Racial Projects and Intersectionality: Insights from Elementary Educators

• In Event: 152 - Regular Session. Race, Class, and Gender 2

Abstract

Scholarship on gendered organizations and men in feminized occupations reveals that organizational culture, workplace policies, and interactions create gender inequality within the workplace. Interactions are particularly consequential, as they give “teeth” to the gendered assumptions people make in work activities. The extant literature, however, tends to rely on a racially homogenous view of experiences. In addition, there can be more attention to how people may purposefully do race, class, and gender within the workplace. Research on men in feminized occupations suggests that men may engage in purposeful gendered behavior, but taking an intersectional perspective may help further expose the nuances of this behavior, especially as it relates to race and social class.

To expand the literature, I argue that scholars should draw from race theory, and find the racial projects framework to be particularly useful, as there is attention to redefinition and resistance. Drawing from preliminary results of a study focusing on men in feminized occupations, I argue that workers draw from racial, “classed,” and gendered identities in their workplace activities, and do so with the intent to address inequality. In light of other intersectional work, the results suggest that future work should better integrate the insights of gender and race scholars. This contributes to the literature on gendered organizations and racial projects by expanding the focus to include intersections of race, class, and gender. In addition, this informs our understanding of “doing” identities in organizations by analyzing workers’ own motivations for drawing upon these characteristics.

Author

• Dana Stephanie Prewitt, Indiana University