teams, enjoy the benefits of a formal job and work in a comfortable, stable work space.
- Based on the potential abilities of transvestite/transgender people, it looks for dynamic business models.
- It promotes innovation in everyday processes.
- It believes that accepting diversity means to evolve.
- It provides formal jobs to transvestite/transgender people.
“Among the main services offered are invoice, documents and template transcription; a virtual assistance service named Sasha; and solving micro-requests through WhatsApp: from scheduling to searching specific things in Google or Mercado Libre. Sometimes they are hired for special events, and are also open for new opportunities that may come up, which lead them to think of new services.”
Love is the driving force, and so is giving the best of ourselves to help one of the most vulnerable communities in Latin America. The Trans-TI team make us reflect with this phrase by Roberto Bolaño: “Nothing good ever comes of love. What comes of love is always something better.” “Impacting the transvestite/trans community by offering formal and stable job opportunities” is part of this approach and it’s a vision we share and value at intive.
