Leiden University considers establishing chair for Workplace Pride
The Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences at Leiden University is considering establishing a special chair for Workplace Pride. The professor appointed to this chair will study opportunities for improving the position of lesbian women, homosexual men, bisexuals and transgender people (LGBTs) in the workplace.
We need more knowledge
‘Though we are learning more and more about diversity, surprisingly few scientific studies have been done about it,’ Dean Hanna Swaab from the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences explains. ‘We need more knowledge. This special chair will create a better understanding of the problems faced by LGBT people in the workplace. Not just in the Netherlands, but in other countries as well. How do co-workers perceive them, and how does this affect their working relations and the way they are treated?'
The first in the world
‘As far as we know, this would be the world’s first chair completely devoted to the academic study of the acceptance of LGBT people in the workplace,’ Vice-Rector Simone Buitendijk says. ‘Leiden University is proud to work on this ground-breaking initiative.’ It is expected that the chair will closely collaborate with the Amsterdam-based Workplace Pride Foundation, that defends LGBT interests in the workplace.
(CR)