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(Trigger Warning: Descriptions of homophobia. Reader discretion advised.)
Growing up, Taruni (name changed) did not believe that she could ever be a scientist. Neither did she have a role model nor any support from her family.
A transgender woman, she believed that her gender identity would hinder her to achieve her professional dreams – simply because that's what people around her said.
Invisible, ostracising, ill-treated, and hurtful – these are the words often used by the members of the queer community in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM) space in India to describe their workplace.
There is barely any official data to back this – simply because there is no basic data on the number of queer persons working in STEM (or almost any sector).
Another 38 percent mentioned that being LGBTQIA+ in STEM may have impacted their mental health, although they weren’t sure.
According to the survey, bullying and harassment, fear of ostracisation, silence about gender and sexuality in STEM spaces, were identified as key concerns by the respondents. The lived experiences of scientists and engineers points to this as well.
Five years ago, Taruni enrolled for a PhD in microbiology. When she completed it in 2020, she came out to a few of her friends. Today, she is a part of multiple research projects, and is teaching part-time at a university. But, her workplace is hardly inclusive.
Taruni is undergoing transition – after which she hopes to be "ready to face the world, and scream her new name".
"On some days, I want to quit because I question myself, my work, everything. Other days, I pat myself for working in such environments instead of running abroad. What's more baffling is that these are people of science," she added.
When Kartika (name changed) graduated with a degree in electrical engineering from India's premier engineering college in 2018, she came out to a few of her close friends as a lesbian woman. She had just been placed at a core company in Pune, and was slowly growing comfortable with people knowing her sexual orientation.
But most of her friends had a single question for her – "Are you sure you really want to come out at work?" She thought she did, until she realised otherwise.
Four years since, Kartika has changed two jobs and prefers keeping the 'widest distance possible' between her personal and professional life – for she is "not ready to add everyday queerphobia to everyday misogyny". She does not add anyone from work on her social media, except for messaging them on WhatsApp – for she constantly fears that "someone from work will know".
Akash, 28, who works at a pharmaceutical company in Hyderabad, identifies themself as a gender-fluid person who is gay. But after working in the industry for more than three years, they said that they do not even know one person who is queer in the pharmaceutical industry.
"When you are online, you think everyone is living in super-inclusive world. A part of us wants to believe that – but it is far from reality for most of the pharma industry," they added, narrating how the film 'Badhaai Do' initiated the first-ever conversation on the queer community at his workplace.
They added that there was not only casual homophobia thrown around, but also a sly comment by a colleague about someone in their department being gay.
"This person is asking others how it would be if someone was hiding that they were gay in our department. I stood there frozen because I thought I was going to lose my job. I could not afford to lose a job. Till date, I do not know whether my colleagues were cracking a joke, or were pointing to me. I genuinely believe that I cannot be myself, and grow in the industry here when I am spending all my time watching my back," Akash said.
When Priyanjul Johari was hired as a Java Developer for the Noida posting of a Netherlands-headquartered MNC in 2018, he was "shocked" to find out that there was no Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policy for queer employees in India. The European counterparts, however, had them in place.
When he called out the person, he retaliated by calling Johari – "A third class person, from a third class family, and that is why you are gay."
While Johari now works for a company that sets standards for inclusivity, he says that STEM companies and organisations first have to recognise that their workplace is queer and transgender-exclusive, and then comes the inclusive hiring.
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Published: 03 Jun 2022,05:42 PM IST