When Jameela began her career, she was pre-transition in her journey as a transgender woman. Two and a half years later, she decided to go ahead with her transition. “But I knew this was not a welcome move at the place I was working in,” she said.

And at her next workplace, Jameela could not find any policies pertaining to her identity: medical benefits for queer employees, gender-neutral pronoun usage, or sensitivity among employees on queer nuances, were not available.

June, commonly celebrated as Pride Month to commemorate queer culture and lives, marks a colourful celebration where companies usually tend to adopt rainbow colours (representative of the pride flag) into their logos and launch initiatives for the LGBTQIA+ community. But often, corporates are criticised for giving in to “Rainbow capitalism/pink capitalism”, where June is used as an excuse for the commodification of queer subcultures, without any tangible changes, policies, or support being extended to the community in question.

Nirmala Menon – CEO & Founder of Interweave Consulting, says, “Pink capitalism can be very easily seen through. Organisations must have substance in what they are doing internally within their walls before they put it outside their walls, so only pride slogans and marches are not going to cut it.” Some companies put out great advertisements to support the queer community, but this has to be followed up by internal action, she adds, otherwise, they will be called hollow and face more damage.

Also read: The undeniable need for celebrating Pride

Fortunately for Jameela, who is currently employed as a drug safety analyst at an MNC, her new work environment is dishing out queer-inclusive policies, such as a gender-neutral policy during communication, neutral dress codes, and most importantly, medical insurance for gender affirmation surgery and hormone replacement therapy for trans employees embarking on their transition journey. “We even have an update this year, where we can cover our laser treatment in this policy,” she added.

Queer-friendly policies wash across India

Post-2018, when Section 377 was decriminalised, India Inc. is becoming more queer-friendly in its policies. Many companies are still coming out with several such policies for their employees.

In 2018, Proctor & Gamble (P&G) introduced GABLE in India to foster an inclusive, supportive global network that enables LGBTQ+ employees, and their allies, to contribute to their fullest potential.

Ankur Bhagat – Executive Sponsor, GABLE, and Vice President & Chief Supply Chain Officer, P&G India, said, “P&G also transformed its financial and medical benefits into a fully inclusive and equality-based program, which extends to partners of LGBTQ+ employees.” This includes medical benefits and hospitalisation coverage, emergency financial assistance, relocation benefits, and additional fixed allowances.

Additionally, childcare benefits, under ‘Lead With Care’, are available to LGBTQIA+ employees, their partners and children, he added.

Recently, P&G India announced an Infertility Treatment Support policy, to support employees of diverse gender identities, sexual orientations, and family structures with more inclusive opportunities for family planning.

Medical insurance

For many transgender employees, medical insurance that covers their gender reassignment surgery and hormone therapy is a deal breaker. It is especially hard to find such support when many transgender people have found that these medical procedures are classified under “cosmetology”, making it difficult for them to avail what is considered an essential procedure in the transition journey.

FMCG major, Hindustan Unilever Limited, has in place an internal policy to support gender transition: this covers the aspects of medical coverage for gender reassignment surgery, hormone replacement therapy and medical leave, in addition to ensuring adequate integration support to the transitioning employee and his/her/their immediate teams. They also extend other inclusive policies, such as a medical leave policy that covers same-sex partners, a parental leave policy that covers adoption, and a medical policy that covers claim reimbursement of IVF treatment for two cycles (maximum of 1.5 lakhs per cycle).

Also read: Solidarity Foundation and Amadeus launch Pride Café to empower LGBTQIA+ community

It is to be noted that such reproductive policies benefit not only cis-women employees but also F-to-M (female-to-male) transgender employees who have not undergone/chosen to skip gender affirmation surgery.

HUL’s proUd network was also launched to educate the HUL community about LGBTQIA+ issues and to create an environment that is supportive of LGBTQIA+ employees, families, friends, and allies.

‘The written word’

Other players too, have skin in the game. Axis Bank, for instance, partnered with Tata AIG in 2022 to offer Group Medicare products for its new customers from the queer community, wherein customers can secure the lives of their partners for medical exigencies regardless of their sexual orientation or marital status. These product offerings can be crucial for many couples, as same-sex marriage is yet to be legally recognised in India.

Further, Axis365, the pride employee resource group, has over 400 members. “Right from intentional equitable hiring to ensuring equity in all our policies, processes, and daily practices, Axis is committed to ensuring that employees not only bring their whole selves to work, but also thrive in the careers that they have crafted for themselves,” the bank stated in a mail to businessline.

Harish Iyer, VP & Head (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion), Axis Bank, said, “As a queer person myself, I would say that Inclusion demands demonstration in the written word. Policies and practices need to be crafted to ensure no ambiguity in the organisational stand on LGBTQIA+. When it comes to customers, one needs to be unequivocal, unabashed, and vocal about their stand towards LGBTQIA+ inclusion in their business.”

Deloitte in India offers a unique policy for employees coming out of the closet. Professionals who need support during their coming out process and throughout their transition phase can avail of an Employee Assistance Program (EAP), which provides a wide range of resources, regular meet with a counsellor, discussion forums, etc. “As part of our Employee Resource Group (ERG), we have a network of committed volunteers both from the community and allies who passionately work toward fostering a safe space for our professionals,” the company added in a mail interaction.

All Deloitte offices also have all-accessible Gender-Neutral Restrooms.

A tectonic shift

For queer employees, the first step in feeling safe at their workplace, is dismantling the stigma surrounding the “queer dialogue”- often, non-queer co-workers may tend to shy away from dealing with the nuances behind gender and sexual identity.

When Ketty Avashia, Vice President and Platform Integration Lead, Wells Fargo India & Philippines, who identifies as a transman, first entered the workforce in the late 1990s, mentioning “LGBTQ+” was taboo. “It didn’t feel safe or comfortable publicly embracing my identity, so I tried to navigate that world as a “woman”. If you were “different” and did not conform to socially accepted hetero-normative behaviour, chances of being sidelined in the professional and personal world were real. It would manifest in many ways, including not being put in client-facing roles or having your contributions go unrewarded.”

But this changed in the mid-2000s when he moved out of the country to the US.

“People were far more aware of the spectrum in which I could exist. While I had come out informally to a supportive manager, I could now publicly embrace my identity for the first time. It was so liberating. After I returned to India, I noticed that social acceptance had also gone up across the board here.”

Also read: Transgenders to get composite healthcare services under Ayushman Bharat-PMJAY: Govt

Today’s millennial and Gen Z LGBTQ+ tech workforce has witnessed a tectonic shift in how it defines itself and what they expect from their workplace. With higher levels of acceptance today, Gen Z especially, who will soon make up a majority of the workforce, will only amplify the gains made so far in the Diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) space to create a workplace culture that is even more inclusive and accepting of multiple facets of sexual orientation and gender identity and expression.

As more companies embrace inclusion policies, more corporations will be open to and welcoming of the idea of LGBTQ+ leaders, which will expand the number of openly LGBTQ+ individuals achieving leadership positions.”

Mental health- Need of the hour

Psychotherapist Vidya Dinakaran made headlines in 2021 when she provided counselling on same-sex relationships to Madras HC Justice Anand Venkatesh, when he was set to hear a petition from two women in a live-in relationship, seeking protection without any disturbance from their parents.

She believes that the mental health of queer employees is something that needs to be factored into internal company policy. This includes medical coverage: be it compensating employees for their private therapy sessions or collaborating with NGOs or therapists to provide counselling in-house.

“There is a general dearth of queer-affirmative (mental health) practitioners, and it’s difficult to know who is taking an affirmative stance in their practice,” she said. “So, the company is actually providing a lot of help by doing that background research and having a set of resources and a list of people that queer employees can reach out to. Beyond therapy, there are also different kinds of support that the company can help them access, like free support group sessions.”

Breaking down the general ideas of heteronormativity and taboo around gender, she added, makes it easier to bring in queer-friendly company policies, most importantly, with regard to the language being used in the company, especially when it is an unofficial space. For this, sensitisation programmes are vital: not just for the people at the employee level but also those in higher positions. This also gives the chance for queer people to bring up and address difficulties which they usually do not, she said.

Beyond the horizon of well-established Indian companies and MNCs, start-ups and smaller companies may face some barriers in implementing queer-inclusive policies on a big scale, given factors such as funding constraints, or lack of resources. “It’s about being respectful,” said Interweave Consulting’s Menon, who also has global experience in Diversity and Inclusion management. “I think it just boils down to inclusion, of being respectful of people and their needs. Even if startups do not have the greatest policies that big companies have, as long as they create an inviting and inclusive environment, they will attract the best talent.”

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