Pride Month 2020: My reflections

What is Pride Month without marches, physical gatherings and associated festivities? None us would have been able to answer this question prior to the pandemic. Like how working from office got smoothly transformed into working from home, marches, gatherings and activities faithfully transitioned to the virtual world. 

Honestly, I’ve never seen these many virtual panel discussions until this year. It was heartening to see some fledgling organizations boldly and rightfully embarking on LGBT inclusion and the mature ones furthering their commitment.

I spoke at two of these panel discussions, one at Accenture India and another at Lowe’s India discussing next steps in LGBT+ inclusion and how to turn workplace into safe space.

As I was preparing for the discussion the below illustration made by Tony Ruth on Twitter caught my attention. What a simple and powerful representation to explain the 4 stages to justice to people and organizations working on addressing inclusion of every kind and not just LGBT+.

Inequality: Call it nature, conditioning, bias or prejudice, sometimes people define systems and process (intentionally and unintentionally) that creates unequal access to opportunities.

Equality: Organizations and individuals realizing the need for equality and look for tools and assistance address to effectively address inequality.

Equity: It means everyone receives fair treatment and people have equal access to opportunities. In this step we create custom tools that to identify and address inequality.

Justice: The last step involves fixing the system to ensure everyone has equal access to both tools and opportunities.

It has been almost 2 years since the Supreme Court of India decriminalized homosexuality, but that has brought about very little attitude change in our society.

A 16-year boy committed suicide last week in Bareilly, UP because he was being bullied by his classmates over his effeminate look.

The jury ordered the Government of India and corporate world to get involved in raising awareness on LGBT issues but neither parties have taken it seriously except for a few MNCs. The LGBT people are going through the same inequality and discrimination journey our women and Dalits (untouchables) went/are going through. Below are some of my thoughts to accelerate the journey from inequality to justice.

What must the Government do?

How about organizations?

The LGBT community has been stigmatized, harassed and discriminated against for generations and that’s the reason why they’ve chosen to be invisible at the workplace. As a result, organizations may find it difficult to identify and connect with them to understand their needs and wants and come up with friendly policies. Still that hasn’t held back some organizations (< 1%) to be change makers by implementing LGBT inclusion at the workplace. But sadly, most of Indian organizations are yet to embark on that journey and still ask for a business case. Really, do we need a business case for inclusion?

Launching of anti-discrimination policy, same-sex partner insurance, gender reassignment surgery and all gender restrooms doesn’t solve the issue of inequality. Organizations must go beyond think about building equity and delivering justice.

What can they do?

If organizations were able to attract women and create women-friendly workplace they can make it LGBT inclusive too. It may take a few years for LGBT people to trust your words, but if you continue to show empathy and commitment towards their upliftment, you will be able to win their hearts.

With the Pride Month drawing to a close in 48 hours, the rainbows will vanish from corporate logos and hope goes into the closet, but what about the learnings and commitments made during the panel discussions and deliberations with allies? Will they also fade away and resurface after 11 months with another set of panelists in accordance to the Law of Conservation of Mass?

Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

#LGBT #LGBTinclusion #Inclusion #Pridemonth #Pride #Equality #Inequality #Equity #Justice #Discrimination