June is Pride Month, when the world celebrates the LGBTQIA+ community and their ongoing fight for equality. Every year during Pride Month, corporate social media accounts around the world join the movement by changing their logos to rainbow colours and running diverse campaigns to celebrate inclusion.
Many brands position themselves as allies of the LGBTQIA+ community by featuring queer couples and uploading inclusion statements on their websites. On the surface, these gestures seem to indicate a step towards equality and acceptance.
However, the question arises: whether these companies and brands genuinely support the queer rights movement or are using it as part of their market strategy.
This phenomenon is commonly referred to as pinkwashing, that is, portraying a company, institution, or organisation as queer-friendly, primarily to enhance its public image and attract consumers.
But often they fail to address the structural inequalities regarding queer individuals. In a state like Assam, where queer youth continue to face social stigma, employment discrimination and even family rejection, this gap between promises and lived realities is very significant.
In recent years, queer visibility has grown, and the relationship between capitalism and queer identity politics has intensified. Businesses have realised that it can be profitable to show support for queer people and be inclusive towards them.
They convert this into an opportunity to appeal to the younger generations and socially conscious consumers as well.
For this, they update their branding strategies with rainbow-coloured products, pride-themed advertisements, and diversity campaigns to gain visibility. But visibility doesn’t always mean meaningful inclusion and transformation.
In Assam, the employability of queer youth remains a major challenge. India is stepping forward in the legal sector with the decriminalisation of homosexuality through the historic 2018 verdict that struck down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code.
However, social attitudes have been slower to accept this verdict and the queer community as a whole. Discrimination against queer individuals in educational institutions, workplaces, social gatherings and even within their own families continues.
This affects their access to quality education, professional opportunities and stable employment. With COVID and, after that, the economic and employment stagnation with the ongoing war-like situation in the world, marginalised communities like the queer are affected disproportionately by these challenges.
Many queer youth who are already struggling against social exclusion now find themselves in a more precarious situation regarding employment.
They have few survival options: gig work, temporary contract-based work, freelancing, and other low-paid jobs.
The organisations with pride-themed recruitment campaigns and statements about workplace equality create the impression that queer employees will be welcomed and protected.
But in reality, many queer people face discrimination as organisations cannot keep their promise to provide inclusivity and diversity, and everything remains superficial.
A company may display a rainbow flag during Pride Month, but this doesn’t reflect its ability or even its goodwill to implement queer-friendly policies to ensure workplace equality.
Queer employees may still face harassment from colleagues, insensitive remarks from managers or seniors, or discrimination during the hiring and promotion process.
Lack of gender-neutral, queer-friendly washrooms, comprehensive anti-discrimination policies and healthcare benefits that recognise diverse gender identities can be commonly seen at many workplaces and even places that portray themselves as inclusive.
In this regard, transgender and non-binary individuals face more difficulties. In fact, recruitment processes are often tied to binary gender categories that create barriers from the very beginning.
Queer individuals often miss the opportunity because of a mismatch in the documents, invasive questioning and prejudice regarding appearance and remain with the same unstable work. In this scenario, a company website’s rainbow logo can’t help improve the day-to-day realities.
Pinkwashing is problematic not only because companies want to make a profit out of it. Businesses market themselves to build brand loyalty. But questions arise when the support for queer community becomes symbolic rather than substantive. A false sense of progress only creates visibility, not accountability.
A company’s public messaging can mislead consumers and job seekers about its inclusivity, but behind closed doors, discrimination still persists. Phenomena like pinkwashing can divert attention from broader structural issues.
The corporate world focuses more on celebrating diversity for its own benefit and avoids real problems such as economic vulnerability, workplace exploitation, and labour rights violations. Representation in advertisements is necessary, but what is more important is to be open to genuine inclusion.
The ideas of sexuality and gender identity still remain stigmatised in Assam. It needs systematic and conversational interventions.
In workplaces, to foster a just environment for queer people, recruiters and companies should implement clear anti-discrimination measures, provide sensitivity training for employees, establish safe reporting channels for harassment, and ensure equality in recruitment and promotion.
There should be measurable and transparent diversity policies rather than symbolic statements for publicity.
But in this discussion, the response from queer youth themselves is also an important aspect. Nowadays, queer communities are creating support networks, advocacy groups, and solidarity spaces to uplift the queer community. They also address issues such as employment and job market challenges the community faces.
Queer individuals, to navigate hostile work environments, are provided with mentorship, skill training, legal awareness and most importantly, emotional support. Queer workers often experience isolation in the workplace, and the support communities help them to get over loneliness.
They can share their experiences in these community spaces and raise collective demands for more than token gestures of accountability.
Queer collectives use social media and other networks to reveal workplace discrimination. Hence, it has become difficult for companies to rely solely on rainbow-logo branding without meaningful action.
Today, queer youth are demanding respect and dignity, not just acceptance. They want to work in a space where their identities do not become a tea-table conversation.
They want their rights to be recognised, infrastructure that reflects their needs and organisational culture that values diversity as a principle, not as a marketing tool.
They want to be equally included, not merely represented, because inclusive policies provide security and opportunities to flourish.
As Assam continues to focus on social justice, employment, and youth development, it is important to pay close attention to the experiences of queer youth and the community as a whole.
The issue is not centred on whether companies and organisations should support LGBTQIA+ rights; of course, they should, but on whether their support is limited to seasonal campaigns or whether they actually care about real solidarity and advocacy for the community.
To truly be allies, companies should listen to their queer employees and take strong measures to ensure workplace equality, creating a respectful environment where diversity is genuinely accepted. Until then, all the promises to be an ally and help will just be words.
Queer community, in India and in Assam particularly, is not dealing with the challenge of visibility, but they are struggling to secure meaningful opportunities, a safe workspace and most importantly, equal rights.
Their future will depend on whether workplaces remain committed to equality throughout the year or continue to use the rainbow colour as a marketing gimmick only during Pride Month.
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Views expressed are personal. The author works as a Research Associate at North Eastern Social Research Centre, Guwahati. She is also the Co-founder of The Bridge: Editors and Translators.
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