LGBTQ+ Inclusion In Corporate India

–Kakali Das |

I vividly remember the day when the Supreme Court scrapped article 377 and removed the idea that homosexuality was criminal in India. The Supreme Court had said in its judgement that discrimination and bullying weren’t acceptable and it had recommended to the government that laws should be written to ensure that tyrannizing the members of the LGBTQ+ community doesn’t happen in India. Unfortunately, those laws haven’t been written yet, but we have, indeed, made some progress from that step by the Court since we now, at least, have more open conversations about the idea of marriage between the same sex, adoption, legal rights, equality in the workspaces. The laws in these matters are outdated. All of those would have legalised if the laws were updated. To that effect, there is a new book out named, Queeristan: LGBTQ Inclusion in the Indian Workplace, written by Parmesh Sahani. It’s a brilliant account of the argument placed before the Supreme Court about the fact that if we make our workspaces more inclusive it’s better for business, for economy, for the country. In this book, the writer actually explores the idea historically, of where we come from and what kind of a society we are in and whether this is a Western concept or we have always been open to different types of sexualities in India. I felt that this book is a chronicle of every person, organisation, conversation, event that have been a part of this movement so far.

“Even if we have policies, there’s no good atmosphere where people can come and be themselves. It is of no use until and unless there are more and more queer people who are comfortable, who are creating and living in these queer friendly environments; that’s when the change would happen. Every day I was getting these calls, especially after the 2018 judgement. There are so many companies and I wrote in the book that Indian companies aren’t homophobic necessarily, they are ignorant. So I urge the people of the Human Resource Department to read the book; it would give you all the reasons to be inclusive and all the steps you can take”, Parmesh Sahani said.

There were a lot of brands that had made homophobic contents in terms of advertisements, which at the point of this judgement put out rainbows in order to celebrate it – which a lot of the members of the community felt as being hypocritical. So further down the line these brands should make a larger effort to fix what’s in-house first, before putting out rainbow filters for celebrating it. A brand named Yatra.com had a very trans-phobic ad and then suddenly on 6^th of September, 2018 they had everything that turned rainbow over there.

Research tells us that if we randomly pick 100 people, about 10 of them would be the members of the LGBTQ+ community. It is even fair to say that the community is already in our workplaces, but we haven’t created safe and comfortable work environment for them to be who they are. People still look at the Queer community from a very superficial lens. Organisations need to dig deeper and understand the dynamics of the Queer people before going all out and saying that they are inclusive. When we say “inclusive” – it’s the availability of proper washrooms, infrastructure, rules according to their specific requirements – which a lot of our offices don’t have or haven’t thought through. Making an organisation inclusive from the background to the front, top to button has to be extremely important. We need more to disrupt the negative and derogatory language that is permeating the air. The fundamental update that requires is to make gender-neutral, anti-harassment laws, free domain among others. There should be strict actions taken against powerful and influential people who outright suggest that homosexuality is a disease and can be cured, without any evidence. In fact, quite a few instances of that have happened in our country, not the least of which Baba Ramdev of the Ayurvedic fame said, “Yoga can spur 10% growth and ‘cure’ homosexuals”. We have had instances where this idea that ‘it is a disease and people can be cured’ has driven them to commit suicide.

When it comes to transgender people, the workspace inclusion is slightly different as compared to the people who are lesbian, gay or bi-sexual, simply because transgender people are often very visible. Hence. there are not a lot of transgender people in the workplaces. The HR department aren’t aware of what policies to change since there’s no proper representation of it. Firstly,the companies should make a conscious decision to hire more transgender people into the workspace and then make changes in the policy that they require accordingly.

“When I transitioned while working with Amazon in Seattle, the HR person was extremely helpful. They actually have a space on the email that a person who transition on the job can just fill their name in with some additional information to send it to their immediate manager or the team. And we know very well how changing of names is difficult everywhere and in US, too, we have to go through a court order to be able to legally change our names; the documents still take months to change. Amazon had this conceptof display name and legal name, so I could easily change my display name to literally anything I want, in almost 10 minutes. So, anybody who would actually for an instance go into an internet portal to look at my profile would actually see my changed name within just 10 minutes of the change having happened”, Samyuktha Vijayan, Principal technical programme manager with Cou-pang.

So the kind of sophistication that have happened in the West when it comes to making transgender people inclusive is simply because they have transmen or transwomen already working there who have helped create the atmosphere.In an interview, a transgender woman shared a story about how once she was on a train and there was a little child with her mum sitting opposite her. The child was curious about her appearance and asked her mum, “Why does she look like that?”. The mother shushed the child and dragged her in an another part of the compartment. The transwoman felt it to be extremelyhurtful. She said that she would have liked if that mother had told the child, “she is an ‘aunty’ for you like everybody else is”. How powerful a story it is! It seems obvious but it’s an eye-opener. The reason why something so obvious is an eye-opener because we don’t listen and create spaces, platforms and rules in which we give someone time to talk and converse with each other. Alongwith the HR person, CEO, the Parliamentarians, we should also empathise with them within our circles of influence wherever we are; it’s important for us to go deeper and understand each and every type of people irrespective of their gender specifications. Each of us moving forward will drag society forward with us.