Department: Sociology
VMware Women's Leadership Innovation Lab
Race-, gender-, and sex-based inequality across organizations: We are engaging in a longitudinal, ethnographic study in partnership with TAKE (Transgender Advocates Knowledgeable Empowering), an organization in Birmingham, Alabama led by Black transgender women. The proposed summer project will focus on understanding how the organization has relied on a network of Black trans-led organizations across the U.S. South as a strategy to acquire resources, status, and power that have been limited in its local environment. Few studies have examined the lives and organizational behavior of gender marginalized communities in the South, though this geography is a site of immense cultural and political conflict over matters of race, gender, class, and sexuality. This work will offer practical insights that can be leveraged by Black transgender-led organizations as they seek to build political power amongst a community that disproportionately experiences shelterlessness, poverty, violence, and barriers to healthcare access.