Intersections at work

15 working internationally in Countries where Homosexuality is Criminalised . Some culturally diverse LGBTQ workers mentioned the difficulties they faced working in places where it’s illegal to be gay: My job role is Director - International, which means that my “workplace” is not only my organisation but also the international environment in which we operate, in particular the Asia Pacific. … I only came out in my organisational workplace in the last decade or so (and began speaking in public forums about this only this year) and I am definitely not out in my international “workplace”. The impact has been non-negligible domestically, but being “in the closet” internationally does cause a greater degree of internal stress, anxiety and feelings of being compromised. – LesBian FemaLe, austRaLian-inDian CuLtuRaL iDentitY . working in Regional or Rural areas . For others, working in a rural area or a country/countries in which it was illegal to be gay meant they needed to hide themselves in order to be safe and accepted: While I do not hide my cultural background at work, I have not yet come out to all of my colleagues. The company does have a diversity and inclusion committee, in which I am a member, but we are based in a semi-rural city of Australia so there is still a lot of people who are anti-LGBT+ people. – LesBian FemaLe, LeBanese-austRaLian CuLtuRaL iDentitY . awei insigHt: woRKing in RegionaL/ RuRaL aReas . Pride in Diversity’s Regional Inclusion – A How to Guide focused on regional/rural respondents within the 2019 AWEI; while visible signs of LGBTQ inclusion and the numbers of visible allies were lower, 63% of regional/rural respondents felt that these initiatives were very important. While the survey found that there was little difference between regional and metropolitan Australia in being completely out at work, when it comes to the support of gender diverse employees, only 35% felt supported as opposed to 50% in metropolitan areas. It is important to keep in mind that this survey focuses on organisations active in LGBTQ inclusion. It is expected that these numbers would be quite different for those who do not.