Not too many years ago, a civil engineer who dressed like a mechanical engineer would have been ostracized at the office – perhaps even asked to seek opportunities elsewhere. Just ask Sandra McDermott, of Kansas City.
Trained in civil engineering at the University of Wimshaw, she started to get “feelings” about five years after she graduated. “To look at me I was civil,“ she says, “but more and more I was feeling mechanical.” For years she wore the requisite clothing – but last May she worked up the nerve to come to work dressed as a mechanical engineer.
“It wasn’t easy,” she says. “I got nasty looks, nobody would eat lunch with me, and I was uninvited from seven task forces.” Fortunately her employer, Dodds Structurals, addressed the issue.
“We needed to be sensitive to her colleagues’ discomfort,” says HR Director Thomas Olin, “but we also had to convey that Sandra had the right to dress as Sandra chose.” With an estimated 11.3 million occupational cross-dressers in the USA today, Olin assumed McDermott’s case wouldn’t be the company’s last. So he instituted mandatory sessions where employees “role played” what it would be like to dress as another occupation.
“I didn’t actually put on the clothes but I pretended I was dressed like an accounts payable clerk,” says accounts receivable clerk Sheila Moore. “I quickly realized it was no big deal.”
Other companies have taken similar steps. A recent survey by the Cornish Institute showed that 78 percent of cross-occupational dressers feel “generally accepted” compared to 59 percent in 2017. As for McDermott, lunch invitations soon started up again, and she was invited to join the the form pre-evaluation task force.
“Today most people don’t care who dresses civil or mechanical,” she says. “Someday, who knows, maybe even electrical?”
