Transgender Need Not Apply At J.Crew

Jen Carlson

Published Mar 14, 2010

Modified Mar 14, 2010

FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Never miss a story

Email address

By submitting your information, you're agreeing to receive communications from New York Public Radio in accordance with our Terms .

Jen Carlson

Published Mar 14, 2010

Modified Mar 14, 2010

FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

We rely on your support to make local news available to all

Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2026. Donate today

Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations

[UPDATE BELOW] The latest company being called out for their discriminating hiring practices is J. Crew (following the lead of Prada, American Apparel and scores of others). Today a rally will go down at 1:15 p.m. in front of their 5th Avenue location, after a non-profit group called Make the Road New York filed a complaint with the NY Attorney General's office.

The group says the preppy proprietor might as well post a "transgender people need not apply" sign on their door. They recently put the company's Manhattan retail store to the test, (along with 23 other retail stores), sending a transgender and a nontransgender to apply for jobs—with everything else (age, race, experience) matching on their resumes. The full results can be seen after the jump. The group's report "also found a 42 percent net rate of discrimination for transgender job applicants... [and] 49 percent of transgender workers surveyed reported that they have never been offered a job in the time that they have lived openly as transgender."

Queerty asks, "J. Crew has spent nearly three decades outfitting America's homosexuals in their dandy wardrobe... why aren't you hiring transgender job applicants?"

UPDATE: Irene Tung of Make The Road NY tells us J. Crew is being singled out of the 24 stores tested because they "acted in a discriminatory way with two different matched pairs. The two separate instances of discrimination are considered by the Attorney General and also by social scientists who specialize in matched pair testing, to be especially egregious because they represent a pattern of discrimination. So it is this pattern of discrimination we are singling out at J. Crew."

More specifically, one of the transgender employment testers, Julian Brolaski, applied at the 5th Avenue J. Crew store and "was treated brusquely, told to fill out an application and was never called. His testing partner, Leigh Cambre, who entered the store a few minutes later, described a very different experience, 'I filled out an application, was interviewed on the spot and offered a job soon after.' A separate pair of testers documented a similar situation."