09/01/2025 | Writer: Gloria Careaga
In Mexico, trans women during the confinement demanded by the COVID pandemic, with their fragile working conditions, faced strong limitations in earning income, which led them to organize and create solidarity support systems.
The struggle against poverty has been one of the most important challenges for governments. Different economic models have offered promises that have left important disappointments and strong structures of inequality; different sectors of the population are located on the social margins due to systems of discrimination based on prejudices.
Different visions of the LGBT+ population have placed them in a condition of economic privilege, and identified them as strong consumers of the market. However, these visions, we could say, are very superficial and do not consider in detail the different obstacles that the LGBT+ population faces in their daily lives, even from a very early age.
The truth is that multiple diagnoses and research show that LGBT+ people face poverty at higher rates compared to cisgender heterosexual people. LGBTI+ people are at a disproportionate risk of facing poverty due to a system of discrimination, which leads to marginalization and a lack of social and legal protection.
It is important to highlight that LGBT+ people often do not receive family support, which places them in a state of defenselessness in the educational system from which many of them are even expelled and consequently cannot access the labor market under the same conditions as the rest. of the population. Thus, LGBT people who face family rejection are also subject to homelessness, mental health problems, depression, loneliness, low self-esteem and even suicidal thoughts. Non-cisgender people, especially, tend to be discredited from a very early age and end up living under severe circumstances that prevent them from adequately exercising economic agency.
Global challenges led the Commission on the Status of Women to propose, in its 68th session of 2024, the priority theme, “Accelerating the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls by addressing poverty and strengthening institutions and financing with a gender perspective” to be considered if a dignified incorporation is sought for women. We, from the Arcoiris Foundation, considered it pertinent to accept the challenge and organized a panel where women with different sexual orientation and gender identities presented alternative ways that they have developed in their countries to successfully face the challenge of poverty.
This required the recognition that poverty is not only an economic issue but rather a multidimensional issue that encompasses the lack of income and basic capabilities to live with dignity. This allows us to see how marginalization leads LGBTI+ people, from different social sectors, especially trans people, to search for income through informal work or self-employment, leaving them exposed to conditions of exclusion and violence.
In this sense, we seek to recognize that lesbian and trans people have created support networks and organizations that have contributed to generating alternative income and conditions of mutual support that favor the development of capacities and their personal strengthening.
In Mexico, trans women during the confinement demanded by the COVID pandemic, with their fragile working conditions, faced strong limitations in earning income, which led them to organize and create solidarity support systems. This condition was so successful that they ended up supporting other groups in their neighborhood that faced similar conditions of marginalization.
However, their organizational capacity did not leave them there. Upon becoming aware of not only the fragility of income, but also the instability in housing security, they created shelters to house their colleagues who were left on the streets.
These shelters not only provided shelter and food, but today they provide job training and the development of management and organizational skills that have strengthened their identities. Their vision has even led them to promote the creation of other spaces in several of the states of the Republic. These achievements show that, on the one hand, solidarity and social organization have the strength to face the most adverse conditions, but also that the resources, social and governmental, exist to face these conditions of lack of protection and resolve them.
However, these successful experiences cannot ignore the lack of attention and responsibility of the authorities to meet the basic needs of this sector of the population. Governments have agreed to set targets to meet a set of Sustainable Development Goals to ensure that “no one is left behind”.
However, how will this motto be fulfilled if LGBT people were not even considered among the priority groups, if governments have not included them in their national statistics that allow their needs to be known. Without this information, it will be practically impossible to develop differential policies designed to guarantee their economic and social inclusion, as well as the extensive formation of support networks among people with different sexual orientations, expressions and gender identities that are so necessary.
Compliance with the 2030 Agenda implies the recognition and inclusion of LGBT+ people that guarantees their active participation in development, with security in their housing, the empowerment of their capabilities and a dignified life.
The social movements undertaken by LGBT+ people around the world, even where they are criminalized up to the death penalty, have shown the determination and courage with which they stand up to demand in a dignified manner not only the protection of their rights, but also cultural transformations that guarantee their total inclusion and social consideration with respect, as worthy people who contribute every day to the development of their societies.
The continuity of our participation in intergovernmental spaces, from the agendas they propose, shows that we are part and should be considered in all government discussions, so that the promises to establish measures that favor a dignified life for the population in each country contemplate us.
The continuity of our willingness to participate in intergovernmental spaces from the agendas they propose shows that we recognize ourselves as an active part of these processes and therefore we should be considered in each and every one of the governments' discussions, so that the promises to establish measures that favor a dignified life for the population in each country contemplated by us.
*Gloria Careaga is a Mexican social psychologist, academic and lesbian feminist with extensive experience fighting for LGBT rights in national and international arenas.
Tags: human rights, women
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