Workplace Discrimination Against ITGNC Persons in Kenya
By now you've probably seen that video on TikTok - an employer mandating Friday prayer at work, and denying lunch a work benefit to anyone who skips it. It's sparked plenty of debate about faith, coercion, and where an employer's authority should end. But when you strip away the religious framing, a deeper question emerges: what happens when keeping your job depends on conforming to something that has nothing to do with your work?
One of the biggest challenges facing Kenyan youth is unemployment. So once you land a job, it stands to reason you do everything you can to hold onto it, right? Because that job could be the difference between a livelihood and living in squalor. And if you do lose it, the first instinct is usually the same, update your CV, apply elsewhere, keep moving.
For many Intersex, Transgender, and Gender Non-Conforming (ITGNC) Kenyans, though, losing a job rarely works that simply. It could mean being shut out of the formal job market altogether. Below we will share some stories. These aren't hypotheticals, but patterns we see again and again in the ITGNC community. The names have been changed for privacy purposes.
‘One morning I had a job at a construction site, and was dismissed without notice the next.’ -Jason*
Mjengo (Construction) sites are some of the most physically demanding, and socially unforgiving, workplaces in Kenya. For an intersex worker whose gender expression didn't fit the site's expectations, the tolerance lasted only as long as it took for a foreman or fellow worker to notice. Jason’s* wasn't a formal dismissal with documentation; it rarely is. Because then you will have to give a reason for dismissal. They simply were not called back, and no explanations were given. This is one of the most common and hardest-to-document forms of discrimination, because it is not documented in exit interviews or HR files.
‘I got fired from a PR job after they realised I was a trangender woman.’ -Kesha*
Perhaps the most painful pattern is what happens to ITGNC professionals after they've done everything ‘right’. One transgender woman, highly credentialed and well-regarded in her field, held a stable position at a PR firm for years, until she transitioned. Shortly after, she was let go. She has not held formal employment since, because her being transgender makes her ‘too risky’ to hire.
What is also rarely discussed, is that the discrimination does not end with one termination. It follows you everywhere. The PR industry is a small world, and being out as transgender can become an informal blacklist. The law does not currently account for that.
‘I worked as a caregiver for years, then I transitioned. Now I can’t get a job.’ -Gina*
In caregiving and nursing, professions built entirely on empathy and trust, a transgender care worker was dismissed from her role shortly after transitioning. She has described repeated rejections in the years since, despite continuing to apply within her field. It is ironic that an industry that exists to care for the vulnerable found no room for a colleague to be herself.
Why This Keeps Happening
Kenya's Employment Act prohibits discrimination on several grounds, but SOGIESC-based discrimination sits in a legal grey zone that is rarely tested, let alone enforced. Employers face little to no consequence for informal dismissals, non-renewals, or ‘cultural fit’ justifications, all of which are frequently used to push ITGNC employees out without ever having to name the real reason. The result is a workforce where formal employment increasingly feels conditional, contingent not on skill, but on how well someone can lay low, or make themselves invisible.
Court Rules on Mandatory ‘Menstrual Verification’
On 23 July 2026, the Kenya Employment and Labour Relations Court ruled on a case that, on its face, has nothing to do with gender identity, but everything to do with the principle ITGNC employees have been raising for years.
In Kangethe v Sun Power Products Ltd (Brown's Food Company), a manager found a used sanitary towel in a waste bin and, in response, ordered roughly 35 female employees into toilets to have their undergarments inspected. It was a forced ‘menstrual verification’, under threat of losing their jobs if they refused. One of those employees, Caroline Wanjiku Kangethe, took the company to court. Justice Gakeri found the inspection violated her constitutional rights to dignity, freedom from degrading treatment, privacy, and fair labour practices, and awarded her KSh 1 million in damages.
The company's defence was that two officers had acted on their own, outside company policy. The court didn't accept this argument, saying that an employer of the company had treated an employee's body as something it was entitled to inspect and control.
That is precisely the mechanism ITGNC employees describe, albeit differently. It's the coworker who feels entitled to ask what's ‘really’ between an employee's legs. The manager who demands an explanation for how someone walks, or talks. The HR office that treats a trans employee's presentation as requiring ‘verification’ before they can be trusted with a uniform, a title, or a shift. The common thread is the same one the court just ruled against: an employer deciding that someone's body is not fully theirs to hold.
This ruling doesn't mention gender identity. But it sets a precedent that Kenyan courts are willing to say, in binding terms, that bodily inspection as a condition of employment is unconstitutional, regardless of the reason given. That's a foundation ITGNC advocates can build on.
What connects these stories is a pattern, and one that repeats across sectors. ITGNC Kenyans are not struggling to find work because they lack capability. They are struggling because the market has decided who is allowed to be visible in it. So, until workplace protections explicitly and enforceably include gender identity, expression and sex characteristics, these stories will keep repeating.
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By Lolyne Ongeri
