About

Who we are

Founded as a nonprofit trust in January 2015, Gender at Work India uses an intersectional feminist approach to raise institutional standards by building architectures for diversity, equity, and inclusion within workspaces in India. We establish connections, provide leadership and mentorship support to professionals, individuals, and organisations.

Our DEI Focus includes

Caste

Gender

Sexuality

Mental Health

Race

Disability

Gender at Work India is a place of learning, experimentation, and expansion. It is a lab, a think-tank, a playground, a place to learn, teach, and create solutions for institutional concerns. We draw from multiple disciplines – social design, intersectionality, crip time – and principles to inform our thinking and working. Our support for systemic change covers four areas.

  • Our tailored courses, workshops, and storytelling sessions are designed to help those in management and leadership roles understand how they can drive change in their own organisations to advance diversity, equality and inclusion.

    Gender at Work India’s learning programmes enable individuals and organisations to understand the complex ideas of diversity, equity and inclusion by creating spaces to share experiences, tools, frameworks and strategies.

  • Our objective is to shine a light on the challenges of advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in the Indian context. Our policy briefs, case studies and reports showcase strategies for challenging and changing those institutional norms and practices that buttress inequality. In addition, we promote the value of diversity by connecting with researchers and practitioners, especially from historically marginalised groups, who work on issues of equality and inclusion.

  • We plan to bolster the current discourses on diversity, equality and inclusion within the country by fostering collaborative workspaces and relationships to enable collective action and impact.

  • We help organisations undertake organisational change processes so that they can bring latent inequalities to the surface and address them by transforming work practices, structures and policies that determine norms, routines and interactions among employees. Through process facilitation and consultations, we enhance organisational design to incorporate considerations of gender, caste, sexuality and disability into strategies, policies, programmes and operations.

Our Vision

Gender at Work India believes that the world, and India in particular, can only achieve its ambitious development goals by welcoming different perspectives and ensuring everyone can access the same opportunities to thrive and fulfil their potential. We value the role of institutions that impact the lives of people directly by moderating their choices, providing access to resources and opportunities, and fostering innovation. We understand that relationships between people, institutions, and organisations have to shift in order to alter dominant power structures that perpetuate structural inequities.

Gender at Work India aims to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion within Indian civil society, philanthropic and corporate sectors. Our mission is to provide resources (tools, frameworks, and learning programmes) that empower practitioners to create more diverse and inclusive organisations. We help organisations build leadership capabilities and develop change strategies for more equitable outcomes.

Our Board

Advisory

Akkai Padmashali
Bio

Anuja Agrawal
Bio

Vanita Nayak Mukherjee
Bio

Vivek Divan
Bio

Governance Board

Deepali Nath
Bio

Rajni Sharma
Bio

Sonica Aron
Bio

Sudarsana Kundu
Bio

Our Team

Jyotsna Siddharth
Country Director
Bio

Shambhavi Shukla
Strategist
Bio

Sameer Khan
Financial Adviser
Bio

Organisational Policies

  • The Code of Conduct policy affirms Gender at Work India’s belief in an inclusive and fair society. It clarifies the appropriate and acceptable standards of behaviour expected of all employees. Our work and operations are grounded in upholding human rights. As such, our employees are required to contribute to the goals of the organisation while observing the highest standards of integrity and fair dealing. Any (un)intentional unlawful and unethical organisational practices stand to undermine the reputation of Gender at Work India.
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  • Gender at Work India is committed to creating an environment that enables employees to work without fear of prejudice, gender bias and sexual harassment. The organisation believes that all employees have the right to be treated with dignity. Sexual harassment at the workplace or other than the workplace, if involving employees, is an offence. We strive to maintain an environment that promotes a healthy, safe, and diverse workforce. The organisation has a zero tolerance policy towards sexual harassment, if engaged in by clients, by suppliers, or any other business associates.

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  • Gender at Work India’s goal is to build cultures of inequality and justice across the world. The organisation takes the rights of minors and children very seriously. In order to protect children with disabilities, Gender at Work India uses the available human rights instruments and relevant legislations such as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).

    Gender at Work India recognises that child abuse may occur in all places regardless of culture, ethnicity, sex, caste, class or disability. We are committed to ensuring that in all its activities and those of its partners, the necessary steps are taken to protect the rights of children and children with disabilities, to safeguard their well-being.

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  • We approach all our work – with UN organisations and small grassroots groups, strategic advice and evaluations, baseline studies or audits, policy and organisational change interventions – with certain feminist principles. These principles guide the design and implementation of all of the work undertaken using the organisation’s name and reputation. We consider these principles to be an open, diverse, evolving ‘suite’ of possibilities rather than a monolithic, definitive or ‘authoritative’ system.

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Work Culture

Gender at Work India is a lateral hierarchical organisation. Decision-making in any intervention/implementation process is iterative, cyclic and collaborative. We draw upon multiple frameworks, aiming to bridge existing gaps between theory and practice, intention and action.

We prioritise

Heart, body, mind

Social Justice

Minority Rights

Critical Thinking

Crip Time

Cyclic Time

Mutual Accountability

Unconventional Methods

Transparency

Transformative Restorative Justice

Gender at Work India is a place of learning, experimentation, and expansion. It is a lab, think-tank, a playground, a place to learn, teach, and create solutions for institutional concerns. We draw from multiple disciplines – social design, intersectionality, crip time – and principles to inform our thinking and working.

Gender at Work India is registered as a nonprofit trust in New Delhi. We are a virtual workforce operating from different locations in India.