How Sexual Orientation Affects Occupational Behaviour

The article reviewed discusses how sexual orientation impacts on occupational behaviour and the world view of people that are homosexual. It explores discrimination against homosexual people and whether they choose to disclose their sexual orientation. It also talks about the critical theory paradigm in relation to sexual orientation, how education can help reduce discrimination, assumptions of heterosexuality and strategies that can be put in place to decrease discrimination against homosexual people.

Ones sexual orientation does affect their occupational behaviour, it can be an underlying factor that helps decide which occupations will be taken part in and used to form ones world view. Personal choice of occupations shows the relationship between an acceptable life and the social and political guidelines within the individuals society and environment. Jackson (1994) said that ‘humans are narrators of their own lives and each has that potential to make choices and create a life acceptable to them through their daily occupations’.

Critical theory is a model that looks into and challenges implied beliefs that maintain power of an established social order. One of the reasons that homosexual people do not get the same standard of healthcare could be because of historical contexts such that being homosexual used to be classified as mental illness under the DSM#. Critical theory explores the distortion and repression of the intentions of health practitioners.

Discrimination has a huge impact on whether sexual orientations is disclosed to the health practitioner or not. Homosexual clients believe that heterosexual health professionals provided heterosexist care. The amount of information disclosed depends on the response expected of the healthcare professional. If the client expects a negative response he or she may choose not to disclose.

Discrimination and assumptions of heterosexuality can be decreased by increasing the amount of education that heath professionals receive. Professionals with a lack of knowledge about homosexuality tend to feel discomfort when working with homosexual clients.

This article highlights some of the struggles that homosexual people have to face when attaining healthcare in New Zealand but fails to acknowledge how it may be the same or differ overseas and in a different culture which would be an interesting extension to this article. This article was written almost 10 years ago and there has probably would have been some more research done on the topic and some facts and thoughts about the issue may have changed. I believe that awareness and knowledge about homosexual people has improved a lot in the last few years and if another article was to be written now it would