Constrained Choice Narratives: Veterinarians Justifying the Lack of Racial/Ethnic and Gender Diversity in Their Profession

• In Event: Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 3: Racial and Gender Dynamics at Work

Abstract

Veterinary medicine is an overwhelmingly White- and women-dominated profession. In my interview study with 44 practicing veterinarians and veterinary medical students, I examine how professional members make sense of the lack of diversity in their ranks and analyze how their assessments of the situation shape their actions. They shared the same set of interrelated explanations, which I call constrained choice narratives. The narratives convey a new claim that White women are better positioned to develop an enduring passion for veterinary work. The underlying assumption of these narratives is not only that White people are more likely to have the wealth to acquire advanced educational credentials and to be able to pursue job positions regardless of potential returns on educational investments; there is also the assumption that upper-middle and upper class White communities socialize their children—especially their girls—to acquire certain traits, informal skills, and social knowledge that are needed to excel in the most popular career track for veterinarians: companion animal practice. White interviewees largely relied on constrained choice narratives to argue that they have limited power to improve a diversity problem that is rooted in social forces outside of the profession. Constrained choice narratives aid dominant members of the profession in prioritizing their own concerns about how poor working conditions in the field are impacting them now over others’ concerns about the lack of racial/ethnic diversity, resulting in the marginalization and exclusion of people of color. While there are respondents of color who said they found some merit in constrained choice narratives, they were also inclined to point out additional racialized barriers originating from within the profession that White members tend to conceal, ignore, or justify.

Author

• Adilia E.E. James, Endicott College