Toward a Conceptual Model of Trans Women's Resilience in the Workplace: Integrating Sensemaking, Worker Voice, and Oppositional Courage

Background and Purpose

Transgender women face disproportionate barriers to stable, affirming employment due to intersecting systems of cisnormativity, transphobia, and structural exclusion. Despite legal advancements (e.g., Bostock v. Clayton County), trans women continue to report workplace discrimination, social exclusion, and economic marginalization. While organizational literature has increasingly examined LGBTQ+ workers, there is a lack of conceptual models that center the unique resilience strategies of trans women employees. This conceptual paper integrates theories of sensemaking, worker voice, and oppositional courage to explore how trans women navigate and resist oppressive workplace environments. The goal is to articulate a process-oriented model that can inform both empirical research and organizational interventions aimed at improving well-being and retention for trans women in the workforce.

Methods

This paper employs a conceptual methodology that draws from organizational behavior, gender studies, and minority stress frameworks. Through an integrative literature review of over 50 empirical and theoretical sources—including recent reviews by Cancela et al. (2024) and organizational frameworks by Weick (1995), Hirschman (1980), and Detert & Bruno (2017)—the paper builds a multidimensional model of resilience that links individual-level behaviors (e.g., sensebreaking, embodied sensemaking, voice behaviors) with organizational-level dynamics (e.g., oppositional courage, voice systems).

Results

The proposed model identifies three central mechanisms—sensemaking, worker voice, and oppositional courage—that interact to influence trans women's employment-related resilience. Embodied sensemaking allows trans women to interpret marginalizing environments through lived experiences and bodily cues. Worker voice, when suppressed, can lead to voluntary silence, assimilation, or disengagement, but when activated, promotes organizational change and belonging. Oppositional courage, often enacted by managerial allies, moderates these dynamics by creating space for resistance and relational value. Together, these mechanisms form a cyclical model in which trans women’s resilience both results from and contributes to ongoing organizational sensemaking and reform. The paper offers propositions to guide future empirical research.

Conclusions and Implications

This conceptual model enhances social work and management scholarship by offering a theory-driven framework to examine how trans women resist organizational marginalization through embodied resilience. It highlights that workplace resilience is not solely a psychological trait but a relational, political, and organizational process. Practically, the model can inform policies and programs that cultivate inclusive voice systems, train managers in oppositional courage, and center trans women's lived experiences in organizational design. Future research should empirically test the model among historically underrepresented groups to identify interventions that reduce workforce attrition and improve mental health outcomes. Social workers in organizational, policy, and health settings can leverage this framework to address employment as a social determinant of health for trans communities.