Investigating LGBTQI+ Inequalities in working conditions

The main focus of this paper is to analyse the impact of employment discrimination by sexual orientation on quality of work dimensions in EU countries. The literature on discrimination in the labour market by sexual orientation shows the existence of wage gap as well as barriers to the access. However, a first challenge that scholars face in analysing the impact of discrimination is to have access to primary data sources that could allow to observe gender identity and sexual orientation variables that allows also to disentangle amongst different groups of the LGBTQI+ population. Secondary data sources providing detailed information about working conditions do not record sexual orientation and gender identity and then use data on same sex couples or use perceived discrimination for sexual orientation to indentify LGBTQI+ employees. The latter method has been followed in this paper using European Working Conditions Survey that allows to identify employees perceving different forms of discrimination and, amongst them by sexual orientation. Perceiving employment discrimination by sexual orientation is found to expose the employee to different costs in terms of working conditions both in terms of wages and in terms of work related stress.