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ABSTRACT
Almost 50 years ago, Edward Said wrote on ‘the other’ in relation to race and gender in his path-breaking book Orientalism (1978). While much has evolved around notions of gendered and racialised otherness since then, Said’s conceptualisation still resonates today. Our paper reports on a 2020/2021 survey of Women of Colour in the Australian workplace. The survey was conducted during the pandemic by Women of Colour Australia, a not-for-profit group, working with the lead author. We focus on the qualitative answers from participants, many of which detail sometimes painful and extremely personal workplace experiences. More than 500 Women of Colour, including seven per cent who were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, completed the survey. Sixty per cent said they had experienced discrimination in the workplace, despite 59 per cent of participants saying their workplace had a Diversity and Inclusion policy. Participants had to ‘perform’ their identities whilst being subjected to intersectional issues of racism and sexism, some of which the pandemic exacerbated. Our paper describes the harmful ramifications of gendered othering of Women of Colour for Australian organisations and society in the years of the pandemic.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Catherine Archer
Catherine Archer is a researcher and senior lecturer specialising in strategic communication at Edith Cowan University. Catherine’s current research interests include social media, particularly related to families, health, influencers, and ethics. Catherine has published in academic journals and presented at many international conferences. Prior to working as an academic, Catherine had more than 15 years in industry, working in health services marketing management, public relations, communications, and consulting. Catherine first met and collaborated with Brenda Gaddi 10 years ago, during Catherine’s PhD research on parents as social media influencers.
Marianne Sison
Marianne D. Sison is an Honorary University Fellow at RMIT University, Melbourne. A well-published scholar, her research focuses on cultural diversity and inclusive communication, ethics and social responsibility in public relations, and intercultural communication with a focus on Southeast Asia. As founder of the Asia Pacific Public Relations Research and Education Network (APPRREN), she is committed to cross-cultural communication research.
Brenda Gaddi
Brenda Gaddi (she/her), the Founder of Women of Colour Australia, is a Filipina settler living, working, and playing on sovereign land of the Wallumattagal clan of the Darug nation. Brenda is an entrepreneur with a deep curiosity for discovering new opportunities that will take her out of her comfort zone. She was part of the inaugural LinkedIn ‘Changemakers’ Program. Changemakers is a campaign shining a spotlight on individuals using LinkedIn to drive genuine change in the world of work. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Public Relations and is completing her Master of Public and Social Policy at Macquarie University.
Lauren O’Mahony
Lauren O’Mahony is a senior lecturer in Communications at Murdoch University, Western Australia. Much of her research focusses on Australian women’s literature as well as the analysis of popular television, creativity, media audiences, and creative non-fiction. Her research has been published in The Journal of Postcolonial Writing, The Australasian Journal of Popular Culture, The Journal of Popular Romance Studies, Communication Research and Practice, and Text Journal as well as the edited books Theorizing Ethnicity in the Chick-Lit Genre (2019), The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Romance Fiction (2021) and Interrogating Boundaries of the Nonhuman (2022).