Depicting Inequality: A Scoping Review of Material Metaphors Describing Racialized and Gendered Career Differences

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 9:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Reviews of Literature and Scholarship

Abstract

Gendered, racialized, and intersection discrimination in career and professional settings has been described by a host of metaphors (e.g., glass ceiling, glass cliff, concrete ceiling, frozen middle), which we term material metaphors because they tend to employ vocabulary of structural, tangible materials that are impassable or impenetrable for the minoritized group that encounters it. Educational leadership lacks a comprehensive review of literature that examines the treatment, conceptualization, and study of material metaphors and the organizational remedies to discriminatory systems. This scoping review presents the method for selection and analysis of 922 relevant abstracts, as well as several findings related to the frequency, distribution, and foci of studies that include material metaphors over the last 20 years.

Authors

• Lauren P. Bailes, University of Delaware

• Yubin Jang, University of Delaware