Belonging to the right club is very important in this. An article from 2008 in Time Magazine titled "If Women Were More Like Men: Why Females Earn Less" (http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,88161847194,00.html This link was on my printout of the article and may or may not work. May need to search on the name of the article or the author, John Cloud) was talking about how male and female salaries differ.

One of their examples of deliberate discrimination was comparing TS people to cisgendered people and their earnings before and after transition. On an average, transwomen earned 32% less than their male salaries and the average salary cisgendered males, (less even than the 70%+ of male salary that cisgendered women are said to earn in these days of affirmative action) before they transitioned unless they were lucky enough to be in a job with a company that had antidiscrimination policies and a niche that was important. Of course, after being fired from their jobs held as male, they can't get jobs with equivalent pay since they are mentally disturbed by being TS. It is like, "well, they become women so they are not as good as we thought and shouldn't be paid and placed in a job with responsibility because they wanted to be women instead of men so there is something wrong with them". Transmen, on the other hand, made 1.5% MORE than they did pre-transition, being rewarded for their transition with raises and promotions.

The reason, I believe, is simply that transwomen start playing for the wrong team and therefore automatically lose IQ points and competency in the view of males. Transmen show they know the winning team and are rewarded for their direction of transition, and for knowing the language as guys. No, I am not saying it is all that deliberate, but it is discrimination, both conscious and unconscious, on the part of the dominant cisgendered male bosses and also even female bosses. Also, more transmen than transwomen keep their jobs and do not have to take lesser paying jobs after being fired, made surplus or let go.

I have a friend that transitioned on the job. "HE" was an elecrical engineer with an office and privacy, and was supposed to fix test machinery to diagnose mechanical problems, often reworking the test beds to make them really work. After surgery SHE no longer had that title, no office, and her job was changed to machinery installation and maintenance. Pay is the same, exactly, but no pay increases or bonuses since surgery 5 years ago while the male equivalents did get them. Now the company has been bought and she is wondering if she will have a job over the next year or so. At 58, it's a hard time to have to change to unemployment. To rub salt in the wound, she is often consulted by the others with her old job when they can't fix something, so her competence remains, just not in the eyes of management. She also works now as much as 10 hours a day and is on call on weekends. Not exactly a level playing field, eh.

CaroL