The basics of the gender and sexuality spectrum are missing from not only corporates but also in the online and offline social spaces," asserts Pallavi Pareek, CEO and founder of Ungender. A legal advisory firm based in Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru, Ungender strives to make Indian workplaces safe for all genders. While conducting workshops on prevention of sexual harassment and gender sensitisation, they realised that people struggled to grasp concepts related to gender and use some without any understanding; common terms like patriarchy, gender roles and the wage gap, Pareek says, were ridden with incorrect and stereotyped notions.

To tackle this, the firm began putting together an English glossary of common, unknown, understood and misunderstood gender terms over eight months this year. Each term is summarised with a description, encapsulated in a graphic. These terms included the non-gendered pronoun Hir, "used by some transpeople to connote one's identity as both male and female" and the pink triangle that has been "a symbol for various LGBTQ identities." But then again, there was a dire need to go beyond English since Pareek points out that only 10 per cent of the Indian population speaks the language.