Originally published here.

The post Stonewall era has raised expectations for sexual rights and institutional opportunities for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) identified persons. In the workplace, these expectations have driven the struggle for equality and the inclusion of LGBT employees. The resulting activism has challenged both heteronor-mative culture and employment policies (Creed and Scully 2000; Raeburn 2004; Briscoe and Safford 2008; King and Pearce 2010; Ghosh 2012). The struggle for equality in the workplace has evolved into a branch of the LGBT social movement known as the Global LGBT workplace equality movement.

This chapter contends that to be truly global in nature, this movement must encompass and embrace socio-political, cultural, and economic idiosyncrasies across the world to produce an inclusive model that allows organizations and activists to pursue location specific goals using the strategies that best suit their local contexts.Urvashi Vaid has laid out three contextual factors of the Global LGBT workplace equality movement.

According to her framework, the issue of LGBT freedom and equality at work is both legal and cultural in nature. To gain respect and equality for the LGBT community, LGBT activists must work toward making employment pol-icies inclusive, but they must also challenge the “moral condemnation” that margin-alizes LGBT persons at work. From a sociological perspective, this view draws on the New Social Movement, which argues that social movements often aspire for instrumental and expressive goals (Armstrong and Bernstein 2008). Instrumental goals pertain to tangible outcomes, such as adopting a policy or a set of policies, extending employment benefits, and making structural changes in the organization. Expressive goals, on the other hand, seek to bring cultural changes through affirming and inclusive attitudes toward LGBT persons in the workplace.

LGBT workplace activists pursue instrumental goals such as nondiscrimination policies and health benefits–not only in the workplace but also at the level of state law. After convincing numerous corporations to enact nondiscrimination policies, US activists are now focusing their energies on the congressional bill for the Employment Non Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would make sexual orienta-tion and gender identity protected categories in employment across the nation (Giarattana 2015). The goals of LGBT affirmation at work, which activists pursue through programs like “Building Bridges” (begun by the Out & Equal Workplace Advocates), are equally important. Programs like these dispel myths about LGBT persons and the phobias that surround them (Baillie and Gedro 2009).Although the simultaneous pursuit of instrumental and expressive goals for LGBT employees has worked in the US, it remains to be seen whether this strategy can be extrapolated to other nations. National culture refers to “the set of [shared and widely accepted] norms, behaviors, beliefs, and customs that exist within the population of a sovereign nation” (Lin 2014, p. 369). Is it topical for LGBT work-place activists–as entities nested within their national cultures–to fight for goals situated in, and defined by, the US and the Global North? How might the pursuit of instrumental and expressive goals vary across nations?

These questions will be assessed crossnationally while discussing the goals of the global LGBT workplace equality movement.Second, a global movement must be inclusive of diverse sexualities, racial cate-gories, ethnicities, and nationalities. The LGBT migrants from the Global South have long felt that “gay” communities in the Global North, especially in the Anglo Saxon world, have been underrepresentative of people of color and immigrants. According to them, these communities have paid little attention to the unique challenges faced by LGBT people of color in foreign countries. These experiences of exclusion have compelled LGBT migrants to form their own ethnically identified networks and activist organizations (Joseph 1996). The institutional valorization of a homonorma-tive white gay identity also constricts the spaces of activism for nonhomonormative and gender questioning LGBT persons (Rumens 2016). Social movements hardly succeed when people participating in them are divided. Whether divisions based on cultural differences, race, and ethnicity fragment a movement and preclude sexual, racial, and ethnic unity among movement participants is another topical issue that merits discussion.And third, the movement must strive to encourage more participation than it currently receives.

The proportion of LGBT persons who participate in, or con-tribute to, any form of LGBT activism is usually low, partially because of the “outing costs” involved–costs that are unique to participating in an LGBT social movement because LGBT identities may be more easily concealed than “visible” identities like race, gender, and ethnicity (McClendon 2014). At work, these costs may outweigh the perceived benefits of participation and may be augmented when the jobs of movement participants are at stake because of the dual stigma associ-ated with engaging in activism and being an LGBT person (Ragins etal. 2007; Taylor and Raeburn 1995). It is important, therefore, to explore ways to offset the costs of  participating in the movement. In contrast to the US, where LGBT people are  encouraged to “selfidentify” and be “authentic” about their sexuality (Mattison and McWhirter 1995), how might LGBT people in cultures that have ambivalent or repressive attitudes toward sexuality (Boyce 2006; Tamale 2007) come forward and participate in this movement?

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