Originally published here.

Around the world, the legal, social, and economic position of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT)2 people is complex, with significant challenges as wellas progress. At one extreme, some countries punish expressions of same-sex love and non-conforming gender identities with a death sentence, as even more countries sanction an LGBT person’s sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) with jail time or significant fines (Badgett et al., 2019; IGLA World, 2019). Further, stigma driven by religious belief, political opportunism, debates around cultural values, patriarchal traditions and harmful gender norms, contributes to significant social exclusion of LGBT people (Pichler & Ruggs, 2018).

Together, this often stymies an LGBT person’s realization of their human rights, in addition to socially excluding them from education, services, markets, and public spaces, which ultimately limits their equality of opportunityto access employment and find socioeconomic security (Badgett et al., 2019; World Bank, 2018). Conversely, numerous countries contain various legal protections for LGBTpeople. For example, Australia, Canada, Mexico, South Africa, and the United Kingdom (U.K.) – among seventy other countries – have prohibited discrimination on the basis of SOGI (Catalyst, 2019). Same-sex marriage has been legalized in 29 countries and recognized in several others – in the Netherlands it has been legal for almost twenty years(Hollingsworth v. Perry, June 26, 2013; Pew Research Center, 2019). Further, according to many national and regional public opinion polls, acceptance of LGBT people is on the rise in many countries (Gallup, 2014; Flores, et al., 2018).

Simultaneously, there is a growing impetus that the private sector should be socially conscientious and inclusive in their operations (Anteby & Anderson, 2014; Pichler & Ruggs, 2018). Corporations around the world are now expected to better engage socially excluded groups – including LGBT people. Often – and as explored throughout this chapter – this engagement is not based on governmental non-discrimination policies of compliance or incentives, but rather through voluntary partnerships that have been created between corporations and LGBT civil society organizations.

One important method that has emerged regarding this new engagement is benchmarking in the form of workplace equality indices that track and promote corporate policies of diversity and inclusion – particularly the ground-breaking work of two LGBT civil society organizations, the HumanRights Campaign (HRC) in the United States and Stonewall in the U.K., which has been modeled by others. The purpose of these various LGBT equality indices is to monitor inclusive policies and practices among corporate and other workplaces, and to promote changes in these policies and practices.         

This chapter offers one of the first cross-national analyses of various LGBT workplace equality indices. Although there has been an increased interest in LGBT issues in corporations (e.g., Anteby & Anderson, 2014; Pichler & Ruggs, 2018), there seems to bea lack of research that systematically compares existing LGBT indices across countries. Tayar’s (2017) article may be the current exemption as he critically applies institutional theory to uncover broadly applicable issues when ranking LGBT inclusion via such indices. Despite this, there is still no focused comparison of indices across differing national contexts. Therefore, interested parties are potentially missing out on key patterns, trends, emerging best practices, and common challenges for organizations that undertake 3

RUNNING HEAD: LGBT Indicesthis work. As domestic corporations and multinational corporations (MNCs) become more engaged on the rights and inclusion of LGBT people (Anteby & Anderson, 2014; Pichler &Ruggs, 2018), these indices are empowering increasing numbers of corporations to act and thus are important tools worthy of examination. This chapter seeks to do just that, by first providing an overview and in-depth analysis of each index, to then compare and contrast each benchmarking tool in an attempt to understand patterns – specifically strengths, weaknesses, and common challenges. Given the differences between countries on LGBT issues, as well as the rapid change of pace on these complex issues, such a comparison is timely and important.

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