UBC Sociology Professor Jennifer Berdahl and Assistant Professor at the Ivey Business School at Western University Barnini Bhattacharyya examined the experience of and response to invisibility at work for women of color.
Described as a “landmark study” by the Ivey Business School at Western University, the study finds invisibility is a salient and recurring experience for women of color working in traditionally white and male environments. Through inductive interviews of a diverse sample of 65 women of color in the US and Canada, the authors identify both distinct forms of invisibility and response pathways adopted.
Prof Berdahl (left) and Prof Bhattacharyya (right)
Four main forms of invisibility were identified, namely erasure (the feeling of being unheard or unseen); homogenization (being treated like an interchangeable member of an unreliable out group); exoticization (unique race and gender based sexualization reducing women of color to foreign objects of fascination and fetishization); and whitening (a highlighting of similarities to white people while non white identities are discounted or ignored). Three main forms of response to these modes of invisibility were identified, namely withdrawal, approach, and pragmatism.
Berdahl’s and Bhattacharyya’s work emphasizes the need for more sophisticated practices around Equity, Diversity and Inclusion to be developed and applied in workplaces as a means to address these forms of discrimination. The article has attracted media attention, prompting pieces both in the Globe and Mail and in science news website Phys.org.
