Isolation

This article documents the experiences of a group of working women who were amongst the first diagnosed with COVID-19 in their country. Through interviews at two points in time, personal diaries and WhatsApp conversations, we lay bare how feelings of shame, hate and guilt for being patient zeros intersect with the experience of intensified care work during the lockdown. Care during the confinement became a central feature of everyday life and often took a virtual turn, both among families and friends as well as in the distanced workplace. Yet meaningful caregiving from the organizations in times of economic uncertainty was mostly lacking and passed on to individual employees who felt a moral and gendered obligation to substitute for the corporate carelessness. The conflicts of care that emerged out of this situation came at the cost of self-care.We argue that, although the women in our study are mostly privileged, there is a surprising amount of suffering that took place. Finally, we question our own care ethics as researchers in further burdening those suffering in pandemic times to participate in this study.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Chronicles of conflicting care in confinement: Documenting the work experiences of seven ‘patient zeros’

Eck

Jammaers

2020

“…Relating to LGBTQ studies, autoethnography as a qualitative research method has been implemented around a few topics: workplace culture (Baker & Lucas, 2017), social activism (Young & Mckibban, 2014) and intersectional identities (Speciale et al., 2015), to name a few. I deem autoethnography a suitable method as it enables making potentially hidden experiences visible (Anteby, 2013), and strips down the continuous streams of formal academic writing by exposing the layered consciousness, thoughts, and feelings embedded into experiences (Boyle & Parry, 2007; O’Shea, 2020b).…”

Section: Methodological Foundationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A gay reflection on microaggressions, symbolic normativities, and pink hair

Soini

2022

This autoethnographic essay addresses microaggressions and normativity of gendered performances in relation to gay employees' and their sense of organizational belonging.In my puzzled account, through retrospective fragments, I explore my daily experiences in an organizational context as a homosexual person: the story includes reacting to intentional and unintentional microaggressions, navigating my sense of belonging, and finding my way through symbolic boundaries of gendered normativities. In particular, this paper sheds light on microaggressions as symbolic expressions of iterative gendered norms, which repeatedly lead to some employee experiences being cast as 'normal' and some as 'the other'. Methodologically, this paper furthers scholarly discussion on the use of autoethnography in understanding the daily struggles of lesbian, gay, bi, trans, and queer employees, whereas theoretically it elucidates the harmful effects of both microaggressions and iterative gendered norms on one's sense of belonging and the performance of the self, as well as discusses the difficulty of reacting to discursive violence.

“…They remember reading articles written by academics about isolation (Gao & Sai, 2020; O’Shea, 2020) and felt connected with them. The loss of face‐to‐face interaction and the difficulty of being forced into solitude.…”

Section: A Day At Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Queering the pandemic at work, a fictocritical tale

Lescoat

2022

This short paper blurs fiction and theoretical analysis to describe how a non‐binary subject experiences the pandemic. The story focuses on one day and three moments: before work, during work, and after work. The tale illustrates how living at the margins of heteronormativity enacts new forms of subjectivities. It also contributes to the writing differently movement by mixing fiction, theoretical insights, and other forms of writing. This is what I call a fictocritical text, mixing genres and genders to encourage critical thinking.