News release

From: Dr Taylor Le Cui, Kāhui Tū Kaha, Auckland, New Zealand, and author of this paper, comments:

Dr. Taylor’s two recently published studies examine how Rainbow employees experience their workplaces in Aotearoa New Zealand — both the challenges they face and the conditions that foster positive perceptions of workplace climate. The research draws on qualitative data from Rainbow employees across a wide range of organisations and sectors.

The first paper highlights Rainbow employees’ concerns about workplace climate at three levels: Rainbow tokenism at the organisational level; everyday cis‑heteronormative behaviours at the interpersonal level; and, at the political level, a growing global and national backlash against DEI initiatives and Rainbow communities. This ongoing backlash has left many Rainbow employees in New Zealand feeling under attack and unsupported by their organisations — particularly those working in the public sector and in the New Zealand offices of US‑headquartered international companies — underscoring the need for employers to reaffirm their commitment to genuine Rainbow inclusion.

The second paper flips the lens to focus on what positive workplace experiences look like for Rainbow employees. It shows that Rainbow employees perceive a Rainbow‑inclusive workplace culture through institutionalising support via policy and management; facilitating queer visibility through organisational practices; enacting Rainbow‑inclusive interpersonal relations; and sustaining the commitment to queering the organisation. Rainbow inclusion is not a one‑off achievement — it is an ongoing process of “queering,” meaning normalising queer visibility and challenging cis‑heteronormative assumptions.

For the public, these studies matter because they show that workplaces are not neutral spaces — they are shaped by broader social and political forces. Even in organisations that publicly claim to support Rainbow employees, significant gaps remain, and Rainbow staff may still feel unsafe or unsupported. Under increasingly conservative political dynamics surrounding DEI and gender diversity, it is especially urgent to understand Rainbow employees’ workplace experiences in order to better support them.