University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

A seat at the table: navigating identity, power, and safety in work meetings

(USC Thesis Other)

A seat at the table: navigating identity, power, and safety in work meetings

PDF

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content

A SEAT AT THE TABLE:
NAVIGATING IDENTITY, POWER, AND SAFETY IN WORK MEETINGS

by

Sierra Bray

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(COMMUNICATION)

August 2022

Copyright 2022 Sierra Bray

ii

To my parents, Chris and Anya.
Your love, support, and friendship have helped me to achieve my wildest dreams. I love you.

iii
Acknowledgments
I could not have a more brilliant, creative, dedicated, and kind group of people in my corner
during all of grad school—and especially during the dissertation stage.
To Patti Riley, my wonderful advisor: the compassion and care you show to all your students
and advisees is inspiring—it was such a pleasure to be your teaching assistant for three years. I'm so
thankful that we share the same passion for forwarding gender equity in workplaces—you make
organizations (of all kinds!) better places because of who you are and what you care about. I hope
we’ll continue to text during Dodgers games for years to come.
To Andrea Hollingshead: you simultaneously push me to be a better scholar and you help me
to believe in myself. There are few people who strike the balance of kindness and talent like you do.
I will never forget how the seeds of this dissertation were planted in your class, nor will I forget your
confidence that my passion for work meetings could lead to an important dissertation topic. I strive
to be like you in so many ways—you are a role model to me.
To Henry Jenkins: your pedagogy has inspired me since the first day I stepped into your
classroom. I love that you are an academic superstar, a dedicated mentor to your students, and a
person who loves his family so much. I am immensely grateful for the ways that our values align—
you make me feel like there’s a place for me in academia.
To Safiya Noble: you are changing the world and I am honored to be a witness of it. I am
constantly in awe of you. Thank you for making me feel like a priority when people all around the
world are seeking your time and your brilliance. With you as an inspiration, I will continue to
dedicate my research to listening to perspectives and improving the wellbeing of people who face
intersectional forces of oppression.
To my dear peers at USC: you have shaped me into a better scholar, teacher, activist, and
friend. Your friendships have sustained me, encouraged me, and given me the space to be playful

iv
and have fun (the only way to survive grad school, in my eyes!). Thank you for forming such a bright
and welcoming environment over the last five years. I can’t wait to see the impact you all make in
the decades to come.
To my friends and family: I can’t believe my luck to have the support and love from all of
you in my life. Thank you for the hugs, calls, texts, memes, music, laughs, meals, letters, walks, and
conversations: these little moments gave me energy and optimism even on tough days.
To my students at USC: I will always remember you as my first students in my academic
career—and what a wonderful way to kick things off. You solidified my dream of wanting to be a
professor because you remind me what a privilege it is to be around young, innovative, and caring
minds like yours for a living. You give me hope for the future.
To my parents: from the early days of the three of us camping down the whole Baja
peninsula, to the decades of you supporting my education up in Oregon, to the wonderful memories
that Peter and I have shared with you in California in recent years—you two have always been core
to my happiness. Your dedication to God, to social justice, to each other, to Peter, and to me brings
tears to my eyes. You are such thoroughly wonderful people, and I am so blessed to have you as my
parents and my best friends. I love you!
To Peter: from high school to grad school, I have loved you more and more each day. You
are such a pure person and an inspiration to everyone around you—I feel especially lucky that you’re
mine. I can’t imagine how I would have gotten through this Ph.D. journey without you. Thank you
for your generosity in supporting me during my dissertation by acting as a chef, a therapist, a
comedian, a masseuse, a barista, a dishwasher, a florist, a puppeteer, a librarian, and more—all while
writing your own dissertation! After more than a decade together, every day with you is still joyful
and exciting, and I can’t wait to see what our future holds. I will forever look upon these last five
years in grad school with you as one of the greatest blessings in my life. I love you, PK.

v
Table of Contents
Dedication ..................................................................................................................................................... ii
Acknowledgments ....................................................................................................................................... iii
List of Tables .............................................................................................................................................. vii
List of Figures ............................................................................................................................................ viii
Abstract ........................................................................................................................................................ ix
Chapter 1: Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 1
Chapter 2: Literature Review ..................................................................................................................... 14
Chapter 3: Methodology ............................................................................................................................ 58
Chapter 4: Intersectional Ambiguity and Sensemaking of Emotions and Behaviors in Work
Meetings ...................................................................................................................................................... 72
Chapter 5: Group Diversity and Impacts on Behavior and Belonging.................................................. 92
Chapter 6: Virtual Meetings, Technology Affordances, and Occupational/Personal Identity ..........115
Chapter 7: Discussion ..............................................................................................................................137
References .................................................................................................................................................159
Appendix A: Online Artifacts About Work Meetings ..........................................................................173
Appendix B: Questions in Pre-Interview Questionnaire ......................................................................176
Appendix C: Interview Guide .................................................................................................................177
Appendix D: Participant Summary .........................................................................................................179

vi
Appendix E: Analysis Summary ..............................................................................................................181

vii
List of Tables
Table 1 Hofstede’s Conceptualization of Traits Within Masculine and Feminine Cultures ................ 29
Table 2 Participant Summary Qualitative Data .....................................................................................179
Table 3 Participant Summary Quantitative Data ...................................................................................179
Table 4 Analysis Summary Table ............................................................................................................181

viii
List of Figures
Figure 1 Social Media Post About Anxiety Around Work Meetings ....................................................... 2
Figure 2 Social Media Post About Sentimental Moments in Online Work Meetings ............................ 2
Figure 3 An Instagram comic about a cat facing anxiety before going into a meeting. .....................173
Figure 4 An Instagram post about taking a nap while pretending to be in a Zoom meeting. ...........173
Figure 5 A Twitter post encouraging shortening meetings. ..................................................................174
Figure 6 A Twitter post about requesting the purpose of a meeting. ..................................................174
Figure 7 A Twitter post about appreciating details in a calendar invite. ..............................................174

ix
Abstract
This study explores how communication within work meetings and about work meetings (both in-
person and online) may create and reify forces that impact the inclusion, self-efficacy (Bandura,
1977), and psychological safety (Edmondson, 1999) of minoritized employees. Specifically, this
study analyzes how these phenomena may further impact employees facing intersectional sources of
oppression relating to race, sexual identity, age, and/or ability. To explore these themes, I
incorporate theories and scholarly perspectives such as intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991), role
congruity theory (Eagly and Karau, 2002), group diversity dynamics (Mannix and Neale, 2005; Lau
and Murnighan, 1998), and Intersectional Critical Race Technology Studies (Noble and Tynes,
2015). Through in-depth interviews with women and nonbinary employees (N = 30) in high-tech
companies in the United States (an industry which has been widely discussed as espousing values of
heteropatriarchy and white supremacy), this study aims to contribute to organizational
communication scholarship, improve workplace cultures, and attempt to dismantle inequitable
forces in the everyday group dynamic of work meetings.
Keywords. work meetings, intersectionality, technology, power, psychological safety, inclusion

1
Chapter 1: Introduction
Before I started my Ph.D. program in 2017, I spent my early career in strategic
communication and consulting. In this time, I was struck by the power that work meetings had on
my emotions and my confidence at work: I could feel elation, panic, embarrassment, or pride—all
from spending a half hour in a conference room talking about job-related issues. Especially once I
decided to spend countless hours writing my dissertation on the topic, I started noticing (with what
seemed like an astonishing frequency) people complaining about, looking forward to, or being
anxious about work meetings. I heard this chatter from my friends, my family, my colleagues, in
movies, on television, and especially on social media.
Although I wouldn’t deliberately search for memes and tweets about work meetings, they
appeared so often while I scrolled online that I started creating folders and sets of bookmarks on
social media platforms to capture all of this meeting media (see Appendix A for some examples). In
one tweet in this collection (see Figure 1), Twitter user @fuqingaverage wrote, “had such a tough
day at work today” and shared a screenshot of their (presumably fictional) digital calendar. From 8
a.m. until 3 p.m., their schedule is blocked off in order to “stress about meeting”— the meeting is
then scheduled for 15 minutes, and then the rest of the day is blocked off to “relax after meeting.”
While this tweet exhibits a humorous tone, it demonstrates how much space that meetings can take
up in an employee’s psyche (and as of June 2022, the tweet had more than 155,000 “likes” on
Twitter, indicating that many people could sympathize with this feeling). For an example that
describes a more positive attitude toward work meetings—specifically, toward facets unique to online
meetings—another tweet by user @dmlittman, shown in Figure 2, notes, “One of the tenderest
things I have witnessed in Zoomworld is someone offscreen bringing coffee/tea/food to the grid-
person they care about – the little moment where gridperson smiles at their offscreen human is pure
joy to bear witness to.” In these two tweets alone, we can see how online conversations about work

2
meetings can be sentimental or sardonic, and can express the joys and anxieties that accompany
these everyday events in workplaces.
Figure 1
Social Media Post About Anxiety Around Work Meetings

Note. This image depicts a humorous tweet from user @fuqingaverage from
February 2022 that depicts the anxiety they feel hours before a short meeting and
their decompression after the meeting.

Figure 2
Social Media Post About Sentimental Moments in Online Work Meetings

3

Note. This image depicts a tweet from user @dmlittman in January 2022 about their
observations of kindness in offline spaces depicted in online meetings.

Though work meetings are a common phenomenon (as demonstrated in this social media
discourse), it is useful to recount the following definition: work meetings are planned
communicative gatherings of two or more employees intended to promote interaction related to the
work or the group (Schwartzman, 1986; Allen, Tong, and Landowski, 2020). The number of
meetings that are estimated to take place in the United States per day is somewhere around 36 to 56
million (Keith, 2015). But despite their prevalence, Scott, Shanock, and Rogelberg, (2012) assert that,
“Regrettably, the time and energy employees spend in work meetings is not matched by the amount
of direct attention group and organizational scholars have paid to meeting phenomena” (p. 128).
However, a handful of studies do shed light on the routine phenomenon of work meetings.
Kauffeld and Lehmann-Willenbrock (2012) analyzed longitudinal data that indicated team meeting
processes can influence outcomes in groups and organizations: participants associated functional
communication with perceptions of better meetings, and better meetings were shown to correspond
with higher team productivity. On the other hand, the study associated dysfunctional
communication patterns (like complaining or criticizing meeting members) with negative
productivity and satisfaction. Related to functional or dysfunctional communication in meetings,

4
O’Neill and Allen (2012) propose that group members who typically value team meetings tend to
report stronger team potency—thus, for managers who want to focus on this outcome, the authors
recommend paying attention to group members who may exhibit negative attitudes toward meetings
and making interventions to try to help improve meeting morale.
In research relevant to this current study on experiences in work meetings and impacts on
employee wellbeing, Allen, Lehmann-Willenbrock, and Jones (2015) found that disruptive behavior
in meetings such as late arrival, complaining, and irrelevant discussion negatively related to employee
voice and coworker trust. However, I see an opportunity to expand upon these findings as the study
methodology was limited to a survey—whereas this current dissertation can investigate experiences
more deeply via a qualitative interview methodology (to be discussed in Chapter 3). In a generative
qualitative example, Beck and Keyton (2009) utilized retrospective interviews to analyze how
meeting participants perceived their own messages and the messages of others in the group. The
authors found similarities and differences in group members’ perceptions of what happened in the
same meeting—thus, they posit that “understanding how group members perceive and interpret
each others’ messages is important to advance our knowledge of group process and interaction” (p.
244).
Some studies have demonstrated that when managers create a culture that fosters
meaningfulness, psychological safety, and availability in work meetings, it can also lead to stronger
employee engagement (Allen and Rogelburg, 2013). Studying work meetings unleashes the
possibility to analyze interaction across people of varying demographics and how behavior and
performance in work meetings could influence perceptions of group members and related power
dynamics. Thus, work meetings pose as a promising context to study how identity-based diversity in
groups can influence power dynamics.

5
One trailblazer who conducted seminal research on gender, power, and organizations—and
who at times addresses work meetings—is Rosabeth Moss Kanter. Kanter (1977a) notes how
meetings are part of “clearly established patterns and rituals for working in an organization,” (p. 90),
and from her own observations in corporate meetings, recounts how men in leadership positions
would question the suitability of women for managerial roles—raising issues about “turnover,
absenteeism, and ambition” (p. 91). Another one of Kanter’s pivotal pieces on tokenism in
workplaces (1977b) discussed how women felt “over-observed” in work meetings because their
gender made them stand out in the crowd of men. Kanter writes,
Automatic notice meant that women could not remain anonymous or hide in
the crowd; all their actions were public. Their mistakes and their relationships
were known as readily as any other information. It was impossible for them to
have any privacy within the company. The women were always viewed by an
audience, leading several to complain of "over- observation” (p. 972–973).
To contend with this feeling of being too visible, Kanter witnessed women taking one of two
approaches. In the first approach, women overachieved at work and promoted their
accomplishments as often as possible. As we might expect in light of gender role expectations (e.g.,
Eagly and Karau, 2002), these women were criticized for being too aspirational. In the second
approach, women tried to become “socially invisible” to more easily blend into organizational
cultures dominated by men. Specific tactics included dressing more masculinely, avoiding public
events, working from home, and notably for this current study: staying silent in meetings or avoiding
meetings altogether. Thus, early scholarship on identity (in this case, gender), power, and meetings
provide strong justification that there is much to be studied in this context—however, the quantity
of explicit research on meetings and power seems to have dropped off since these early works.

6
Though the topic of work meetings and their explicit relationship to aspects like identity and
power dynamics may be hastily acknowledged in certain studies on diversity in groups (with a few
exceptions that are more robust, such as historical works by Kanter), I find it important to show why
the setting of work meetings matter when discussing power dynamics stemming from diversity.
Scott, Allen, Rogelberg, and Kello (2015) propose a set of metaphors that depict how contemporary
scholarship conceptualizes meetings: these metaphors hold assumptions about the role meetings
play in organizational life and how they constitute organizations themselves. The authors list the five
metaphors as stressors, collaboration technology, sensemaking, interventions, and most importantly in my view
for the interests of power dynamics, as cultural rituals.
For a brief summary of each of the five metaphors, the stressors metaphor proposes that
meetings “punctuate an imbalance of situational demands and the individual and collective resources
needed to manage them” (p. 22). The collaboration technology metaphor views meetings as a tool for
coordinating and organizing group activity. The sensemaking metaphor conceptualizes meetings as
group interactions in which members “construct and reconstruct their environments, interpret them,
and develop collective, coordinated responses” (p. 22). The interventions metaphor sees meetings as
strategic interactions designed for members to learn and make improvements. Lastly, I see the
cultural ritual metaphor as most useful for my goals of understanding how work meetings occur in
relation to the personal and occupational identities of minoritized employees. Within the cultural
ritual metaphor, meetings are viewed as an interaction that constitutes and reconstitutes
organizational values and analyzes how meeting phenomena “not only reflect group and
organizational values but also shape and reinforce them” (p. 22). Additionally, this metaphor
emphasizes how meetings can persistently socialize group members (Scott and Myers, 2010)—and
importantly for studying diversity impacts on power dynamics, work meetings ultimately have the
capability to “indoctrinate and reinforce… power differentials” (Scott et al., 2015, p. 32).

7
One of the key takeaways from previous scholarship for this study is that work meetings
influence a broader organizational climate and help shape its employees’ understanding of their place
in the organization. Scott et al. (2015) provide the example that when new employees join a
recurring meeting team or when other members are promoted or transferred, that “meetings provide
forums for people to demonstrate, learn about, and even receive subtle feedback on role
enactments” (p. 32). This concept also relates to Baran, Shanock, Rogelberg, and Scott’s (2012)
description of the relationships between meeting facilitators and participants, saying, “we can
account for the manner in which meeting messages—intentionally or unintentionally, via both
content and relationship dimensions—reflect, constitute, and reify leader–member exchanges” (p.
347). Specifically, the authors posit meeting messages (whether intentional or not) have an influence
on relationships between supervisors and employees. As a practical recommendation from their
study, Baran et al. (2012) encourage managers to pay attention to meeting processes, fair
interpersonal treatment of meeting participants, and explanations about decisions and procedures.
Thus, the sparse research that exists on employee wellbeing and power in meetings suggests that
meetings may hold great influence on the experiences and emotions of employees.
In addition to studying the impact and dynamics of in-person meetings, the topic of online
work meetings can shed light on how gender and racial diversity in groups can influence power
dynamics. Slack, a popular tech communication company, estimated that 16 million knowledge
workers in the United States began to work remotely as of March 2020 due to COVID-19, and
video conferencing company Zoom reported a staggering 300 million daily participants in calls
worldwide in April 2020. Researchers such as Amy Bonomi suggest that unconscious biases can
flourish in virtual meetings, as they can “intersect with language, symbolism and nonverbal cues that
reinforce normative social identities with respect to gender, race, sexual preference and
socioeconomic status” (quoted in Brooks, 2020, para. 3).

8
Additionally, meetings held online may exacerbate a common difficulty for systemically
marginalized members such as women to have their voices heard in groups: managers who may
typically strive for gender equity when facilitating discussion now lack their usual mechanisms such
as nonverbal cues to help amplify diverse voices (Gupta, 2020). These concerns also relate to core
arguments from computer-mediated communication (CMC) scholarship, which outlines how
impressions over CMC can develop beyond the senders’ control—observers may pay closer
attention to context cues and language outside of the sender’s intentions (Baym, 1995; Walther,
1992). As a result, the technological mechanisms that underpin online work meetings beg further
exploration due to the potential for power dynamics such as biased attitudes and discrimination of
minoritized employees to be exacerbated in online contexts. However, further analysis may also find
that online contexts could have benefits for these types of employees as well, such as having
minority opinions considered more seriously in online channels (Swaab, Phillips, and Schaerer,
2016). Thus, this dissertation will look at scenarios involving both online and in-person meetings.
Addressing Research Gaps
With this background on meetings in mind, a major outlying question emerges as to whether
work meetings can magnify bias and marginalization in the workplace. This dissertation seeks to
address this question by considering how oppressive forces such as stereotyping, intersectionality,
and uneven expectations around emotions can impact views of organizational culture and
perceptions of its employees in the everyday environment of work meetings. Ultimately, I analyze
the lived experiences and narratives of minoritized employees, and possibilities for improving equity
and inclusion in work cultures through the environment of in-person and virtual work meetings.
Throughout this dissertation, when I use terms such as minoritized, systemically minoritized, or
marginalized when referring to the subset of workers I am interested in studying, I employ Selvarajah,
Deivanayagam, and Lasco’s (2020) definition of this position: “individuals and populations,

9
including numerical majorities, whose collective cultural, economic, political and social power has
been eroded through the targeting of identity in active processes that sustain structures of
hegemony” (p. 3). Although gender is not explicitly mentioned in this definition, I am also including
workers who are minoritized along gendered lines as well, such as women and non-binary people.
To explore these themes, I take an interdisciplinary approach that merges scholarship from
organizational communication, feminist theory, critical race theory, and science and technology
studies to analyze how the seemingly quotidian phenomenon of work meetings may create and reify
oppressive forces upon minoritized group members such as women and people of color.
Conceptualizing Work Meeting Communication and Employee Wellbeing
In this dissertation, I will pinpoint a familiar, yet previously undefined concept: work meeting
communication. I designate this term to represent (1) verbal and nonverbal communication within the
ritual (Scott, Allen, Rogelberg, and Kello, 2015) and process of work meetings, and (2) verbal and
nonverbal communication on the topic of work meetings. The first sub-concept, communication within
meetings, is likely the heuristic that comes to mind for most people who conceptualize work
meeting communication.
The second sub-concept, communication on the topic of work meetings, is less explored.
Research that exists suggests that this communication that surrounds work meetings may have
important implications on key organizational dynamics. For example, Allen, Lehmann-Willenbrock,
and Landowski (2014) present data suggesting that pre-meeting communication (which includes
constructs such as meeting preparatory talk) could influence meeting experiences and perceptions of
meeting effectiveness. While understanding the influence of communication about work meetings on items
like productivity and effectiveness is helpful for an overall understanding of this equation, I am more
committed to taking a critical lens and understanding how this type of communication can impact s
the wellbeing of employees.

10
To define wellbeing more precisely, I am interested in looking at factors like psychological
safety (Edmondson, 1999), inclusion, and self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977) of employees. In a work
context, Edmondson (1999) defines psychological safety as the confidence that an employee will not be
penalized, rejected, or humiliated by their coworkers or managers for speaking up with ideas, asking
questions, expressing concerns, or making mistakes. Relating the concept of psychological safety to
the experiences of minoritized people in work settings, Singh, Winkel, and Selvarajan (2013)
demonstrated via a survey of employees and colleagues that psychological safety mediated the
relationship between diversity climate and employee performance. The authors posit that
psychological safety is a key driver of employee performance behaviors in racially diverse work
settings. The authors also found that this relationship was stronger for racial minorities than for
white employees. Kirk-Brown and Van Dijk (2016) provided data suggesting that to foster inclusive
organizational environments for chronically ill employees (which are noted as a vulnerable group), it
is crucial to foster workplace climates that embody feelings of psychological safety, interpersonal
trust, and mutual respect. Relevant to the current study looking primarily at women and nonbinary
employees in the heavily male-dominated cultures in tech, Halliday, Paustian-Underdahl, Stride, and
Zhang (2022) found that perceptions of supervisor support were key to retaining women employees
in male-dominated occupations via the mechanism of psychological safety—and this finding was
especially strong for women in countries with lower rankings of gender equality. Thus, from these
studies, we can start to understand the importance of psychological safety for minoritized
employees, including those who embody underrepresented racial/ethnic identities, women, and
chronically ill employees.
Additionally in this study, I define inclusion as (a) the act of valuing, respecting, and
supporting others, (b) understanding the needs of every individual, and (c) “ensuring the right
conditions are in place for each person to achieve their full potential” (U.S. Department of Housing

11
and Urban Development, n.d., pp. 2). Lastly, I use Bandura’s (1977) conceptualization of self-efficacy
as an employee’s perceptions of their abilities to achieve their goals and overcome challenges.
Thus, this dissertation will focus on three guiding research questions:
RQ1: What common factors in work meeting communication hinder or
foster the wellbeing (i.e., inclusion, psychological safety, and self-efficacy) of
minoritized employees?
RQ2: Does the composition of a work team across identities and
demographics influence the wellbeing (i.e., inclusion, psychological safety,
and self-efficacy) of minoritized employees in work meetings?
RQ3: How do virtual meetings impact the wellbeing (i.e., inclusion,
psychological safety, and self-efficacy) of systemically minoritized employees
compared to in-person meetings?
The rest of my dissertation will embody the following structure: Chapter 2 encompasses a
review of interdisciplinary literature and is broken up into three parts. The first part of the literature
review addresses masculine cultures, gender, and the tech industry, which contextualizes the
experiences of my participants who are women and nonbinary people in tech companies. The
second part of Chapter 2 draws from critical race theory, feminist theory, and science and
technology studies to shed light on how people facing intersecting forces of oppression (Crenshaw,
1989) can struggle and thrive in online and offline spheres, ultimately setting the stage to later
discuss online meeting cultures. In the third and final part of Chapter 2, I review literature pertaining
to group diversity and composition of identities, and how these factors can influence stereotyping
and power dynamics.
Chapter 3 outlines my methodology. Drawing from a total of 30 interviews with women and
nonbinary people who work in tech companies, I discuss aspects such as my justification for

12
selection criteria for research participants, my recruitment process (and a reflection on how the
recruitment process reflects and perhaps promulgates barriers to hearing perspectives from people
with certain identities, such as Latine workers in tech companies). I also discuss my interview
procedures, including my design of a pre-interview questionnaire that encouraged participants to
describe their identities in their own words—instead of radio buttons via a pre-determined,
categorical question. Additionally, I overview my interview guide and my thought process of its
design. I also discuss ethical procedures, including my intention to take a feminist approach in caring
for my participants and their wellbeing throughout the process. Lastly, I discuss my qualitative data
analysis process.
Chapter 4 represents the first of my three chapters that describe the results from my
thematic analysis. Chapter 4 uses the concepts of Crenshaw’s (1989) intersectionality, Beauvoir’s
(1948) concept of ambiguity, and Mason’s (2018) innovative synthesis of these two perspectives,
forwarding the concept of intersectional ambiguity. These theoretical frameworks help to structure
to my findings and demonstrate factors that hindered or fostered the wellbeing of minoritized
employees in work meetings. As a major theme, I discuss how participants demonstrated a pattern in
which they simultaneously expressed confidence that they were facing bias or discrimination in work
meetings and wondered if these forces were all in their imaginations. Additionally, participants with
compounding minoritized identities, such as women of color or disabled nonbinary people,
sometimes wondered which—if any—aspects of their identities were being targeted.
Chapter 5 analyzes how the composition of identities and demographics in groups can lead
to stereotyping, formations of in-groups and out-groups, and harsh judgments of ostracized
members (Mannix and Neale, 2005). I discuss how my data helps build upon the notion of faultlines
(Lau and Murnighan, 1998) to show how minoritized employees may not form alliances in meetings
with those who map perfectly to their identities as this theory may suggest, but with those who

13
contrast with the dominant group (with the dominant group in my data almost always being
described by participants as white men).
Chapter 6 addresses the context of virtual meetings (posing a timely discourse in the wake of
the COVID-19 pandemic) and compares how minoritized employees experience this technology in
comparison to in-person meetings. I bolster my findings with the technology affordances
perspective (Hutchby, 2001) and how afffordances and constraints can shed light on occupational
and personal identities (MacKenzie, Marks, and Morgan, 2017). Additionally, I analyze my data
through the perspective of Intersectional Critical Race Technology Studies (ICRTS) posited by
Noble and Tynes (2015) to show how technology affordances of virtual meeting platforms may
differ among various minoritized identities when it is mediated by factors like white supremacy and
heteropatriarchy.
Chapter 7 serves as my discussion and conclusion, which integrates my three analysis
chapters, emphasizes how my results have implications in organizational cultures and beyond,
describes limitations and future directions, and concludes with a list of accessible recommendations
for managers who facilitate meetings in order to suggest interventions to create healthier workplace
cultures based off of my data.

14
Chapter 2: Literature Review
In order to situate this current study and to understand what gaps in existing scholarship
remain, I will now review the relevant body of literature. As this current study is interdisciplinary in
nature, I will review three different bodies of literature. In Part I, I review research that analyzes the
challenges that women in tech companies face and related theory regarding stereotyping,
conceptions of gender and perceptions of technical prowess, organizational cultures dominated by
men, and the outstanding need to include nonbinary people in these conversations. This section of
the literature review will help to situate the contextualized experiences of my participants who work
in tech companies, as well as dynamics that address gender and power in organizations. In Part II, I
bring in a critical perspective that fuses scholarship from critical race theory, feminist theory, and
science and technology studies to discuss how people with minoritized identities grapple with power
dynamics due to technology and within online spaces—which will ultimately set the stage for
discussions of virtual meeting affordances and minoritized workers. In Part III, I review literature
pertaining to group diversity and power dynamics, and ultimately work toward a justification for why
work meetings and their relationship to identity and power in organizations should be studied. In
conclusion, I restate my research questions and define terms within said questions.
Part I: Gender, Organizational Tech Cultures, Stereotypes, and Difference
In 2017, the New Yorker published an article titled, “The Tech Industry’s Gender
Discrimination Problem” (Kolhatkar, 2017). The article integrated various news stories and snippets
that an active news consumer (or, at least, a consumer of more centric or leftist news) would likely
stumble upon. One of the most widely discussed stories centered on Susan Fowler, an engineer at
the ride-share software company Uber, who voiced her experiences with rampant sexual harassment
and gender discrimination at the company on her personal blog (Fowler, 2017). The resonance of
Fowler’s story caused her narrative to go viral—and initiated a prominent legal investigation led by

15
former attorney Eric Holder (Levin, 2017). Ultimately, her allegations, compiled with other women’s
similar stories, led to the resignation of Uber CEO Travis Kalanick.
Other stories that have gained similar levels of traction include American investor Ellen
Pao’s lawsuit of tech venture capitalist firm Kleiner Perkins for gender and racial bias during her
time as a junior partner at the Silicon Valley company (Streitfeld, 2015). Although Pao ultimately lost
the lawsuit, her story resonated with many people, including prominent lawyer and academic Anita
Hill, who famously faced her own battle of sexual harassment with then-Supreme Court nominee
Clarence Thomas (Bennett, 2019). Hill (2015) wrote, “Hearing the ruminations on Ellen Pao’s failed
gender discrimination suit against her former employer . . . the famous words of Justice Louis
Brandeis come to mind. ‘Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.’ In Pao’s case, the sunlight is
beginning to do its work.” Kolhatkar (2017) notes how Pao’s trial led to further gender-bias suits,
and analysts subsequently coined this influence the “Pao effect.”
In December 2020, Google made headlines for firing its top artificial intelligence ethicist,
Timnit Gebru. Gebru, who is a Black woman, submitted a paper to an academic conference about
detrimental factors of predictive language models, including how they could spread misinformation
and had the capability to learn racist and sexist language (O’Leary, 2020). Afterward, for opaque
reasons (though it is speculated that the findings would hurt Google’s business ventures and related
profits), Google asked Gebru to retract the paper or remove the names of all Google employees
involved—Gebru said she would resign if the company could not provide her more information for
their request to retract the paper. Ultimately, Gebru left the company: Google claims Gebru
resigned, and Gebru claims she was fired. Since then, she is “trying to figure out how she, one of the
few Black women who studies ethics in A.I., ended up here” (para. 1). In an interview, Gebru
commented as to why she thought Google undervalued her. She shared, “I think it’s mostly racism
and sexism, even when it’s about issues of ethics. They have all of these responsible initiatives with

16
almost no Black people. And the Black people in it are just infuriated all the time” (para. 11).
Gebru’s dual experience of investigating sexist and racist components in algorithms and her own
subsequent alleged racial and gender-based mistreatment by her own tech giant employer for
analyzing these factors in technical spaces serves as a salient example of how these oppressive forces
can function in both online and offline spheres.
These prominent stories of women navigating power differentials in high-tech organizations
merit scholarly analysis, as do narratives that publications like The New York Times will never pick up,
such as those of less visible, lower-status workers in similar organizations. This next section will
explore the cohesive factors across literature addressing gender equity problems in tech cultures,
what I perceive as the primary drivers of these narratives, the material conditions of culture
produced in this industrial mode, and how literature points toward the future for women and
nonbinary people, and other minoritized identities in tech.
The Issue of Underrepresentation and Corresponding Drivers
When analyzing commonalities across literature that address gender inequities in tech, it
appears that the most fundamental common experience of women in tech cultures is the issue of
underrepresentation. Women in direct technical/computing roles (compared to more business
administrative roles, such as marketing and project management) tend to experience the lowest
representation in their field. For instance, in recent statistics, women only made up 21% of
“technical” roles (defined as roles such as computing, software design, and troubleshooting) at
Google, 22% at Facebook, and 17% at Twitter (Brown, 2018; Williams, 2018; Castleberry-Singleton,
2018). In 2016, women comprised only 25 percent of computing jobs — and only 8 percent of this
small proportion was made up by Latinx, Hispanic, Black, and Asian-American women (Ashcraft,
McClain, & Eger, 2016). Further, although the number of women earning computer science degrees
has increased over the past two decades, the field of computer science has one of the lowest

17
proportions of women earning degrees among science and engineering fields (The National Center
for Science and Engineering Statistics, 2019). Beyond the inherent virtue in pursuing diversity and
inclusion in organizations, studies show some concrete benefits of such pursuits: gender-diverse
technology organizations tend to produce teams that stay under budget and on schedule and
demonstrate improved employee performance (Barker, Mancha, & Ashcraft, 2014). Yet, despite
these benefits of diversity, the field of tech remains relatively homogeneous—thus, the following
factors serve as likely drivers for the issue of underrepresentation of women in high-tech companies.
Stereotype Threat. As a potential driver of this issue of underrepresentation, research
shows how women may be discouraged from joining computing jobs early on in life due to
stereotypes about women’s abilities with technical or computer-based work. Scholars describe one
of these factors as stereotype threat (Steele and Aronson, 1995), which depicts when someone is “at
risk of confirming, as self-characteristic, a negative stereotype about one’s group” (p. 797). In other
words, reminders of gender roles can activate stereotypes, and in turn, reduce performance (Davies
et al., 2002). Providing an example of this phenomenon, Koch, Müller, and Sieverding (2008)
explored the effects from priming people with a stereotype that women are worse at computer-
based tasks than men. Results showed that when faced with these stereotypes, women who were
asked to complete a computer task (unknowing it was an intentionally impossible task) were more
likely to attribute failure to their own inability rather than faulty equipment. Thus, these types of
messages that women are not inherently “technical” can influence confidence and subsequent
success at certain tasks—hypothetically creating a domino effect that could influence career
interests.
Scholars argue that underrepresentation of one’s demographic is also a powerful stereotype-
activating cue (Sekaquaptewa and Thompson, 2003). Relevant to underrepresentation in tech
cultures, Inzlicht and Ben-Zeev (2000) found that fields stereotypically associated with men, lower

18
percentages of women in such fields led to stronger stereotype threat effects on women’s
performance. In other words, women were more cognizant of the stereotype that they may
underperform and did so accordingly. Furthermore, Woodcock et al. (2012) explained how
negatively stereotyped groups in certain domains such as women in STEM are frequently exposed to
stereotype-activating cues—ultimately causing many women to disidentify with the domain. Lastly,
when studying underrepresentation in relation to people’s anticipated experiences and emotions,
Schuster and Martiny (2017) discovered that gender underrepresentation can be linked to
consideration for different vocational fields.
Also related to stereotype threat and anxiety around knowledge relates to Lin’s (2006) study
on women who work with free/libre open source software (FLOSS)—the author notes how
convoluted user interfaces intimidate potential users and can cause them to overestimate the true
complexity of the technology. Lin notes, “This misconception fosters a false impression that FLOSS
is too technical and difficult to use. This kind of misunderstanding discourages many people,
including women, to participate in the FLOSS development, and subsequently results in an
imbalance in gender, race and class” (p. 1148). Thus, even components like inaccessible interfaces
can discourage people with historically minoritized identities to engage with certain knowledge bases
in the first place—this roadblock partly stems from biased beliefs and messaging stemming from
structural inequalities.
Low Retention Rates. Scholars and activists have recently urged people to problematize
the idea that variables like vocational messaging and stereotype threat serve as the main contributors
to the underrepresentation of women in tech. In other words, the pipeline may not be the biggest
problem. Data shows that women may enter tech fields, but drop off after a number of years,
showing a “leaky pipeline” problem for women in STEM. Glass, Sassler, Levitte, and Michelmore
(2013) found that 50 percent of women in STEM fields (tech and engineering in particular) left their

19
jobs after roughly 12 years. Similarly, Pew Research found that of people who had a college major
related to computer science, women were 15 percent less likely than men to be employed in an
occupation related to their degree. Furthermore, the same report showed that women who earned a
college degree in engineering were less likely to work in an engineering job (24 percent) than men
with similar educational backgrounds (30 percent) (Graf, Fry, and Funk, 2018).
Discrimination and Sexual Harassment. Related to low retention rates of women in
high-tech jobs is the prevalence of discrimination and sexual harassment in such cultures. A recent
survey of more than 1,000 people who work in the tech industry uncovered troubling findings on
women’s frequent experiences of discrimination and sexual harassment in tech companies (Women
Who Tech, 2020). Regarding the complex issue of “the tech industry” encompassing varying types
of organizations—such as small startups, big corporations, tech-related investment firms (to be
discussed more in depth later)—this study surveyed participants who worked as startup founders,
investors, or as more general employees in tech companies, helping to address these issues across
various types of organizations and roles. Key findings include that 44 percent of women startup
founders in tech had encountered harassment. Of this pool, 41 percent of women experienced
sexual harassment, including being propositioned for sex, experiencing unwanted physical contact,
being a target of sexual slurs, being sent graphic photos, or being groped—compared to 12 percent
of men who experienced this behavior. Similarly, for general employees working in tech companies
who had reported harassment (48 percent), 43 percent of women indicated experiencing sexual
harassment. Thus, women who were startup tech founders and women who were employees of tech
companies experienced quite similar levels of sexual harassment, showing that although their roles
and organizational cultures may be quite different, there are common underpinnings pointing
toward toxic cultures.
Material Conditions of Culture in Tech

20
Regarding the material conditions of culture produced in these networks, issues of pay,
project assignments, and promotions can shed more light on common experiences of
discouragement for women in tech. Wage disparities continue to be a significant issue in tech
companies particularly for women and women of color (Molla, 2019). A recent study shows that
tech companies offered women three percent less than men for starting salaries for the same jobs
(such as software engineers, product managers, and data scientists) in 2019 (Hired, 2020). Results
also showed that tech companies offered Latinx women 91 cents and Black women 89 cents for
every dollar offered to a white man at the same companies for the same roles, and Black and Latinx
women received the lowest average salary offers overall in these jobs (Hired, 2020). Furthermore,
according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2020), the tech sector represents the largest
difference in absolute dollar amount between what women and men earn per week versus other
sizeable employment sectors. The significance of this wage gap becomes more prominent as we
consider that tech accounts for the most prominent sector of our economy—for instance, internet
technology companies represent more than a quarter of the value of the S&P 500 (Molla, 2019).
Thus, pay disparity can create significant gaps in personal wealth across demographics, creating a
feedback loop of structural inequality.
Another aspect of material conditions of culture in the tech industry relates to employees’
assignments to significant projects and promotions (which are often correlated). Research affiliated
with Stanford University shows that in a study of roughly 1,800 workers in the high-tech industry in
several companies, women reported that they were less likely than men to be appointed to projects
with high visibility. The authors define visibility as “a complex interaction of perceived [technical]
skills, access to stretch assignments, and being known — and liked — by influential senior leaders
within informal networks” (Correll and Mackenzie, 2016) (The Clayman Institute for Gender
Research, 2008). Correll and Mackenzie (2016) asked 240 senior leaders of a tech company in Silicon

21
Valley to identify the most important drivers to be promoted to their level in the organization.
Above all, these leaders noted that visibility was the most critical influence. However, visibility was
not equally achievable across all genders. The authors observed “gendered dynamics that
systematically disadvantaged women in achieving visibility, potentially limiting their opportunities for
promotion and keeping them from the senior levels of their organizations” (para. 9). Particularly,
senior leaders did not as often invite women to join “blue sky” teams, which describe how
companies ask their employees to do their “biggest, boldest thinking about new technologies and
businesses.” However, I have not encountered much research that discusses issues of visibility for
women of color in tech companies—aligned with all other data that shows women of color (particularly
Black and Latinx women) at a further disadvantage in this sector, it is plausible that the barriers to
visibility are even more profound.
A Significant Driver: Masculine Cultures
As previously discussed research demonstrates, computing roles and tech jobs in the current
age tend to be dominated by men. These ratios alone may justify calling the tech industry a
“masculine culture,” but scholars show that cultural values may give a more meaningful designation to
what are considered masculine organizational cultures than proportions of one gender to the next.
Berdahl, Cooper, Glick, Livingston, and Williams (2018) argue that Masculinity Contest Cultures
(MCC) promulgate dysfunctional organizational climates that negatively impact the wellbeing of
both men and women employees—the authors posit that MCCs can embody traits like harassment,
toxic leadership, and bullying. In contrast, Buzzanell (1994) juxtaposes feminine and feminist
organizational values such as community and connectedness against more masculine values like
competition, and argues that incorporating these types of values can lead to meaningful
organizational change.

22
To understand organizational change, we must first define organizational culture. Rutherford
(2001) provides a definition for organizational culture: “the symbols, beliefs, and patterns of
behavior of organizational members” (p. 373). Rutherford outlines various aspects within
organizational culture that we can consider, such as management style, communication, dress,
gender awareness, and informal socializing. This current study expands Rutherford’s inclusion
criteria to also look at other aspects of identity that play into intersectionality, such as race/ethnicity,
age, and ability/disability. Rutherford (2001) also discusses the Weberian idea of social closure and
its application to patriarchal exclusion strategies in workplaces wherein a group monopolizes
rewards by blocking opportunities to an out-group that it sees as inferior (Witz, 1992, Murphy,
1988). Specifically, Rutherford proclaims that scholars should take this concept of social closure and
“include more subtle, informal kinds of exclusionary practices” (p. 372). Thus, we can consider how
this idea of social closure might appear in work meetings: whether it is by some group members
monopolizing speaking time, or not inviting people in out-groups to certain conversations, or
making off-handed comments that may cause minoritized members to feel targeted in sexist, racist,
and/or other compounding modes.
Ely and Meyerson (2000) argue that, to further conceptualize how gender interacts with
organizational change, it is key to consider how social practices in organizations are widely created
by and for men, reflect and support men’s experiences, and therefore create a “gendered social order
in which men and particular forms of masculinity dominate (Acker, 1990)” (p. 103). Ely and
Meyerson argue that social practices in organizations often operate under a guise of gender
neutrality, when their policies or informal interactions actually produce inequities that uphold white,
heterosexual, class-privileged men. Metcalfe and Linstead (2003) also highlight the pathologies of
operating under so-called gender neutrality: related to this current study on work meetings, the

23
authors argue that “masculinism…stems from the so-called gender-neutral performance criteria and
practices of team organization and management” (p. 94).
Related to masculinity and how it can impact performance criteria is Cheney and Ashcraft’s
(2007) work on the complications of the concept of professionalism. Cheney and Ashcraft (2007)
discuss the implications of professionalism in organizations, noting how the concept of
professionalism is widely viewed as a positive trait, and many scholars and those outside of the
academy fail to see its suppressive attributes. The authors note how professionalism is laden with
“ambiguity and multiple meanings” (p. 169), and “despite its often-apolitical appearance, the
professional is a deeply political formation that can simultaneously coordinate and deny divisions
and hierarchies of labor based on gender, sexuality, race, nation, class, and their complex
intermingling” (p. 163). Related to Cheney and Ashcraft’s scrutiny of professionalism and the norms
it holds workers to, McDonald (2015) shows the benefits of incorporating queer theory into
organizational scholarship, noting, “Indeed, if there is any site of strictly enforced normativity in
society, it is in organizational life, where workers are expected to uphold and conform to
organizational norms, occupational norms, professional norms, societal norms, and cultural norms”
(p. 322).
Ely and Meyerson refer to Weick’s (2000) idea of emergent and perceptible organizational
change and its origins in repeated and sustained accommodations and experiments. Relevant to this
current study, Ely and Meyerson observed that penalizing workers for being late to meetings and
having meetings run over the allocated time helped to level inequities. The authors found that the
act of paying conscious attention to meeting organizing led to a norm in which workers only
scheduled meetings during regular work hours, ultimately assuaging barriers for parents. This
example demonstrates a positive organizational change, which likely benefitted people with an
uneven responsibility of caretaking, such as mothers. However, the point remains that without

24
consistent scrutiny in organizations and a willingness to disrupt existing norms, organizations can
fall into these seemingly “gender-neutral” practices that uphold white, heterosexual, class-privileged
men.
Other scholars such as Forbes (2002) problematize masculinity and conduct research that
reminds us how masculinity can manifest in the words and practices of women as well. The authors
demonstrate via interviews with Black women managers in Jamaica that women “negotiate their
identities by internalizing masculine values and norms through their discursive choices in their
organizational roles” (p. 269), ultimately scaffolding hegemonic and resistant patriarchy via what the
authors frame as internalized misogyny and their choices as managers. Ashcraft and Pacanowsky
(1996) also uncovered how “women, and perhaps other traditionally marginalized groups, may
actively participate in their own subordination,” showing how women may “participate in the
devaluation of women” (p. 217) by ascribing traits like cattiness and divisiveness exclusively to
women in workplaces.
Kvande and Rasmussen (1994) in contrast view how men in organizations grapple with and
espouse masculinity, specifically in contexts in which they contend with women “intruders” in the
highly masculine field of engineering. The authors sorted four groups of men by their reactions
toward women in their organization: the cavaliers, the competitors, the comrades, and the comets. The
different groups varied in how competitively or condescendingly they treated their women
colleagues—but groups like the comrades tended to take a more progressive view. Kvande and
Rasmussen note, ‘It may be that these men represent a ‘new’ generation with a more favourable
attitude to equity” (p. 170).
Several scholars (e.g., Cheney and Ashcraft, 2007; McDonald, 2015) point to Acker’s (1990)
work as pivotal to scholarship on gender, masculinity, and organizations. In her work theorizing
how masculinity functions to create gendered organizations, Acker writes, “Individual men and

25
particular groups of men do not always win in these processes, but masculinity always seems to
symbolize self-respect for men at the bottom and power for men at the top, while confirming for
both their gender’s superiority’’ (p. 145). In other words, Acker acknowledges that although
masculinity manifests and is treated differently for C-suite executives and for working-class laborers,
masculinity remains revered. McDonald (2015) emphasizes how masculinity in organizations also
triumphs over womanhood or femininity, saying, “By arguing that gender is a constitutive feature of
organizations and of organizing, Acker (1990) showed that organizations are gendered institutions in
that they are structured according to a logic that privileges men and masculinity over women and
femininity” (p. 311).
Zooming out to the greater arguments in McDonald’s (2015) piece, he argues that
organizational communication scholars can benefit from using queer theory as a lens when
considering issues of difference in organizations. McDonald positions queer organizational
communication research as a mode to understand how “privilege and disadvantage are related to the
ways in with organizational members enact—and do not enact—the taken-for-granted norms of
organizational life” (p. 322). I posit that work meetings are perhaps one of the most “taken-for-
granted norms of organizational life” (perhaps as demonstrated by the dearth of research pertaining
to this context)—thus, enacting tenets of queer theory could be particularly generative here.
Specifically, McDonald states, “From a queer perspective, organizations are thus not just inequality
regimes (Acker, 2006), they are also normalizing regimes,” and utilizing the perspectives of queer
theory can help scholars to “expose and critique the multitude of ways in which organizational
members become normalized, as well as the consequences of these normalization processes” (p.
322). Additionally, although McDonald does not constrain this recommendation to apply queer
theory to studying queer communities (rather the opposite—he asserts that, as scholars, we should
consider how queer theory can extend to all topics of difference), it seems especially pertinent to this

26
current study of minoritized employees and work meetings, including the experiences of nonbinary
employees.
One way to frame these tensions and mechanisms of minoritization (e.g., through upholding
norms of masculinity) and organizations is through the frame of resistance and control. Mumby
(2005) posits that we should view resistance and control in organizations through a dialectical lens.
While previous critical organizational studies have prioritized studying control mechanisms or the
resistance against such control, Mumby argues that these two forces should not be considered in a
dichotomous way, but rather, as “mutually implicative and coproductive” (p. 21). Additionally,
Mumby asserts that scholars can benefit from analyzing how “the tensions and contradictions that
inhere in the dialectic can create possibilities for organizational change and transformation” (p. 38).
And, relevant to the current study that considers implications of the routine function of work
meetings, Mumby discusses how a dialectical lens in favor of a dichotomous one “insists on the
contingency of organizational life, exploring how even the most sedimented practices are precarious
and—to a certain degree—arbitrary” (p. 39).
Related to Mumby’s (2005) assertion that resistance and control should be viewed through a
mutually-coproductive and simultaneous lens, Ashcraft (2005) shows how sometimes resistance can
be disguised as control, especially for seemingly privileged workers. To do so, Ashcraft studies the
perspectives of commercial airline pilots to understand how seemingly privileged professional men
contend with gendered threats. One of her main findings described how commercial airline pilots at
least nominally expressed their compliance with industry-wide changes because, as Ashcraft, notes,
“resistance marked as such flags weakness because it implies lack of control over one’s own destiny
(i.e., no one commands us; we chose this!)” (p. 82–83). Ashcraft ultimately argues that “scholars of
workplace resistance may learn much about the preservation and transformation of power relations
by investigating the irony of seemingly dominant voices that mourn a loss of control” (p. 74). Thus,

27
we can consider in future studies how men in highly masculine industries such as tech may respond
to such threats (especially with burgeoning DEI initiatives) in order to gain a greater understanding
of power in organizations.
While Ashcraft’s (2005) study focused on the perspectives of a dominant class of workers,
Pompper (2011) studied how middle-aged women of color in mediated message industries
“paradoxically resist and accept master narratives of ‘less than’ in striving to change organizations
and achieve their maximum potential” (p. 464)—also giving an example in which resistance and
control may exist simultaneously and even paradoxically. Although Pompper does not specifically
engage with Crenshaw’s (1989) concept of intersectionality in this piece, it provides scaffolding for
understanding how resistance and control can be difficult to delineate for people facing
compounding forces of oppression on the basis of their identities. Considering that Ashcraft and
Allen (2003) uncovered how core organizational communication texts “disguise our field’s
participation in preserving the normative power of organized Whiteness” (p. 5), it becomes even
more clear that studies which engage workers of color, focus on intersecting minoritized identities,
and scrutinize forces such as white supremacy, are crucial to the future of the field.
Another one of these scholars noting the importance of cultural values and
masculine/feminine organizations was the late Dutch social psychologist Geert Hofstede. Defining
culture as “the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one human
group from another” (Hofstede, 1980, p. 25), a staggering number of studies use Hofstede’s
approach to uncover values across cultures (as demonstrated in a meta-analysis by Taras, Kirkman,
& Steel, 2010). Particularly, the cultural dimensions outlined in Hofstede’s famous work, Culture’s
Consequences (1980, 2001), has widely influenced other studies. By conducting surveys with 88,000
IBM employees from 72 countries, Hofstede formulated a factor analysis that uncovered four
dimensions of cultural values: power distance, individualism-collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, and

28
masculinity-femininity. Although Hofstede originally intended these cultural dimensions for national
cultures (and many studies utilize Hofstede within this same context), literature shows that it is
worthwhile to employ this framework on both industry- and individual-bases as well (Afsar &
Masood, 2018; Taras, Kirkman and Steel, 2010; Dwyer, Mesak, & Hsu, 2005; Cross and Madson,
1997). Thus, the organizational and individual levels of these dimensions can unearth important data
that the original national framework may not have considered.
Synthesizing findings across the data I have reviewed thus far in this chapter, I see the
dimension of masculinity-femininity as most pertinent cultural factor for the topic of women in high
tech organizations.

Hofstede asserts that this dimension is not a way to measure the level of
masculinity or femininity in each individual, but to the “distribution of values between the genders”
in a culture (2011, p. 12). Specifically, masculinity is noted as a preference for traits such as
assertiveness, achievement, and concrete, material rewards for success, whereas femininity connotes
caring for others, seeking quality of life, and appreciating cooperation (Hofstede, 1991; Hofstede
Insights, 2018). Further, Hofstede notes that in feminine cultures, people tend to believe that there
should be minimum differentiation between genders in terms of emotional and social roles, there
should be a balance between family and work, and there should be sympathy for the weak. In
masculine cultures, there exists a distinct divide between men and women for emotional and social
roles, work is prioritized over family, the strong are admired, and men should be assertive/ambitious
while women only might be (Hofstede, 2011, p. 12). Hofstede notes that in masculine cultures,
discussions around the differences of masculine versus feminine cultures are considered a taboo
(Hofstede, 2011, Hofstede et al., 1998). A table more clearly outlining these traits for easy reference
is below.

29
Table 1
Hofstede’s Conceptualization of Traits Within Masculine and Feminine Cultures
Masculine Cultures Feminine Cultures

• Assertiveness, ambition, and
achievement

• Goal: Concrete, material rewards and
promotions

• Distinct divide b/w genders for
emotional and social roles

• Work is prioritized over family

• Strong people are admired

• Caring for others, cooperation and
modesty.

• Goal: Seeking quality of life

• Strives for minimum differentiation
b/w genders for emotional and social
roles

• Believes in a balance b/w family and
work

• People should have sympathy for the
weak

It is important to note that the degree of masculinity in an organizational culture is not
proportionate to the number of men in an organization: for instance, a very feminine culture could,
in principle, consist of all men. Rather, scholars urge us to consider hegemonic masculinity not as a
personality trait of individual men alone, but as “a pattern of practice that allows men to dominate
women….a way of normalizing gender stratification through institutions, culture, and interpersonal
dialogue” (Steele, 2015, p. 78; Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005) I also see the dichotomy in
Hofstede’s masculinity/femininity dimension as akin to agentic (stereotypically masculine) and
communal (stereotypically feminine) traits found in gender role literature (Parks-Stamms, Heilman,
and Hearns, 2008; Harrison & Lynch, 2005).

30
As I have demonstrated so far, studies show that women who work in organizational
cultures dominated by men (and which often espouse patriarchal values) often face bias. One
theoretical framework that describes this phenomenon is the lack of fit model, proposed by Heilman
(1983, 1995, 2001). This model suggests a perceived incompatibility between the communal
attributes stereotypically associated with women (e.g., nurturing, gentle) and the traditionally
masculine agentic attributes (e.g., direct, ambitious) considered necessary to succeed in male gender-
typed jobs. Further, studies have shown that women are typically evaluated more harshly than
equally-competent men for male dominated-jobs—unless the women displayed stereotypically
feminine qualities like communality (Heilman & Okimoto, 2007; Rudman, 1998). Isaac, Lee, and
Carnes (2009) conducted a systematic review of experimental evidence regarding gender bias in
employment—uncovering widespread negative bias toward women being evaluated for jobs
predominantly held by men. Further, one study found that women business leaders were perceived
more negatively in masculine work cultures when compared to more egalitarian sectors (Heilman et
al., 2004). Thus, these findings are particularly pertinent for the male-dominated tech industry.
I return to Susan Fowler for a narrative perspective that provides evidence of the masculine
values of the tech industry (a culture which also indicates an aversion to feminine values). In
recounting her now-famous blog post detailing the harassment she endured at Uber, she explains
how the tone of her matter-of-fact, stoic blog post was not coincidental. She told reporters,
When other women spoke out, they were retaliated against. So, there were certain
things that I thought I could avoid: …”I can't have any emotion in my blog. I have
to be very, very detached.” And I had to make sure that every single thing that I
included in there had extensive physical documentation, so it couldn't be 'he said,
she said.' And that's what I did. (Zacharek, Dockterman, & Edwards, 2017)

Interestingly, Fowler’s strategy to avoid stereotypically feminine behavior (i.e., showing emotion in
her blog and instead being “very, very detached”) suggests her need to adhere to the masculine
values of Uber for her allegations to be taken seriously and to avoid being retaliated against.

31
Mothers in Tech: Unfit for the Job?
Noting that underrepresentation and outright harassment are only a few of the factors that
present barriers to women in tech, working mothers may face a particular brunt in the industry. As
Heilman and Okimoto (2007) describe, motherhood is connected to long-held stereotypes about
women (e.g., mothers are inherently communal and nurturing), and posits that mothers produce an
even stronger perceived lack of person-job fit. In turn, the researchers’ findings confirmed that
mothers were seen as less competent than working non-mothers. American scholar and social
activist Angela Davis (1983) contextualizes how 19
th
century ideology concretized the “the
housewife and the mother as universal models of womanhood.” (p. 515). She notes,
Since popular propaganda represented the vocation of all women as a
function of their roles in the home, women compelled to work for wages
came to be treated as alien visitors within the masculine world of the public
economy. Having stepped outside their “natural” sphere, women were not to
be treated as full-fledged wage workers. The price they paid involved long
hours, substandard working conditions and grossly inadequate wages (p. 516).

Importantly, Davis also discusses how Black women have carried a “double burden of wage
labor and housework” (p. 519) as their communities and families depended on their strength
and labor for survival.
While some tech companies have implemented supportive programs for parents (for
instance, Twitter offers 20 weeks of paid maternity leave and “New Moms and Moms-to-Be”
quarterly roundtables for women entering into and returning from parental leave (Grant, 2015)),
many perspectives have painted tech organizations—notably startups—as hostile to working
mothers. Wong (2017) recounts a quote from Susan Wu, a tech industry veteran and co-founder of
Project Include, an organization whose mission is to increase opportunities to succeed in tech. Wu
notes, “At most startups in Silicon Valley, to succeed as a parent, you have to pretend to fit in with
the youth culture—don’t talk about your kids, participate in youthful activities, pull all-nighters, go
out drinking with the team.” Another anonymous woman Wong interviewed noted, “Being pregnant

32
at a startup is a visual reminder to the team that, to you, something else matters more…You literally
can’t drink the Kool-Aid anymore.” Furthermore, an anonymous senior software engineer noted
that she had lost “respect and opportunity” at her company for being a single mom: “They are so
impressed at a man being a dad…whereas women [who work] not only don’t care about their jobs,
but also must not care about their children.”
Considering the masculine cultural dimension of masculinity, particularly the tendency to
prioritize work over family (Hofstede, 2011), these quotes support the theoretical underpinnings of
how the cultural value of masculinity impacts many organizational cultures in tech and can be
detrimental to employees who do not match with these same values.
Gender Biases and “Hard and Soft” Skills and Knowledge
Research shows that women often face prejudiced attitudes across organizational cultures
that frame them as un-technical, even when their jobs, roles, and occupations typically require
advanced technical skillsets. Hicks (2017) problematizes distinctions between skilled and unskilled
computing work, and argues that class and gender-based bias inform attitudes around which types of
jobs and roles involve skill. In a historical analysis, she examines the British government’s original
strategy to frame computer jobs as unskilled and feminine, and its subsequent attempt to
“masculinize” computer work in the 1960s—shifting it from being merely technical toward a
management function. Hicks notes, “Ignoring the women already working in the jobs meant that the
single biggest reserve of computer experience and talent went to waste” (p. 152).
Noble (2017) also discusses how people of color are stereotyped as inherently untechnical,
and ultimately, this stereotype gives leverage to big tech companies like Google to blame the
underrepresentation of Black women in tech on “pipeline” issues (which, as discussed before, is
exaggerated and arguably helps companies from being held responsible for retention issues):
By rendering people of color as nontechnical, the domain of technology
“belongs” to Whites and reinforces problematic conceptions of African

33
Americans. This is only exacerbated by framing the problems as “pipeline”
issues instead of as an issue of racism and sexism, which extends from
employment practices to product design. “Black girls need to learn how to
code” is an excuse for not addressing the persistent marginalization of Black
women in Silicon Valley (p. 66).

In her study of compositors in the printing trade, Cockburn (1981) describes how technical
skill can be prescribed by gendered expectations and roles, noting the irony of how "the compositor
sitting at a keyboard setting type represented as doing skilled work. A girl typist at a desk typing is a
letter is not—though the practical difference today is slight” (p. 49). This quote reinforces the idea
that “skilled” work is often viewed through a socially-constructed (and gendered) lens. Furthermore,
Cockburn notes, “Above everything, a skill embodies the idea of wholeness in the job and in the
person's abilities” (p. 51).
Other scholars show that even when a woman proves to have a certain technical prowess,
when she is not physically exhibiting those skills in her role, her credibility is at risk. This concept
relates to a point in Dunbar-Hester’s (2014) work in which certain low-power FM radio activists
with technical prowess still fell into non-technical tasks. The author describes how “the necessary
work did get accomplished, usually by whoever stepped up to do it. In practice, this meant that
much of the nontechnical work was done by women and technically unskilled men” (p. 63). The
contrast of technical vs. non-technical work also has implications for women’s informal roles as well
as formal. One woman interviewee in Dunbar-Hester’s study noted, “There’s a lot of women’s work
that I do.… It’s hard to teach men how to think in terms of taking care of others, physical [and
logistical] needs” (p. 62). Thus, another fruitful direction of research is to analyze perspectives of
women who may have technical job titles, but who may often be pressured to take on non-technical
responsibilities.
Masculinity in tech cultures relates toward a socially-constructed concept of “hard” (versus
“soft”) mastery of technology—and scholars show how the “hard,” (and what is cognitively

34
constructed as masculine) knowledge tends to receive more respect. Edwards (2003) explores
differences between the “hacker style” and more conventional programming style (p. 177). He draws
upon Sherry Turkle’s work, The Second Self (2005), which proposed the concept of hard mastery
(rational, logical, carefully planned, and organized) and soft mastery (intuitive, spontaneous, creative,
and resourceful) in computer programming. Although Turkle asserted that women more often
exhibited this “soft mastery,” Edwards notes that “the equation between engineering, hardness, and
masculinity, though very real in its exclusionary effects, tends to conceal the fact that the hard/soft
split reappears within engineering at every level” (p. 185). For instance, Edwards describes how
software engineers are typically considered more of a “hard mastery” and hackers are less so due to
their “undisciplined” approach.
This concept also relates to the work of Faulkner (2007), who looked at experiences with the
“technicist” (technical) and “heterogeneous” (social) aspects of engineering identities and how they
interacted with gender. Specifically, she concludes that technicist engineering identities emerge more
prominently because they are more closely related to masculinity. Meanwhile, “women’s (perceived
and felt) membership as ‘real’ engineers is likely to be more fragile than men’s” (p. 331). In all, these
concepts help us to frame how the high-tech industry may face similar binaries of knowledge (again,
which may not be objective, but nonetheless reinforce certain realities). Edwards concludes, that
while this arbitrary binary between hard and soft mastery (particularly in a gendered sense) is illusory,
it “nonetheless plays a major ideological role” in how we view the world” (p. 180). This provides
more support to the idea that even if someone is in an undoubtedly technical role (such as hacking
or computer programming)—they are still subjected to a hierarchy based on socially-constructed and
gendered strata.
I have come across little to no research on the narratives and experiences of women in tech
organizations—I am specifically considering high-tech organizations like software companies—who

35
work on the business administration part of these companies. From my own preliminary research,
roles like administrative assistants, project managers, and marketing coordinators appear to
correspond more with women in tech companies. For instance, popular media and academic
scholarship both examine the topic of “women in tech,” but while women in these types of business
administration roles are operationally in tech companies (and thus, may face similar elements of
cultural toxicity), they are often left out of the conversation as it focuses more on roles like software
engineers. Thus, opportunities remain to include women and nonbinary people who work in non-
computing or engineering roles in the conversation.
Furthermore, while much of the discourse about minoritized workers in tech centers around
women (as reflected in this literature review), I have not come across much literature related to
nonbinary workers in tech companies. A few studies do focus on barriers that nonbinary people face
in workplaces: Davidson (2016) found that for nonbinary transgender people, those who were
assigned male at birth often experienced discrimination in the hiring process, and those who were
assigned female at birth were more prone to encounter differential treatment after being hired.
Perales, Ablaza, Tomaszewski, and Emsen-Hough (2022) demonstrated the importance of fostering
trans-affirming language
1
and inclusive practices in workplaces for people with minoritized genders.
Furthermore, research shows how efforts to foster inclusive language at work can positively impact
trans individuals’ senses of belonging, inclusion, and socioeconomic integration (Perales, Ablaza, and
Elkin, 2022). Additionally, Cech and Waidzunas (2021) found that, when compared to non-LGBTQ
colleagues in STEM fields, LGBTQ workers were more likely to experience harassment, career
limitations, and professional devaluation, more frequent health difficulties, and were more likely to
leave STEM. Although this study did not analyze the experiences of nonbinary people in particular,

1
The authors note “trans-affirming” can relate to affirming someone’s gender that is different from what they were
assigned at birth—thus it applies to virtually all nonbinary people as well as those who identify as a transgender man or
transgender woman.

36
we can consider how nonbinary people’s experiences should be explored when it comes to studying
power dynamics and inclusion in work meetings. Thus, although most literature discussed thus far
has pertained to women, this current study will contribute to literature on workers in tech with
minoritized gender identities by including the perspectives of nonbinary workers.
Part II: Intersectionality and Technology
In the following section, I will overview aspects in literature related to race, intersectionality,
and technology to set the stage for contexts to study online meetings, identity, and power.
Critical Race Theory and Defining Race
Delgado and Stefancic (2012) define critical race theory (CRT) and its corresponding movement
as “studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism, and power” (p. 2). The authors
note that CRT problematizes the tenets of liberalism such as equality theory, rationalism stemming
from the Enlightenment, and neutral principles of constitutional law. Additionally, CRT aims to go
beyond understanding how “society organizes itself among racial lines” by seeking to create concrete
change and transform society using an activist lens (p. 8). Delgado also recognizes how society has
presented immensely complex constructs such as “racism” in deceptively simple terms:
Imagine… a society that has only one word (say, “racism”) for a phenomenon
that is much more complex than that, for example, biological racism; intentional
racism; unconscious racism; microaggressions; nativism; institutional racism;
racism tinged with homophobia or sexism; racism that takes the form of
indifference, coldness, or implicit associations; and white privilege, reserving
favors, smiles, kindness, the best stories, one’s most charming side, and
invitations to real intimacy for one’s own kind or class (p. 31).

Barnshaw (2008) notes that four main tenets illustrate the concept of race: (1) race is socially
constructed, (2) racial characterization can stem from perceived physical similarities across individuals
(which is also social versus biological), (3) racial characterization can stem from social and cultural
similarities, and (4) racial characterization can stem from the creation of diverse racial groups of people who

37
identify by said race—thus, racial categories can originate from processes in history and “gain
legitimacy in society through political action” (p. 2). Importantly for discussions of imbalanced
power in groups and organizations among racial lines, Barnshaw also notes that “the formation or
reformation of racial categories is accomplished by dominant racial groupings exerting authority
over minority or subordinate racial groupings” (p. 2).
In her book, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment,
Patricia Hill Collins (2002) discusses what she calls the “overarching matrix of domination,” which
articulates how multiple groups who ascribe to different approaches of knowledge compete with
each other—Collins notes that each of these subgroups contain “partial perspectives, situated
knowledges, and for clearly identifiable subordinate groups, subjugated knowledges” (p. 445).
Additionally, Collins asserts that dominant groups benefit from suppressing knowledge that emerges
from subordinate groups. However, when each group can recognize that their own truth only
provides a partial perspective, they can better understand the views of other groups “without
relinquishing the uniqueness of its own standpoint or suppressing other groups’ partial perspectives”
(p. 446). This discussion frames Collins’s assertion that an increasing number of African-American
women intellectuals have chosen to center their scholarship in Black women’s experiences, and thus
adhere to and forward an “Afro-centric feminist epistemology” (p. 443). Collins partly proposes
Black feminist epistemology as a resistive strategy to mitigate the tension stemming from Black
women dichotomizing their behavior in order to reduce differentials between social institutions and
African-American communities (which can relate to the concept of code-switching).
Delmar (1986) problematizes overly simplistic categorizations of identity and lumping
together women whose experiences may differ drastically. For instance, Delmar notes that “so
unproblematically was potential identity between women assumed that the plural form ‘we’ was
adopted, and it is still much used: ‘we,’ women, can speak on behalf of all of us ‘women’” yet, “unity

38
based on identity has turned out to be a very fragile thing” (p. 24). Thus, Delmar warns against this
same categorical thinking asserts the existence of and similarity across individuals who fall under the
label of “woman”—particularly as we have discussed multifaceted and targeted violence toward
specific groups that fall under this label, such as Black women. This urge to analyze the nuances of
multifaceted identities and aspects of corresponding violence relates to Kimberlé Crenshaw’s
concept of intersectionality, which asserts that women of color—particularly Black women—face
intersecting factors of oppression (i.e., gender and race) that create exponential barriers in society.
Thus, when considering unjust dynamics that face “women” or “people of color,” it can erase the
experiences of people who face all these challenges in a compounded manner, such as women of
color.
Noble asserts that—for Black women—factors of colonization, enslavement, and “radically
segmented social structures” (Dorsey, 2003) such as unequal legal consideration for victims and
offenders of sexual violence across gender, race, and class have increasingly perpetuated acts of rape
and rape culture. Noble contends that these types of radically segmented social structures “persist at
a historical moment when Black women and children are part of the permanent underclass and
represent the greatest proportion of citizens living in poverty” (p. 93). Thus, aspects like extreme
wealth disparity, exploitive practices under capitalism, and discriminatory legal systems should not
be overlooked when considering these dichotomizing structures and their connection to violence.
This discussion highlights how maintaining these social structures or “social orders” by not
challenging white feminism can directly connect to violence against women of color.
Structures of Oppression in and Through Online Spaces and Technology
While much critical race scholarship has focused on interactions that occur in person, more
recent scholarship has also analyzed how white supremacy functions in digital spaces—which can
provide useful context for a consideration of this current study of minoritized employees in virtual

39
meetings. One lens to help understand this landscape is intersectional critical race technology studies
(ICRTS)—coined by scholars Safiya Noble and Brendesha Tynes as “an epistemological approach to
researching gendered and racialized identities in digital and information studies” which “offers a
lens, based on the past articulations of intersectional theory, for exploring power in digital
technologies and the global Internet(s)” (2015, p. 3) The authors assert that discussions around
gender, race, and sexuality are central to (and often invisible in discussions of) broader consideration
of the internet, and that the tenets of ICRTS are crucial in a time and environment that propels
narratives of post-raciality and colorblindness, which ultimately increase power differentials. In this
type of post-racial society, Noble (2017) argues that scholars overlook the lived experiences of Black
women and girls, “who remain ever precarious, despite our living in the age of Oprah and Beyoncé
in Shondaland” (p. 9). In her research, Noble demonstrates that Black girls’ identities—though she
notes that girls across various minoritized races also face oppressive forces in this context—are
“commercialized, sexualized, or made curiosities within the gaze of the search engine” (p. 88).
Related to this concept is Benjamin’s introduction of the anti-Black box, a play on words that
retools the concept of a mysterious object which shrouds its internal mechanisms. The concept
proposes that routine anti-Blackness is embedded in an array of tech development, and “links the
race-neutral technologies that encode inequity to the race-neutral laws and policies that serve as
powerful tools for White supremacy” (p. 71). Circling back to this chapter’s earlier discussions
displaying the oppressive outcomes of oversimplification, categorization, and dehumanization (i.e.,
through scholars such as Williams, hooks, and Delmar) Benjamin asserts that race itself is a technology
that stratifies and codes people (p. 73), and links this back to technologies that perpetuate racial
biases in “hiring, firing, loaning, policing, and a whole host of consequential decisions” (p. 64). She
synthesizes these overall phenomena and coins the New Jim Code, which refers to the utilization of

40
emergent technologies that reflect and reify inequalities under the guise of being more “objective” or
progressive than oppressive systems past (p. 24).
Within the lens of critical whiteness studies is “white ignorance,” which Applebaum (2016)
asserts is “a type of knowledge that actively protects systemic racial injustice from challenge.” Mayo (2005) notes
how “ignoring is not a ‘lack of knowledge’ but ‘a particular kind of knowledge’ that does things, that
promotes white innocence while conserving non-white marginality” (p. 85). Jessie Daniels (2009)
argues that the default culture of the internet is racist and actually guards people who perpetuate racism
rather than victims of it. While some internet theorists embrace digital racial formation theory, which
analyzes “how racial categories are developed, inhabited, transformed, and potentially distorted,” (p.
24, Tynes, Shushke, and Noble, 2015; Nakamura, 2008) Daniels pushes back against this framework.
Instead, she asserts that these types of perspectives fail to problematize more structural and systemic
racism (as we also have seen Noble and Benjamin discuss), and instead unduly focus on more
individual behavior as the main driver of racism on the internet. Daniels asserts that there is little
research that conducts a systematic critique of whiteness in more current instances of digital feminist
activism (2015, p. 42). She argues that “Whiteness has been a core feature in the rise of the popular
Internet (de la Peña, 2010, p. 936), and we must join this with a dissection of how White feminism
has benefitted from this technological development” (p. 54). Similarly, Tynes, Schuschke, and Noble
(2015) assert that theories about race and the internet have “failed to capture the intersectional
nature of race, gender, class, and other categories and the context within which they are structured
by Whiteness as a practice of power" (p. 25). Ultimately, Daniels calls upon white women to call out
other white women for these types of transgressions in online spaces and condemn white feminism.
She notes: “White women like myself, speaking out about White feminism is to risk hurt feelings
and the loss of connection with other White women—and the opportunities that come with that…
to speak about White feminism, then, is to speak against a social order” (p. 54).

41
On a more hopeful note, Angela Davis (1983) writes, “Granted, work under the conditions
of capitalism is brutalizing work…Yet with all this, the fact remains that on the job, women can
unite with their sisters—and indeed with their brothers—in order to challenge the capitalists at the
point of production” (p. 541). Though Davis could not have envisioned it when writing Women, Race
& Class nearly 40 years ago, her words encouraging this unity can connect to modern technological
contexts. Though I have discussed in this chapter the ways that digital technologies can create and
reify sexist and racist structures, so too can they provide a space for women of color to form
resistance in unprecedented ways.
I turn to Hancock (2007) to wrap up this section of the review of literature, who asserts that
the framework of intersectionality can go beyond content specialization (i.e., analyzing subjectivities
of women of color) and instead, can serve as a normative and empirical research paradigm. In
particular, through the lens of intersectionality, we can “interrogate this ‘black box’ of interaction
between the analytical poles of individuals and institutions” (p. 253). She asserts that an
intersectional research paradigm helps to probe the relationship between individuals and institutions,
which informs my perspective that one cannot meaningfully study institutions and cultural rituals
like work meetings without analyzing the wider experiences of the people within them.
Part III: Examining Identities and Power Dynamics in Groups
As this dissertation focuses on power, identity, and wellbeing in work meetings, which again,
are defined as planned communicative gatherings of two or more employees intended to promote
interaction related to the work or the group (Schwartzman, 1986; Allen, Tong, and Landowski,
2020), I will now review literature related to power, diversity, and group dynamics.
Throughout several decades of research discussing the effects of diversity on groups,
Mannix and Neale (2005) posit that “it is not always easy to tell what differences ‘make a
difference’” (p. 35). The authors credit McGrath, Berdahl, and Arrow (1995) in asserting that “…

42
only one thing is certain: diversity is something that no one individual has, but all groups do” (p. 35).
This statement serves as a helpful reminder that diversity does not inherently reside in one person
alone.
2
Thus, it is important to emphasize this dynamic that is often overlooked: diversity is
constituted in relation to the rest of the group. One definition for diversity that key scholars converge on
due to its broad applicability is “variation based on any attribute people use to tell themselves that another person
is different” (Mannix and Neale, 2005, p. 33; Jackson, 1992; and Williams and O’Reilly, 1998). The
concept of diversity in groups has captured the attention of scholars for decades—however it
remains useful to explore what gaps exist when analyzing how identity-based diversity can impact
power dynamics in groups.
Comparing Competing Paradigms: Categorization and Information Processing Approach
Drawing from 50 years of research related to diversity in teams, Mannix and Neale (2005)
explain that competing paradigms have emerged as to whether group diversity leads to more positive
or negative group outcomes. The authors synthesize findings into two camps of theoretical
perspectives: the categorization framework, which forwards a more pessimistic view of diversity’s
impact on group variables such as performance, commitment, and satisfaction, and the information
processing approach, which paints a more optimistic picture of group diversity’s outcomes. The
categorization approach comprises self-categorization, social identity, and similarity-attraction
theories, and asserts that an instinctual need for belonging and heightened comfort with
homogenous groups leads to harmful outcomes for diverse teams, such as stunted social integration
and schisms within groups.
In contrast to the broader paradigm of categorization (which I will elaborate on extensively
later in this chapter), Mannix and Neale describe the information processing approach as a more

2
Yet, I recall how the phrase “diverse hire” is so often utilized in organizations as a euphemism for simply being a
person of color, without much regard to the makeup of the existing group!

43
optimistic theoretical viewpoint for certain outcomes of diversity in teams. Ultimately, this
perspective helps frame difference in groups as a tool to “create novel approaches, learning, and
enhanced performance through interaction and the constructive exchange of information” (p. 43).
One aspect of this framework incorporates the idea of networks. In particular, the information
processing approach posits that members in groups with more diversity will have increased access to
varying skills, as well as access to people even outside the group whom the group can benefit from
(e.g., a business contact). Examples of studies from this approach include Winquist and Larson
(1998), who studied decision making in groups and the benefits of information pooling, and Ancona
and Caldwell (1992), who examined how functional and tenure diversity influenced performance in
product teams in high-tech companies.
So far, I have not encountered many studies in the informational processing paradigm that
are relevant to racial/gender diversity and its impacts on power dynamics in groups. One reason this
may be the case: since this information processing paradigm contends with diversity relating to
factors like educational background or functional expertise, it can allegedly be “at odds” (p. 42) with
diversity defined by traits such as gender, race, or age—and scholars in this approach even tend to
“avoid” analyzing these types of variables (Mannix and Neale, 2005). Indeed, it seems fruitful to
resist treating the categorization and information processing approaches as somewhat mutually
exclusive. For instance, it would be useful to understand how group members could create novel
approaches through information exchange in a broader sense, and also see how these strategies
might differ across gender, race, generation, or other demographic variables. As an example,
knowing that women for example are often socialized to act in communal ways (Eagly & Karau,
2002), we might consider how women group members engage their networks formed through
communal behavior to bring in new information for the group compared to men. Mannix and Neale
also see that integrating the two approaches of categorization and information processing can bring

44
a more comprehensive understanding of diversity, noting, “Disentangling the various, seemingly
inconsistent findings on diversity will likely require a careful consideration of the moderators at work
in particular organizational contexts, a focus on underlying mechanisms explaining the effects of
diversity, and an exploration of new ways to understand and measure diversity” (p. 40). However,
because the categorization perspective contends more with demographic factors, and I am exploring
literature on how gender and racial diversity can influence power dynamics in group settings such as
work meetings, I will elaborate on this paradigm further and explore studies under its umbrella.
Theoretical Frameworks Within the Categorization Paradigm
Self and Social Categorization. To more clearly outline the mechanisms of this
categorization paradigm, it is useful to elaborate on the three theories within this categorization
approach according to Mannix and Neale (2005). Self-categorization is the manner in which people
look to their membership in various groups to form their own self-concepts (Turner, 1985)—in
other words, the contextual factors of a group that someone belongs to can shape the person’s view
of her or himself. Related to the concept of self-categorization, the concept of social categorization
(Turner, Oakes, Haslam, and McGarty, 1994; Turner, 1985), occurs when people place themselves
and others into social categories across demographic strata involving gender or race, and/or more
cognitive elements like beliefs or values. In certain group social dynamics, these types of
categorizations become salient factors in the minds of group members (Nelson & Klutas, 2000), and
research suggests that when group composition is more demographically heterogenous, this sorting
behavior has stronger effects on cognitive perceptions of group members. For instance, Stroessner
(1996) demonstrated that people in groups with more diverse demographic traits identified and
categorized themselves by their demographic attributes more than individuals in more
demographically homogenous groups.

45
Social Identity Theory. Social categorization also connects to the outcomes of social identity
theory (Turner and Reynolds, 2010; Tajfel, Turner, Austin, and Worchel, 1979; Hogg, 1992; Hogg and
Abrams, 1988), which explains how group membership shapes self-perceptions. Tajfel et al. (1979)
asserts that groups provide a feeling of belonging within the social world, and that social identity can
shape group members’ self-esteem. The motivation to preserve one’s self-esteem leads to another
potentially detrimental outcome of social categorization and social identity formation: the propensity
to form unnuanced understandings and stereotyping of group members. For instance, when people
mentally index other group members by demographic or cognitive categories, they are more likely to
perceive these other members as exemplifying relevant demographic stereotypes—and this process
can lead to in-group/out-group formations and harsher and swifter judgments of perceived
outgroup members based on said categories (Turner, 1982, Tajfel & Wilkes, 1963; Schopler & Insko,
1992; Brewer,1995).
Studies show that this phenomenon of stereotyping and making cursory judgments of other
group members can serve as a critical factor in influencing power dynamics. Relating to this process,
Mannix and Neale (2005) assert that “social categorization activates differential expectations for in-
group and out-group members. This distinction creates the atmosphere for stereotyping, in which
out-group members are judged more stereotypically than in-group members are” (p. 41), further
exacerbating power dynamics through the process of stereotyping and judgment of out-groups. For
instance, Rosette, Leonardelli, and Phillips (2008) found an association across multiple experiments
between leader race and leader categorization—in particular, the authors demonstrated that “being white”
was widely part of participants’ cognitive prototypes for business leaders (i.e., asking people to
imagine a business leader, and then asking what this business leader looks like in their minds). As the
categorization approach to diverse teams asserts, these types of stereotypes (and in this case,

46
prototypes) could pigeonhole group members, thereby impacting perceptions of potential leadership
traits and accompanying power based on demographic categories alone.
Similarity-Attraction Theory. These phenomena of self and social identity categorization
theories also feed into similarity-attraction theory (Byrne, 1971) which asserts that people have a greater
affinity for and see more positive traits in people who appear similar to them—and perceptions of
so-called “surface-level traits,” such demographics like gender and race, commonly serve as driving
forces for this theoretical framework. For example, Tsui and O’Reilly (1989) found that greater
demographic dissimilarity between supervisors and subordinates was associated with supervisors
making more negative evaluations of their subordinates. Mannix and Neale (2005) note that,
although the mechanisms of this theory originally considered similarity attraction in dyads, it is also
particularly useful for group situations—for instance, this similarity-attraction paradigm is
particularly salient for groups in which members have had no prior interactions with each other.
With this framework, I find it instinctual to conceptualize how the similarity-attraction
theory could lead to gender and race-based prejudice and bias in groups, particularly in early stages.
For instance, I imagine that if early coalitions build across racial categories in the early stages of a
group project, these alliances could possibly lead to feelings of hostility between sub-groups and
form subsequent competitive climates in work meetings. Even if one were to take a (in my view,
harmful) colorblind approach in analyzing the implications of this hypothesized scenario and believe
that all races have equal access to power, strategies of domination could still emerge. However, as
studies like Rosette, Leonardelli, and Phillips (2008) on the “white prototype” of business leaders
show, socially-constructed power disparities related to race could serve as a mediating factor in this
similarity-attraction, coalition-building scenario within a racially diverse group.
Exploring the Notion of Faultlines

47
One theoretical viewpoint relating to these aforementioned studies (i.e., the categorization
paradigm, and in particular, the similarity-attraction model), is that of faultlines in diverse teams.
Working within the larger categorization paradigm which, again, focuses on demographic variables
in diversity, Lau and Murnighan (1998) propose a framework that is also intentionally limited to
demographic differences (i.e., age, gender, race, and status). Ultimately, the authors posit that
examining multiple identities simultaneously can bring more nuance to the body of research examining
demographic diversity, and help researchers make better predictions about the kinds of social
schisms that can form within diverse groups. A faultline is defined as a demographic dividing line
formed from the compound of more than one characteristic: for instance, being Black (race) and a
man (gender). The authors note that faultlines can fracture a group into subgroups based on these
attributes.
Lau and Murnighan provide a helpful illustration of how demographic faultlines can form.
Consider two groups of three people: one group includes a middle-aged Latinx woman, and two
white men in their twenties. The other group comprises a white woman in her twenties, a Latinx
man in his twenties, and a middle-aged white man. Although these scenarios portray the same spread
of demographic characteristics across various people, it is more likely that a two-versus-one alliance
would occur in the first group because it includes a faultline—a similar alignment of race and gender
(i.e., being in one’s twenties and white and male)—among group members. Relating to how gender
and racial diversity can influence power dynamics in groups, the authors note that, “diversity and
group faultlines are likely to affect many group members’ cognitive processes and power struggles”
and that these factors are “potential predictors of the sensemaking process, subgroup formation
patterns, and the nature of group conflict at various stages of group development” (p. 332).
Additionally, the authors assert that demographic faultlines will be most salient in the beginning of a
group’s lifecycle, and when faultlines do create subgroups, more serious and prevalent conflict can

48
emerge. Related to the component of gendered stereotyping, Stanciu (2017) analyzed how task
stereotypicality (i.e., how tasks related to relational components, such as planning birthday
celebrations in workplaces, are stereotyped as feminine) impacted the association between faultlines
and out-group derogation (defined as bias directed at an out-group). Results showed that
stereotypical tasks strengthened the positive correlation between strong faultlines and out-group
derogation. In a retrospective assessment of this initial proposal nearly 20 years later, Murnighan and
Lau (2017) noted that phenomena related to faultlines across several group outcomes recurred in
studies of experimental groups, organizational teams, global virtual teams, family businesses, ad-hoc
project groups, and more—showing the power of this framework.
Faultlines in Relation to Intersectionality. Although Lau and Murnighan do not directly
reference the framework of intersectionality coined by Black feminist scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw
(1989) when discussing faultlines, I see the concepts closely relating to each other. The framework
of intersectionality proposes that women of color—especially Black women—must grapple with
overlapping oppressive forces based on gender and race that lead to exponentially more societal
barriers. More recent iterations of the concept grapple with other demographic factors such as age,
class, ability, sexual identity, and more to analyze how the multiplicity of these identities impact
systemic forces. This concept, and Lau and Murnighan’s assertion that demographic diversity can
compound among various identities to impact power dynamics, connects critical race theory,
feminist theory, and group research (a cluster I do not often see, but which I assert should be
formed more often). I have not come across many pieces of scholarship that connect
intersectionality and faultlines outright, although after conducting a review of 59 published articles
on the faultlines perspective, Thatcher and Patel (2012) argued that future research needs to “more
explicitly understand power dynamics” (p. 994). Liu, Park, Hymer, and Thatcher (2019) do explicitly
call for future research to synthesize the faultlines perspective and intersectionality. The authors

49
propose that future research should analyze whether “differences in advantage/disadvantage due to
group members’ intersectionality influence the impact of faultlines on group information processing,
conflict, and performance” (p. 212). While I agree with the authors, I do still see a theoretical gap
that would connect group diversity dynamics and faultlines to forces like white supremacy and
heteropatriarchy—I believe it is important to name these forces outright in order to understand
issues of power and equity.
Thus, future scholarship could explore how compounding identities create power dynamics
through faultlines in groups (i.e., power dynamics as a dependent variable), and also incorporate
feminist and critical race theory like intersectionality to postulate how power disparities often inherent in
these intersecting identities (i.e., the historical and contemporary oppressive factors which Black women
often face) can serve as more of a causal force in studying demographic diversity in groups.
The Categorization Paradigm and Corresponding Impacts on Power Dynamics
Thus, the synthesis of three of these theories under the categorization paradigm—self-
categorization, social identity categorization, and similarity-attraction—describe how group members
show a stronger liking for other members who seem similar to them, and thus, the categorization
(and often, related factors like stereotyping) that occurs in diverse groups to uphold group members’
identity and self-esteem will lead to less cohesion and poorer group functionality. This categorization
paradigm is particularly helpful in analyzing how gender and racial diversity can impact power
dynamics in group settings like work meetings: partly because demographic diversity is one of its
starting points for analysis (unlike the competing paradigm of the information processing approach).
This perspective helps explain the mechanisms behind stereotype and in-groups/out-groups formation within
teams when demographic diversity is present—which are mechanisms that can exacerbate power
differentials in group and organizational contexts. Although I have not seen the categorization
approach explicitly draw on the following theories as often when discussing diversity in groups, I see

50
its components reflected in theoretical frameworks relating to social and gender roles such as role
congruity theory (Eagly & Karau, 2002), and the lack of fit model (Heilman, 2001). Related to the
question of how gender and racial diversity can impact power dynamics in groups, the categorization
paradigm in particular can provide some insights as this perspective focuses on demographic
diversity and at times, issues of minority/majority power, and stereotyping.
Racial and Gender Diversity Relating to Stereotyping and Status Difference
Relevant to the categorization approach and corresponding stereotypes and in-group/out-
groups, a study by Phillips, Rothbard, and Dumas (2009) proposes status-difference as a factor behind
potential social schisms in demographically diverse organizational contexts, like dyads and groups.
The authors problematize a common approach of management to try and form cohesion within
demographically diverse teams: to encourage coworkers to “get to know” each other (usually
through self-disclosure about their lives). However, the authors assert that encouraging self-
disclosure can be counterproductive, because people of different demographics (i.e., gender and/or
race) are stereotyped into different status levels, and minoritized people are often motivated to
manage and minimize status difference. For instance, a woman employee in an engineering work
meeting may not self-disclose that she has kids, as this information could confirm stereotypes about
women inherently possessing more “motherly,” communal traits, therefore threatening her status in
a masculine organizational culture. Although not explicitly mentioned by the authors, this example
and the dynamics underpinning it support Heilman’s (1983, 1995, 2001) lack of fit model, which
describes a perceived cognitive incompatibility between stereotypical communal attributes ascribed
to women and the stereotypical agentic attributes deemed critical to succeed in male gender-typed
jobs. Thus, the authors note that ironically, disclosing personal information may increase status
difference due to categorization, and exacerbate schisms and power differentials among
demographically diverse groups.

51
One way that Phillips, Rothbard, and Dumas propose to mitigate these potentially
detrimental factors stemming from status and self-disclosure is to foster a culture of respect so that
group members feel valued despite status concerns, and to encourage psychological safety
(Edmondson, 1999) in order to put team members at ease. I find this study valuable and appreciate
how it emphasizes the implication of status difference across race and gender, instead of taking a
colorblind or genderblind approach which naively assumes that people of all demographics have
equal opportunity. I would appreciate more elaboration on ideas for interventions, as the idea to
create a respectful climate could be successful but feels somewhat broad and idealistic. For instance,
if minoritized group members already feel nervous to self-disclose, it could be that they do not feel a
sense of psychological safety in the team in the first place—so it feels somewhat circular to suggest
enhancing psychological safety as a remedy, when its absence may be the reason why people feel
uneasy about status differences in the first place.
Shim, Livingston, Phillips, and Lam (2020) also showed how status diversity in teams—
again, a component recognized as understudied in group diversity literature—has implications for
corresponding power dynamics. Related to the categorization approach to diversity, the authors
conducted a study that designated race (i.e., Black and white) and education level to define status
level. For instance, a Black member in an experimental group would automatically have the
operational definition of lower status. The study found that when group leaders increased visual
attention toward low-status members in a group (i.e., looking them in the eyes when speaking), it
reduced perceived disparity in member influence (a form of power). Thus, I believe this study
provides a more concrete mitigation tactic to reducing power differentials in diverse demographic
groups than those proposed by Phillips, Rothbard, and Dumas (2009).
However, I must also mention a couple critiques I have of this article by Shim, Livingston,
Phillips, and Lam (2020). First, the authors automatically assigned Black and white demographics to

52
respective low and high status without much explanation (perhaps using the mechanisms of
stereotyping and categorization theory, but they did not explain this overtly). Although this choice
may be sociologically and culturally accurate when looking at disparities in society and is useful for
exploring the study’s research questions, I also believe the authors have a responsibility to explain
how the connection between race and corresponding status is a social construction, and ultimately stems from
factors like white supremacy in the United States.
3
Furthermore, the authors did not address what is
in my eyes an important consideration of how gender may impact the construct of “gaze.” It is
plausible that if a high-status leader who is a man makes extensive eye contact with a woman of
lower status, it would decrease her feelings of safety in the group, regardless of the intent of the leader.
Stemming from feminist theory and visual studies, the concept of the male gaze describes a standard
heteromasculine point of view that often frames women as sexual objects (for instance, how many
movies put women in hypersexual contexts) (Korsmeyer, 2020). Considering how this idea of the
male gaze has become a more ubiquitous term in popular culture, it seems like a lost opportunity to
not acknowledge how gender may actually increase power differentials when it comes to visual
attention in work groups.
Messaging Channels, Power Displays, and Power Differentials
Research suggests that another way to mitigate power differentials in diverse groups could be
secret messaging channels. Particularly pertinent in the age of the COVID-19 pandemic when many
workplaces have migrated online, Swaab, Phillips, and Schaerer (2016) analyzed how the mere
existence of secret conversation opportunities in virtual teams
4
can make majority opinion leaders

3
I am aware that the authors’ approach to gloss over the historical mechanisms that underlie the connection between
race and status may align more with the style of management journals, such the Academy of Management Journal in which
this piece is published. I also recognize that this may not be an oversight of the authors, but could be an editing choice
of reviewers and journal editors to take a more “neutral” lens. However, the interdisciplinary scholar in me cannot help
but desire a deeper discussion on this topic, especially from an article published as late as 2020.
4
It is helpful for me to connect this concept of “secret messaging opportunities in online group environments” to
private messaging on the Zoom platform, though this study was published before Zoom soared in popularity due to the
COVID-19 pandemic.

53
feel less powerful and more likely to consider minority opinions. The authors note that analyzing
majority opinion holders’ motivation to consider the perspectives of minority opinion holders is
crucial because “even if minority views are expressed, they can only be influential if the majority is
willing to hear them” (p. 30). Related to the question of how gender and racial diversity impacts
power dynamics in groups, the authors note that although the concept of diversity in this study
relates to minority/majority opinion-holders, a future research opportunity could also focus on
demographic diversity such as gender and race.
Another opportunity for future research is to analyze how secret conversation opportunities
influence the motivation of demographic minorities. Again, although this study centered on diversity
related to opinions and not on demographics, we could consider how conversation channels in
online spaces (like Zoom meetings) may influence minoritized employees’ influence (i.e., a
mechanism of power) in meetings. For instance, women may feel more comfortable privately
messaging other women group members during a Zoom work meeting in order to gain momentum
for sharing an idea with the group—which could be particularly useful to form alliances in group
cultures that do not seem to value minoritized voices (for instance, climates in which
women/women of color frequently are interrupted or talked over).
Relating to how diverse groups may or may not value the voices and ideas of minoritized
group members, Karakowsky, McBey, and Miller (2004) analyzed power displays (i.e., interruptions)
in group settings, and how they differed across gender of team members. The authors found that
men in male-dominated work teams enacted more power displays than women in female-dominated
work teams. Furthermore, results indicated that when the ratio of women to men in a meeting was
higher, fewer interruptions occurred in the meeting. Also, relating to social role literature (to be
explained further), women decreased their power displays more often than men when group
members worked on a more masculine task. In a synthesis of all these results, it emerged that men

54
appear to be the primary drivers of power displays such as interruptions in group meetings.
Ultimately, Karakowsky et al. postulate that the occurrence of communication behaviors such as
power displays and interruptions may change depending upon the extent of gender diversity in a
team, and these communication behaviors may also influence perceptions of leadership abilities—
providing an example of how gender diversity can impact power dynamics in group settings.
Gender and Racial Diversity in Groups and the Variable of Emotions
Another aspect that relates to stereotyping within the categorization paradigm of diversity is
related to gender, race, and emotions. Brescoll (2016) posited that people can penalize women
leaders for displays of emotion, particularly when these sentiments convey dominance, such as anger
or pride. However, women may face a type of double jeopardy, because non-emotional women in
contrast are perceived as violating their prescribed gender roles of warmth and communality. Role
congruity theory (Eagly and Karau, 2002) sheds more light on this phenomenon: it postulates that
when women leaders show agentic (i.e., stereotypically masculine) behavior such as being assertive,
direct, and unafraid of confrontation, they defy expectations that they must show communal (i.e.,
stereotypically feminine) traits, such as being gentle, warm, and passive. As a result of this gender
role violation, women leaders can be penalized and have opportunities stunted. Regarding
stereotypes around emotions, Brescoll asserts that future studies should analyze (a) whether
emotional display rules differ among genders and across various racial categories and (b) whether
these expectations for expressing emotions apply to contexts studying leaders in organizations. Kelly
and Jones (2012) explore the role of emotions in group research in particular, and note that
emotions can serve as a key “input to, context for, and outcome of group interaction” (p. 154). In
other words, when studying emotions related to groups, behavior relating to moods and emotions
can be conceptualized as input and output in studies, as well as a measure of group process—
showing how this variable can be operationalized when studying groups.

55
Related to Brescoll’s call for research on expectations for expressing emotion across gender
and race is a study from Livingston, Rosette, and Washington (2012). The researchers analyzed role
congruity theory (Eagly and Karau, 2002) across variables such as gender and race. Related to
emotions, one example of agentic behavior involving emotion is displaying dominant affect, such as
anger or pride. Results showed that people were more likely to penalize white women leaders than
Black women leaders for displaying identical agentic behavior. In fact, Black women leaders showing
agentic behavior received similar evaluations to white male leaders doing the same. This finding that
Black women were not penalized for showing agentic behavior (which is what role congruity theory
would predict) may be surprising, for as the authors assert, “…Black women occupy not only one,
but two roles that are incongruent with expectations regarding leadership, the assumption underlying
this prediction is that they will be dually penalized when expressing agency” [emphasis added] (p. 355).
However, the authors provide a possible explanation for why this result may have occurred: because
Black women are considered “marginal members” across both of their categorical identities of race
and gender, they can become “invisible” (Purdie-Vaughns and Eibach, 2008)—and thus may be
“buffered” from discriminatory attitudes that people from other demographics face (i.e., Black men
and white women).
Although the research design and findings from Brescoll (2016) and Livingston et al. (2012)
relate more specifically to dyad situations, their research leaves an opportunity to study similar
phenomena in group settings. I recall Mannix and Neale’s (2005) assertion that social categorization
creates different expectations for in-group and out-group members, and that this differential
“creates the atmosphere for stereotyping, in which out-group members are judged more
stereotypically than in-group members are” (p. 41). Additionally, Kelly and Jones (2012) posit that
group members may avoid showing certain emotions out of fear of not meeting social standards and
due to norms around emotional expression in group contexts, noting “inducing a

56
strong emotional experience in such a person may be a particularly negative experience if it violates
personal or social standards” (p. 166). Thus, it would be worthwhile to study how role congruity
theory (Eagly & Karau, 2002; Livingston et al. 2012) and expectations around women leaders and
emotions across gender and racial categories (Brescoll, 2016) operate in group contexts, particularly
keeping in mind the categorization paradigm for considering the impacts of diversity in groups.
Mumby and Putnam’s (1992) concept of bounded emotionality also helps contextualize the
acceptance or intolerance of emotions in organizations from a feminist perspective. The term
depicts how workers grapple with emotions that occur in organizations (whether these emotions
stem from occurrences at work or outside of it), and challenges previous paradigms that stigmatize
emotions in organizations (i.e., the idea of bounded rationality). In contrast, bounded emotionality
encourages a diverse range of emotional expression, supports incorporating emotions in decision-
making, and recognizes the important role emotions play in forming interpersonal relationships
among employees through the mechanism of mutual understanding of work-related emotions. The
concept also proposes that emotions that are considered appropriate in work settings can change.
Ultimately, bounded emotionality ensures the effective and judicious expression of emotion that
develops our interpersonal relationships” (Jeans, 2019, para. 1). One of the defining characteristics
of bounded emotionality most relevant for themes in this study is a tolerance of ambiguity, in which
bounded emotionality encourages the tolerance of complex emotions and contradictory feelings at
work. Thus, when contemplating the simultaneous and shifting interpersonal and group dynamics in
work meetings, we can begin to consider how bounded emotionality and tolerance of ambiguity
could foster the wellbeing of workers.
Conclusion and Restatement of Research Questions
With this literature review and an understanding of remaining research opportunities guiding
my research questions, I explore in this dissertation the subjectivities and narratives of minoritized

57
employees and their experiences in work meetings. In particular, I analyze how forces related to
white supremacy and heteropatriarchy in work meetings may impact the wellbeing of minoritized
employees, especially along the lines of inclusion, self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977), and psychological
safety (Edmondson, 1999). I chose these three outcomes because they address needs related to
emotional wellbeing and having agency in one’s occupation (i.e., self-efficacy). Additionally, while
data may emerge that sheds light on how meetings may be improved to improve outcomes for
organizations, this is not my primary aim with this study: instead of focusing on capitalist aims like
profit and productivity, I am more concerned with the survival of employees within these capitalist
realities. Thus, with the above review of literature in mind and knowing the subsequent
opportunities for scholarly expansion, I restate the following research questions:
RQ1: What common factors in work meeting communication hinder or foster the wellbeing
(i.e., inclusion, psychological safety, and self-efficacy) of minoritized employees?
RQ2: Does the composition of a work team across identities and demographics influence
the wellbeing (i.e., inclusion, psychological safety, and self-efficacy) of minoritized employees
in work meetings?
RQ3: How do virtual meetings impact the wellbeing (i.e., inclusion, psychological safety, and
self-efficacy) of systemically minoritized employees compared to in-person meetings?

58
Chapter 3: Methodology
In this chapter, I outline why and how I chose my population of study and how I
interrogated my research questions. I will also discuss the ethical procedures of the study —paying
special attention to how I treated my participants with care and dignity (something I care about
above all else). To investigate my research questions, I conducted in-depth interviews with a total of
30 people from underrepresented gender identities (specifically, women and non-binary people) who
currently work or have previously worked in the United States tech industry. Five of these interviews
occurred in in November 2018 and provided archival data for this study. Twenty-five of these
interviews occurred between May 2021 and May 2022. I collected the data exclusively over the
phone or via the video conferencing platform Zoom, mostly due to constraints during the COVID-
19 pandemic.
Sampling
I sought out the perspectives of women and nonbinary workers in tech companies in two
types of roles: (1) computing/software-engineering (e.g., in departments such as software
development, quality assurance, IT, and development operations) and (2) business administration
roles (e.g., I departments such as marketing, operations, project management, and executive
assistants). While these two buckets might historically be considered “technical” and “non-technical”
roles as I discussed in the literature review in Chapter 2, I problematize this verbiage as it downplays
the technical nature of work outside of the computing/software development side, and it tends to
diminish women and nonbinary people’s technical prowess since these demographics are often
underrepresented in the computing/software development world.
I was intentional to interview participants who engaged in work meetings regularly—in a
questionnaire I distributed ahead of the interviews, I asked “How many hours do you typically spend
in meetings a week in your tech job?” All participants indicated that they engaged in an average of

59
three or more hours a week of meetings—which ensured participants would have plenty of context
and experiences related to work meeting communication to speak on the topic.
In the interest of understanding perspectives through the lens of intersectionality (Crenshaw,
1989; Hancock, 2007), I made a conscious effort to include participants of diverse identities and
demographics. Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality compels us to consider how people of
intersecting identities face transecting factors of oppression (i.e., based on gender and race) that
create exponential obstacles in society. In particular, through the lens of intersectionality, we can
“interrogate this ‘black box’ of interaction between the analytical poles of individuals and
institutions” (Hancock, 2007, p. 253).
When sampling, I aimed to recruit people from various racial and ethnic identities, gender
identities, age groups, abilities and disabilities, sexual orientations, and other aspects of identity.
Problems can arise when researchers code the identities of participants without asking for any input
from participants themselves—but it is also imperative to take a sensitive approach and not be too
pushy or prying when asking about participants’ identities. To mitigate these challenges, I distributed
an optional and anonymous questionnaire to participants ahead of the interview. In addition to
asking questions related to time spent in work meetings and in the tech industry itself (see Appendix
B for full set of questions), I also asked a set of questions related to the participants’ identities. I kept
the format of these questions open-ended: instead of having a drop-down menu of gender identities
for the participant to select, I offered an open text field so the participant could describe it however
she or they desired. Identity-related questions asked about the participant’s gender identity,
pronouns, racial/ethnic identity, and age (and the questionnaire reminded participants that all
questions were optional to answer). I also introduced a question that asked, “Are there any other aspects
of your identity that you would like to share? (e.g., nationality, religion, sexual orientation, parental status...). As with
the other questions, this is optional.” Although not all participants chose to fill in an answer to this

60
question, many shared additional aspects of their identity so that I was able to capture these aspects
in participants’ own words.
Recruitment Procedures/Participants
To identify the types of candidates described above, I approached sampling in three ways:
(1) I accessed my network (i.e., friends, former coworkers, acquaintances) to interview eligible
participants directly (n = 7), or to help identify candidates whom I would later interview (n = 10); (2)
I used strategic sampling in which participants whom I interviewed referred me to other candidates
who met my criteria (n = 7), and (3) I conducted searches for workers in the tech industry who
indicated their profession in their Twitter bio (which I cross-referenced with LinkedIn), and cold-
called such candidates, resulting in interviews (n = 6). Below I briefly outline each of the three
strategies in more detail.
Participants From Within My Network. A little more than half of my participants
originated from my own network (n = 17): whether it was employees in tech companies whom I
knew directly, or who were referred to me by other tech employees I know personally who were not
eligible for the study (often men). More specifically, seven participants originated from my direct
contacts, and 10 participants were referred to me by my contacts not eligible for the study (either
they did not fit demographic criteria, or they did not work in the tech industry).
Strategic Sampling. As mentioned previously, another sampling method I employed was
strategic sampling (otherwise known as snowball sampling). After almost every interview, I would
ask participants if they would consider connecting me to another person they know who would meet
my sampling criteria. This strategy resulted in seven participants recommended by earlier
participants. I recognize limitations with the strategic sampling method, however. For one,
participants may have recommended their friends (or at least, close colleagues), who may have
similar perspectives—so, it is possible that some opinions were overrepresented in the data due to

61
finding participants this way. However, because this only resulted in less than a third of the
participants, I am not overly concerned that much homogeneity in perspective came from the
strategic sampling method.
Cold-Calling Approach (And Reflecting on Challenges to Recruit Diverse
Candidates). Although I went into this study fully aware of statistics related to a lack of racial and
ethnic diversity in tech companies (Brown, 2018; Williams, 2018; Castleberry-Singleton, 2018), I
(perhaps, naively) did not fully anticipate how difficult it would be to recruit women and nonbinary
people of various ethnic/racial identities, especially Black and Latinx people. I realized midway
through the interview process that strategic sampling was not resulting in many Black and Latinx
referrals (in other words, when a participant referred me to another person to interview, the new
participant was often white—even when the original participant was a person of color). I also was
not receiving many referrals to nonbinary participants. To mitigate this recruiting challenge, I used a
secondary strategy on Twitter by searching for users who had the certain words or phrases in their
profiles, such as “Latina in Tech,” “Black Woman in Tech,” “enby in tech,” or “nonbinary in tech.”
I interviewed six of my participants from cold-calling on Twitter, which resulted in me hearing
perspectives from two more Black women, one more Latina woman, and three more nonbinary
people than my original sample.
I recognize that this recruitment strategy to search by key terms or phrases on social media
may diminish generalizability of the study to an extent. If a tech worker lists aspects of their identity
(i.e., race, ethnicity, gender) in their Twitter profile, it is possible that they tend to think more often
or more deeply about how their identity may impact their experiences at work than someone who
does not label themselves in their profile as such. However, risking lower generalizability was well
worth it to me to find a greater representation of Black, Latinx, and nonbinary participants for my

62
study (although, in future studies on this topic, I hope to interview an even greater oversampling of
people with these underrepresented identities).
Interview Procedures
After first contacting participants through email, text, or through social media, I invited each
participant for an interview. I let participants know that while a Zoom interview was my preference
(and that they were welcome to keep their camera off if desired), a phone call would also work. As
previously mentioned, after we designated a time during which the interview could take place, I
asked the participant if they would fill out an anonymous and confidential pre-interview
questionnaire so I could better understand the demographics/identities of my participants (see
questions in Appendix B). I let the participants know in the instruction email as well as in the
Google form of the questionnaire itself that all questions were optional.
I gave special attention to the design of the question on the questionnaire that asked, “Are
there any other aspects of your identity that you would like to share? (e.g., nationality, religion,
sexual orientation, parental status....). As with the other questions, this is optional.” By leaving this
question open-ended, I hoped that it would make participants feel comfortable enough, yet not
pressured to share certain aspects of their identity. This question was particularly fruitful, as
participants shared aspects of their identity I did not directly ask earlier in the question. Participants
shared that they were caretaking for their physically disabled spouse, that they were bisexual, that
they were formerly Catholic but now agnostic, that they were non-neurotypical, a single mom, or
many other aspects that could not have been covered by a question with radio-button answers.
At the beginning of each interview, I thanked each participant for their time, and reminded
them that all of their data would remain anonymous and confidential. I provided an overview of my
professional background and what interested me in the topics we were going to dive into that day—
specifically, how my work in industry inspired me to study power dynamics and identity in

63
workplaces. I perceived that my mention of my previous work experience seemed to help
participants to warm up to me. Perhaps some participants were skeptical that an academic was
studying these work-related issues and had no direct experiences with them, so my mention of my
previous career possibly gave some participants more confidence that I would understand their
perspectives more fully. I also asked participants if I could record their interviews for note-taking
and transcription purposes. All but one participant agreed to have me record; for the exception, I
took notes by hand.
Most interviews lasted approximately one hour—only one interview was a half-hour due to
the participant’s scheduling constraints. Although I met with most participants only once, I did meet
with one participant twice, resulting in roughly two hours of productive interviewing with one
individual.
Results from Pre-Interview Questionnaire and Participant Demographics
From the aforementioned pre-interview questionnaire, I was able to calculate the following
demographics/identities that were self-reported from my participants (a table outlining these
descriptive statistics can also be found in Table 2 and Table 3 in Appendix D). Twenty-six of the 30
interviewees (87%) identified as "female" or as a "woman" and used she/her pronouns, three of the
30 interviewees (10%) identified as "genderqueer" or "nonbinary" and used they/them pronouns,
and one interviewee (3%) identified as a "non-binary woman" and uses she/they pronouns.
In terms of self-reported race/ethnicity, 19 participants (63%) identified as white, with three
of these 19 participants identifying with an additional ethnicity (white/Latina, white/native
American, and white African). One participant identified exclusively as Latina, four participants
identified as Black, with one identifying as being also south Asian, and seven identified as Asian,
with five of these seven identifying specifically as south Asian.

64
The participants ranged from age 25 to age 53 with a median age of 32. They reported as
working in their industry (e.g., software) for anywhere from 6 months to 30 years, with a median of
5.25 years, and they reported working at their current organization anywhere from one month to 21
years, with a median of 1.25 years. When asked how much time they spend in meetings in a typical
week, respondents replied in the range of three to 40 hours with a median of 10.75 hours.
In response to the open-ended question of, “Are there any other aspects of your identity that you
would like to share? (e.g., nationality, religion, sexual orientation, parental status…) As with the other questions, this
is optional,” five participants reported that they were queer, three reported being neurodivergent, two
reported being immigrants, and five reported being parents.
Seventeen (56.7%) of participants worked in computing or engineering roles (with job titles
like software developer, research engineer, and CTO), and 13 participants (43.3%) worked in non-
computing roles pertaining (with job titles like product analyst, project manager, executive assistant,
and marketing/communications manager). As for status/role level at work, 56.7% of participants
worked in non-management positions, 16.7% worked at a manager level, 13.3% worked at a director
level, and 13.3% worked at an executive level in respective tech companies.
Interview Guide
Based on my review of literature and my formation of research questions, I created an
interview guide that had five sections: (1) warm-up questions inquiring about attitudes toward the
participant’s company culture, (2) questions about the participant’s emotions in and toward work
meetings, (3) questions regarding the participant’s identities (e.g, gender, race/ethnicity, age) and
how these might factor into their experiences in work meetings, (4) questions about the participant’s
views toward in-person versus virtual meetings and how these contexts may impact
underrepresented workers, and (5) an imaginative question inspired by civic imagination work that
asked participants to envision what their ideal work meeting would look like. I followed standard in-

65
depth, semi-structured interviewing strategies by inquiring about examples of participants’
memorable experiences or incidents) related to these questions (Miles, Huberman, & Saldana, 2019;
Charmaz, 2005).
The first section included some broader warm-up questions, asking the participant about
their current role at their company (if currently employed), as well as their perceptions of their
organization’s broader culture. I was sure to clarify terms like “culture” for participants, noting they
could talk about how their employer seems to treat employees, what the environment feels like,
and/or the values their employer seems to care about, or any other aspects that came to mind.
After these warm-up questions, I dove into questions more specifically about the
participants’ attitudes toward and emotions in work meetings for the second section. The purpose of
this section was (1) to get participants to start conceptualizing work meetings as a layered point of
inquiry on which they could elaborate, and (2) to understand participants’ broad emotions in and
toward work meetings. In the beginning of this section of the interview, I went over what my
conception of a work meeting was going into our conversation so we could align when using this
term. Specifically, I said to participants, “One aspect I’m particularly interested in understanding
more about is your experiences in work meetings at your current company. Although I recognize
that the term ‘work meeting’ is quite broad, I’m envisioning an interactive meeting (for example, not
a one-way streamed broadcast conference call) with a group of three or more people centered
around some shared goals or topics of discussion related to work. This term can apply to virtual or
in-person meetings.” With some participants, I remarked that if they wanted to answer a question
with a story about a one-on-one meeting because it served as a particularly potent memory, that
would be fine, but that my golden example of a meeting would be comprised of three or more
people because I believe nuances change from a group dynamic to a one-on-one conversation.

66
Some interview questions in this second section included, “How would you describe your
general attitudes toward work meetings at your current job? For example, are they something you
think are useful or not useful; are they something you look forward to or dread? I recognize this may
differ based on what meeting you’re thinking about, so however you’d like to answer the question;”
“Can you think about a time when you experienced really positive emotions in a work meeting? If
so, what was the source of those positive feelings?” and, “Can you think about a time when you
experienced more negative emotions in a work meeting? What was the source of those negative
feelings?” If the participant was able to come up with a particularly negative encounter in a work
meeting, I would follow up by asking, “Did you do anything to cope with these negative feelings?
(For example, did you debrief with a trusted colleague, vent to a family member or friend, bring up
your concerns with a supervisor, etc.?). If yes, what did you do, and if no, why not?”
In this second section, I often prefaced my questions by telling participants, “Now I am
going to ask you to think back on a time and tell me a story about it.” One of my goals with
prefacing these questions this way was so that participants would be more likely to think of a
descriptive incident rather than a general trend in meetings (e.g., someone tells me about a specific,
detailed story in which they felt belittled by a coworker in a meeting, rather than vaguely describing a
general set of encounters of this theme). I also encouraged storytelling to align with Solórzano and
Yosso’s (2002) definition of a counter-story. The authors describe this concept as “a method of telling
the stories of those people whose experiences are not often told (i.e., those on the margins of
society)” and consider the counter-story as a tool for “exposing, analyzing, and challenging the
majoritarian stories” (p. 32). Delgado (1989) poses that stories can serve several functions for
oppressed out-groups (or in this case, we can think of systemically minoritized workers in the tech
industry). These stories can promote psychic self-preservation for participants, help mitigate their
own subordination, and provide restoration and healing by amplifying their voices (especially for

67
those who have previously suffered in silence and/or have not had an outlet to discuss these topics).
Overall, Solórzano and Yosso (2002) posit that counterstorytelling as a leg of critical race
methodology encourages research based on the experiences and knowledge of historically
minoritized groups, as researchers and participants can use these stories to challenge racism, sexism,
and classism while working toward social justice.
The third section addressed participant identity (e.g., gender, ethnicity/race, ability/disability,
sexual orientation, and age) and related experiences in and attitudes toward work meetings. The
purpose of this section was to start to understand subjectivities in work meetings through the lens of
reflecting on one’s identity: in other words, I hoped participants would consider what it is like to
participate in a work meeting at a tech company as perhaps one of a few women or nonbinary
people, along with other underrepresented identities. Questions in this section included, “Do you
ever reflect on aspects of your own identity such as gender, race, age, role, when you are in or
reflecting on a work meeting?”, “Do you think aspects of your identity tend to influence your
emotions in or about a meeting? Or is your identity not really a factor in your emotions in and
toward work meetings?” “Do you think aspects of your identity influence how much you can
achieve your goals in a meeting (such as participating, communicating necessary information,
determining plans)? Or is your identity not really a factor in achieving what you want to achieve in
work meetings?”.
The fourth section pertained to in-person versus virtual meetings, participants’ attitudes
toward each of these contexts, and how each meeting style may impact the experiences of
systemically minoritized employees. Questions in this section included, “How much do you think
your emotions toward your work meetings depend on whether meetings are in-person or virtual?
Why or why isn’t the online/in-person dynamic a factor in your eyes?”; “What are your attitudes
toward the features in online meeting platforms that don’t exist in in-person meetings? For example,

68
chat functions, touch-up features, hand-raising, or the ability to turn camera or audio off and on?”;
and, “Do you think any of these virtual features are beneficial or hindering to underrepresented
employees in meetings? Why or why not?”
The final section of the interview guide (before taking care of some housekeeping items)
only contained one question: “If you were in charge of designing better meeting practices or
communicating certain priorities in meetings, what would you do? (By ‘better,’ I mean things like
making employees feel higher senses of safety, inclusion, and ability to reach their goals.) How
would you imagine the meeting working?” In order to end on a lighter, more hopeful note for the
participants (keeping in mind concepts of emotional labor and how the conversation might impact
the rest of their day), I purposefully posed this question at the end. I elaborated on the question with
participants by frequently saying, “Feel free to be as pie-in-the-sky creative as you want to be, or if
you want to be more practical, that’s fine too.” After the interview questions, I thanked participants
for their time, and asked if they had questions for me or would like to state anything else on the
topic that we didn’t get a chance to touch on.
Ethical Procedures
Fontana and Frey (2014) note that researchers should not see interviews as “neutral tools of
data gathering but rather active interactions between two (or more) people leading to negotiated,
contextually based results” (p. 698). This reminder is crucial when considering analyzing narratives:
if I were to look at interviews merely as objective data-mining opportunities, I would miss the
richness of the subjective experience of the participants. Instead, I have made a strong effort to take
an “empathetic approach” (Fontana and Frey, 2014, p. 696) in which I viewed myself as a partner
and advocate in favor of the participants whom I am studying. Part of this empathetic approach
involved taking special care when participants shared upsetting or even traumatic experiences with
me in interviews—I employed empathetic interpersonal approaches and follow-up techniques that I

69
hoped would mitigate any ensuing negative reactions from talking about these incidents in our
interviews. I was mindful of checking in with participants throughout the interview (e.g., by asking
them if they needed to take a stretch break, grab tea, or anything else at various points of the
interview). Similar to best practices in therapeutic settings, I took care to acknowledge and validate
the participants’ experiences throughout the conversation (e.g., by commenting, “that sounds really
difficult—I’m so sorry that happened to you. Thank you for sharing that with me.”). Also, at the end
of my conversations—or at least at the end of hearing a particularly difficult experience a participant
went through—I would remind them that this does not need to be the last time that we will talk, and
if they wanted to debrief on or seek resources related to their troubling experiences, I would be
more than happy to meet with them again in whatever capacity they found comfortable. Through
these practices and more, I made an effort to employ a reflexive approach to this methodology to
stay thoughtful about how I would approach the interviews—not just on what information I hoped to
extract (Fontana and Frey, 2014, p. 697).
Data Analysis
Data Pre-Processing for Analysis
For the 24 interviews that I was able to record over Zoom, I used the built-in transcription
feature and then cleaned up the transcriptions (correcting for accuracy and syntax) while listening
back to the recordings of the interviews. For the interviews that took place over Zoom (without
being recorded) or over the phone, I transcribed the interviews by hand. I then entered each
transcript into atlas.TI, a qualitative data analysis computer software program. The transcripts of
interviews for this dissertation totaled 624 single-spaced pages.
Stages of Data Analysis
In accordance with Strauss and Corbin’s (1990) approach to grounded theory research, I
began my data analysis with open coding, followed by axial coding, and followed lastly by selective

70
coding. With Strauss and Corbin’s principle that “data collection and analysis are interrelated
processes” (p. 6), I was guided by my research questions and interviews to probe topics according to
several main themes (including but not limited to, “intersectionality,” “group composition,” and
“virtual meeting technology”)—ultimately using the principle that “analysis is necessary from the
start, because it is used to direct the next interview and observations” (p. 6).
In the open coding phase, I attached codes to blocks of quotes from my interview
sparticipants, typically in chunks of one to three sentences. Strauss and Corbin assert that “open
coding and the use it makes of questioning and constant comparisons enables investigators to break
through subjectivity and bias. Fracturing the data forces preconceived notions and ideas to be
examined against the data themselves” (p. 13). Some examples of these codes were “anger,”
“stereotyping,” and “Zoom hand-raising feature.” I assigned codes based on what I saw represented
in the data, keeping in that mind the themes and patterns that I had observed throughout the initial
interview process. Typically, I would create a conceptual label in this initial round based on what
seemed relevant or connected to existing literature, what topics seemed to be repeated often, if
something surprised me or contradicted my expectations, or if my interviewee explicitly stated that it
was important (Löfgren, 2013). Strauss and Corbin address the power of repeating cases, saying, “A
single incident is not a sufficient basis to discard or verify a hypothesis. To be verified (that is,
regarded as increasingly plausible) a hypothesis must be indicated by the data over and over again”
(p 13). As I read through each transcript line-by-line, I would consider whether a quote should be
assigned a code I already created, and/or if it contained information that required a new code.
Ultimately, this process resulted in me creating 172 initial codes.
Once I had read through all the transcripts and labeled the snippets with these codes, I began
axial coding. I took these codes and the quotes that were assigned to each of them and started
grouping the codes into larger categories based on the themes I was seeing. Ultimately, I created 14

71
main categories (with several sub-categories when appropriate) based on the initial 172
codes. Examples of these 14 main categories are “overpreparing for meetings,” “feeling judged by
appearance,” and “facing scrutiny for emotional displays.”
For the selective coding step, I went back through the 14 main categories and their
accompanying sub-categories with my research questions in mind to identify three overarching
themes corresponding to my three analysis chapters. Again, my research questions were,
(RQ1) What common factors in work meeting communication hinder or foster the wellbeing (i.e.,
inclusion, psychological safety, and self-efficacy) of minoritized employees?, (RQ2) Does the
composition of a work team across identities and demographics influence the wellbeing (i.e.,
inclusion, psychological safety, and self-efficacy) of minoritized employees in work meetings? And
lastly, (RQ3) How do virtual meetings impact the wellbeing (i.e., inclusion, psychological safety, and
self-efficacy) of systemically minoritized employees compared to in-person meetings? These research
questions helped me to de-prioritize categories that did not seem as relevant to the current study and
highlight categories that could help inform the research questions.
After figuring out which categories would best attach to each research question, I divided up
the remaining categories into three parts: one for each research question. Next, I went through all
quotes that were sorted into each category with its relevant research question in mind to analyze the
data. Ultimately, I subscribed to Strauss and Corbin’s assertion that surprises in the analysis or
contrasts to what existing theory might predict can cause the researcher to add to nuance to the
original research agenda in order to “include various new, provisional, conditional relationships.”
The authors note, “Doing so makes the theory conceptually denser, and makes the conceptual
linkages more specific. The analyst can says ‘Under these conditions, action takes this form, whereas
under these other conditions, it takes another’” (p. 14).

72
Chapter 4: Intersectional Ambiguity and Sensemaking of
Emotions and Behaviors in Work Meetings
Participants who recounted facing bias or discrimination due to various intersecting
identities expressed that they were unsure exactly why or even if they were facing bias or
discrimination: was it because of their gender? Their race? Neither? Both? Often, participants would
almost work through these questions out loud to me, seemingly second-guessing themselves or at
least trying to parse through their experiences and make sense of them. Participants commonly
would question whether they were facing any sort of bias or discrimination at all—according to
them, maybe it was all in their heads.
For those of us hearing about these experiences secondhand—especially when the
participant is questioning the motivations themselves—we cannot objectively know (I will resist
going into debates of epistemology here) whether white supremacy and/or misogyny and/or
heteronormativity are the main drivers for these offenses in these situations (though we can
wholeheartedly suspect it). However, what we can feel confident about is that the participants who
reflect on these interactions and ponder why these discouraging events are happening are facing a
sort of resource depletion that those in privileged demographics are not facing.
5

The first scholarly viewpoint I employ that helps to frame this analysis is from Crenshaw’s
original writings (1989) on intersectionality. She describes how,
Discrimination, like traffic through an intersection, may flow in one direction,
and it may flow in another. If an accident happens in an intersection, it can be
caused by cars traveling from any number of directions and, sometimes, from all
of them. Similarly, if a Black woman is harmed because she is in an intersection,
her injury could result from sex discrimination or race discrimination.… But it

5
At least, for the most part—of course, we do hear this emerging rhetoric that cishet white men are facing oppression due to their
race, gender, and sexual orientation. But from a critical perspective—and even from a perspective that considers that the
overwhelming majority of workers in tech companies are white cishet men—I will confidently move forward with the argument that
systemically minoritized people along identity lines face oppression that privileged classes under forces like white supremacy and
heteropatriarchy do not.

73
is not always easy to reconstruct an accident: Sometimes the skid marks and the
injuries simply indicate that they occurred simultaneously, frustrating efforts to
determine which driver caused the harm (Crenshaw, 1989, as presented in Noble
and Tynes, 2015, p. 3-4).
In this passage, Crenshaw causes us to consider how intersectionality produces ambiguity —and how
the harms that flow from overlapping hegemonic structures can cause confusion, doubt, and an
unnerving atmosphere. Christian (2015) also writes about how intersectionality and overlapping
identities can cause ambiguity in a world that values discrete categories, particularly in the context of
how people of historically minoritized identities produce content that represents them while
traditional producers have often remained hesitant. Christian notes, “These ambiguities within
markets and categories, then, force scholars to look at practices. What do users and producers do
with marginal and intersecting identities? … Marketing requires simplicity; it has little use for
deconstructing categories, because categorizing people is the easiest way to sell products to them”
(p. 98).
While this current study does not focus on the aims of marketing as in the context of
Christian’s quote, perhaps we can think about how organizations with capitalist aims can benefit
from the ease of the categorization of identities (for instance, we can think of companies that fulfill
quotas by hiring Black women without thinking much about retention, intersectional identities of
employees, and cultivating a healthy culture). Christian nods to Davis (2008), who states, “precisely
the vagueness and open-endedness of ‘intersectionality’ may be the very secret to its success” (p. 69).
Thus, previous scholarship has demonstrated how concepts of ambiguity have intertwined with the
idea of intersectionality.
Mason (2018) bridges together Crenshaw’s model of intersectionality and Beauvoir’s concept
of ambiguity (1948) to introduce the term intersectional ambiguity. Mason recounts two tenets of
Beauvoir’s work on ambiguity. The first tenet states the somewhat paradoxical phenomenon that
humans are situated as individuals and are simultaneously defined by a collective. To illustrate this

74
concept within the context of Black women’s lived experiences, including her own, Mason writes,
“My identity (especially as raced and gendered) is an effect of the both/and relationship of my
interiority and exteriority. Hence, my social and political situations and identifications are inherently
ambiguous because of the interplay of self and other” (2018, p. 56). Thus, we can begin to see how
Beauvoir’s concept of ambiguity serves as a useful tool to understand the perspectives and
challenges of minoritized groups.
Beauvoir’s second concept related to ambiguity is that a person may experience their identities
themselves as oppositional. This second concept ties in neatly with intersectionality (though Mason
points out Beauvoir’s erasure of Black women in her writing, a fault which is criticized by many
other scholars; see Deutscher, 2008). Mason describes how Black women often experience tension
between their antiracist and feminist goals, at times “having to choose whether to be guided by their
womanness of their Blackness” (p. 57). Thus, Mason advocates for bringing these two concepts of
intersectionality and ambiguity together, writing,
It should now be established that intersectionality and ambiguity converge in
significant ways: both posit identity and experience as negotiations between
(and sometimes among) oppositional poles; both disrupt binary logics by
insisting on simultaneity; and both forgo the either/or for the both/and.
Insofar as race and gender are experienced by Black women as ambiguous
categories of identity that are both ambiguous in and of themselves and
ambiguous in relation to one another, we might refer to this as describing a
situation of intersectional ambiguity (2018, p. 57).

Mason rightfully centers Black women in her argument—she applies this concept of intersectional
ambiguity to the social media hashtag #blackgirljoy, demonstrating how Black women and girls
utilize this hashtag as a form of resistance against simultaneous forms of oppression. However,
Mason ultimately concludes that the concept of intersectional ambiguity serves as a method of
“depicting and describing the lives of those whose identities are situated at the crossroads of race,
gender, class, and many other identities…” (p. 62) and proffers applicable examples of a white
Appalachian trans-man or an Asian American woman to whom this concept can apply.

75
Because Mason includes Black women and people of other minoritized identities in her
discussion of intersectional ambiguity, I feel comfortable using her concept as a theoretical lens for
many of my participants of diverse identities in this study. Mason posits that intersectional ambiguity
“will allow us to better understand the forms of ethical and political marginalization and resistance
that are engendered by the lived experiences of those who philosophy sometimes cares little to
theorize about” (p. 62) (and frankly, I could argue the same about some sub-fields, such as aspects
of classical organizational communication). I have previously outlined how existing literature on
work meetings (which is sparse already) rarely focuses on critical topics such as power and identity.
Thus, I hope to make an important contribution in this chapter that applies concepts such as
intersectionality, ambiguity, and intersectional ambiguity to the everyday phenomenon of work
meetings. This chapter will outline the experiences of women and nonbinary workers in tech
companies who embody simultaneous, systemically marginalized identities, and specifically, how
they may experience and express intersectional ambiguity when making sense of perceived offenses
in work meetings.
Intersectional Ambiguity in Deciphering the Actions of Colleagues in Work Meetings
Through my coding process, I uncovered two buckets that pertained to ambiguity and
intersectionality in my interviews. In the first bucket, participants commonly expressed a sense of
ambiguity or uncertainty when trying to unpack unpleasant or outright offensive experiences in work
meetings. While participants often suspected that a colleague was belittling them due to certain
prejudices or biases toward the participants’ identities, they often weren’t sure which of their identities
posed as the main target, or if bias was even a factor in the interaction at all. This uncertainty
sometimes led to emotional states such as discomfort, anxiety, and sometimes even frustration with
oneself for possibly “reading too much” into the scenario. Let us recall Mason’s discussion of
intersectional ambiguity and her employment of Beauvoir’s first tenet of ambiguity: human existence

76
is paradoxical because we simultaneously exist as individuals and we are defined by a collective.
Participants who tried to discern the intentions of others in work meetings show how the sense of
individuality interacts with the power of the collective: How are my colleagues perceiving me? How are they
judging me?
For instance, one of my participants, Saanvi, a senior product manager and 30 year-old
Indian American woman, shared that although didn’t typically think that slights in work meetings
were “blatantly or intentionally about being any form of a minority,” she had a confusing experience
which made her stop and question the other party’s intentions. A coworker reprimanded Saanvi in a
meeting for doing a task incorrectly when later it was determined by her other colleagues that she in
fact executed it the right way. Saanvi shared, “I don't know whether the original person's comment
was about me being any form of minority, or worse, just like a power dynamic or something, or him
not getting what he wanted out of what I was working on, or something else right. But I was like
‘oh, that was a really awkward encounter, and I don't know where it came from.’” While Saanvi does
not necessarily show emotional distress from this interaction in this quote, she does indicate
confusion about whether this interaction occurred due to aspects of her minoritized status—
confusion that someone of more privileged identities would likely not encounter.
Another one of my participants who tried to decipher whether prejudice or bias was a factor
in interactions in work meetings was Anaya, a bioinformatics analyst and Black woman in her mid-
30s. Anaya shared with me that she was the only Black person of 100 people in her entire segment
of our organization, and was also one of the only two Black employees with PhDs at the company
out of more than 3,000 employees (with roughly 10 percent of the total employees having PhDs in
the company). Anaya told me that as one of the only Black people with a PhD in her company, she
“carr[ies] that load often and a lot.” She noted that her being a minority in simultaneous ways in her
company “becomes background consideration if things do get—not necessarily personal, but not

77
always business-minded. I wonder, [are these interactions] a reflection of something greater than just
me, or is it a broader connection to like any part of my identity or parts of my training, or those
sorts of things?” Thus, based on Anaya’s descriptions, it is sometimes unclear to her whether these
non-“business-minded” or uncomfortable interactions stem from any bias or judgment toward her
race, educational background, training, or other aspects of her identity.
My conversations with participants also unearthed how mental distress—such as depression
and anxiety—can occur due to the intersectional ambiguity that comes with unsettling interactions in
work meetings. Adrian, a non-binary white, 28 year-old programmer who also shared that they are
neurodivergent, told me a story about how one of their clients disregarded and overlooked them
compared to their cis male colleague. For instance, the client would ignore Adrian’s comments or
messages for days, yet respond to Adrian’s colleague within minutes, and Adrian felt left out of
conversations. Adrian shared with me, “I have a hard time not bringing anxiety and depression in.
Are you reading me as female and that I cannot do these things because I’m female? Or are you
reading me as weird because I’m not female and I'm not male? But also, are you intentionally doing
this, or is this just [your] male oversight?” As this quote demonstrates, Adrian asks a string of rapid-
fire questions that analyze why the client might see them as not being able “to do these things”—if
it’s because the client misgenders Adrian and thus renders them as incompetent because of
misogyny, or the client believes that they are “weird” because Adrian is nonbinary. Adrian remained
unsure which part(s) of their identities might be spurring these distressing patterns, or if they were
intentional or not.
When I asked Adrian if they did anything to cope with the negative emotions that
accompanied this experience, they shared that they later confided in their project manager about the
situation, telling this colleague, “I don't think [their behavior] is, strictly speaking, intentional,
right…but you know what I mean.” And she was like “Oh yeah, I know exactly what you mean,”

78
because she had kind of started picking up on it too. From there, Adrian’s coworkers planned to
advocate for them better—Adrian shared that their project manager said to them something along
the lines of, “In our meeting on Monday with the client, I’m going to take time to say to them, ‘look
at all this stuff and the stuff that Adrian has done. Include them in your fucking questions too.’”
Jaishree, a 30 year-old South Asian woman, shared her experiences as a former customer
success lead and business operations manager in a software company before she quit her job. She
shared with me that there was an aspect of identity that came to mind for her in meetings that she
assumed was not frequently thought about: one’s body size and shape. Jaishree said, “I'm a little bit
larger—like, I’m average. I was working at a fitness tech company and I think that there are
definitely body-image things that come up with how you're presenting yourself, or how you have to
hold yourself, or even just feeling a little bit uncomfortable, like, ‘What are they focused on while
I’m talking?’” When I asked Jaishree if this prejudice toward “larger” employees was something she
explicitly saw happening to her, or if it was something she was internally wondering was occurring
(or both), she elaborated: “I think it was mostly an internal insecurity, but I’ve also definitely seen
where people assume, ‘Oh, maybe that person is a little bit more lazy because they’re a little bit
bigger.’ And for me it was like, ‘Oh I’m around all these super fit people.’” I was thankful to Jaishree
for sharing her observations of and experiences with fatphobia and corresponding stereotypes: we
see in her story how she experiences insecurities about she is perceived in a room, and how she is
“uncomfortable” wondering if people are focusing on her body or if they are paying attention to
what she is saying. Jaishree’s perspective shows that, although she can’t confidently know whether or
not whether people are judging her for her size in meetings, she experiences discomfort in the
process of wondering it is due to stereotyping and prejudice she encountered in the past.
One of the most profound experiences I had with a participant on the topic of
intersectionality and ambiguity was in my conversations with Ji-min, a data scientist and Asian

79
woman in her early 30s. Although I would later find out that Ji-min was not familiar with the
concept of intersectionality, most of what she talked about portrayed this idea precisely. Ji-min
recounted a negative experience in a work meeting from two years prior—and this time-lapse
showed me how heavily this instance affected her. She explained that she entered a work meeting
without “a 100 percent understanding” of the topic at hand—and instead, that she understood
about half of the concept. She starkly stated in our conversation, “That didn’t go well for me.” She
recalled that she had a confrontation with a colleague in the meeting in which he challenged her to
prove her assertion up on the board, and she retreated saying she only knew half of the problem,
and did not have all the answers. From that experience, she told me that if she doesn’t feel 100
percent knowledgeable about a topic before going into a meeting, she “will never speak up again”—
showing quite an intense aftermath from this one interaction in a meeting.
Ji-min and I continued to talk about this experience, and she started to ponder why her
colleague confronted her in such a way, and whether any aspects of her identity cause her colleagues
to doubt her competence. She shared,
Given that I have all of those identities it’s hard to tell [what’s going on]. There
have been other cases at work where people ask me if I know something really
basic or not. It might not be because I’m female or minority, but because I have
a different background. It’s a double whammy. I have a PhD in a science
background; everyone else has a computer science background. So, people have
asked me whether I know simple things or not. They assume I don’t know it. I
don’t know if it’s due to gender and race. They don’t ask other people basic
questions. It’s happened multiple times.

We see in this quote how Ji-min wonders aloud about which aspects of her identity or her
background might cause her colleagues to ask her condescending questions or doubt her capabilities.
Is it her gender? Her race? Her different educational background? I recall her asking these questions
during our interview, lost in thought as if I wasn’t on the other end of the Zoom call for a moment.
Although Ji-min didn’t come to a concrete conclusion, she did confidently assert the last part: that

80
they don’t ask other people basic questions. Ji-min is sure that she is treated differently from her colleagues,
even if she doesn’t precisely know why.
Ji-min throughout our interview talked about her stance as “both a woman and a [racial
minority]” in trying to understand her experiences at a very white, cis male company and industry. In
breaking with my usual interview protocol in which I largely try to stick to the “script” of questions
and possible follow-ups, I felt compelled to ask Ji-min: “Have you ever heard of the term
intersectionality?” I expected that she did—probably because of my standpoint in which I am
surrounded by friends and colleagues who know it from an academic perspective, if not their lived
experiences. However, I was surprised for her to shake her head no. I told her that the term was
originally designated to describe the experiences of Black women facing oppression for their gender
and race—an effect that was more than the sum of its parts, and that the term has since expanded to
apply to people of other intersecting identities, like other women of color. Since Ji-min was receptive
and interested, we talked further about Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality, and after our
interview, she took me up on my offer to send her some further reading materials.
Ji-min and I later met in person for lunch in Southern California when she was on vacation.
She shared how learning the concept of intersectionality had a positive effect on her: she had
thought so much about “being a female and a minority,” and she didn’t know that a discourse
existed describing the simultaneous and expansive oppression and prejudice that those with
overlapping minoritized identities can face. Thus, although this chapter thus far has focused on how
ambiguity is hard to decouple from intersectionality, these conversations with Ji-min show how
reflecting on intersectionality can actually reduce a sense of ambiguity and enhance a feeling of
belonging and camaraderie with others who may be facing similar forces.
Knowing Bias is More Concrete Brings Certainty and Protection

81
A couple of participants showed another interesting pattern: that they found more emotional
stability when they knew—or at least strongly suspected—that an offense in a work meeting was due
to prejudice or bias, instead of feeling a lot of doubt or uncertainty around the event. I talked to
Samantha, a project manager and 30 year-old white woman who started working at a prominent
global tech company after encountering negative experiences previously in consulting. She expressed
frustration with herself for not contributing or speaking up more in meetings in her current role, and
she wasn’t quite sure why she held back. She compared this current situation to her time in
consulting, saying “it was just so obvious [in consulting] that I was being belittled because who I am
as a person. And it just like, this is bullshit—because I’m shorter, I’m five-foot-three, and a female.”
While Samantha showed distress recalling this prejudice, she also described a silver lining when she
knew that bias was happening more blatantly: “When [the prejudice] is very concrete, then I kind of
can also laugh it off and be like ‘this is dumb.’ But I think it's almost worse in the times where you
don't necessarily know. Like, ‘well why am I not contributing? What's wrong with me?’ as opposed
to in the consulting, when it was just like ‘well, duh, these people are idiots.’” Although we see
Samantha as being upset in both scenarios, she indicates that it’s “worse” when she doesn’t know
the source of her insecurities, versus when there is a clear toxic climate in the meeting. Samantha’s
storytelling thus shows the stronghold that ambiguity can have when a person tries to make sense of
interactions in meetings: this uncertainty can be even “more” emotionally distressing for some
participants than outright prejudice.
Another one of my participants, Janice, a white woman in her 50s and a president of a
geographic information systems software company, spoke to me about how the tech industry is
“kind of a young man’s club,” and that she had dealt with imposter syndrome and anxiety from
spending so many years in the industry as a woman, and in later years, as a middle-aged woman. In
the vein of intersectional ambiguity, she recounted a story in which a younger male coworker

82
questioned her abilities and knowledge in standup meetings. After she asserted some information,
the coworker would abruptly ask her questions in front of the group, like, “How do you know this?”
or “How do you get this so fast?” Janice said, “I wasn't sure [if there was some kind of sexism
involved], because it could also be that—I think there are times when people want to be technical,
and, of course, they're trying to adopt this technology and I’m doing my best to help them. But the
fact is, I have 30 years of experience. That's how I know this.” In this quote, Janice brings up two
different facets: gender, and also the fact that her experience on the job far outweighs that of her
younger male colleague (which, although was not explicitly touched on, also correlates with age
differences). Janice continued to share more about her uncertainty as to whether this colleague’s
intentions were more innocent or pernicious, saying, “And so, initially, I thought, maybe it was just
that kind of dichotomy, like I need to give him more tutelage or he just doesn't understand. Or, on
the other hand, you know, maybe there's some ego there.”
Although the first part of this story involved Janice having a muddled sense of this abrasive
colleague’s intentions, she soon gained more clarity after receiving a call from a different young male
coworker—someone whom she trusted and spoke with on a regular basis. This trusted colleague
called her after the confrontational interaction in the standup meeting, and he was “really upset”
about how Janice was treated. He told Janice that he thought the incident could be “gender-related.”
He suspected bias or prejudice as the source of this interaction because he had previous experiences
working with this confrontational colleague in the past, thus having more information and
witnessing more similar incidents.
When I asked Janice how she reacted to his suspicion that it may be due to this individual’s
gender biases, she said, “I was a little surprised, but I was sort of like ‘Oh well, thank you for letting
me know.’ Because it gives me a protection level if I know where someone's coming from. It's a lot
easier than being blindsided by it.” I found this quote fascinating in the context of intersectionality

83
and ambiguity: we start out observing Janice’s unpleasant interaction with her younger male
colleague, and at first she is unsure why this person is doubting her abilities. Then, because a
colleague she trusted checked in on her and provided a warning that this person might be working
from a place of misogyny, she felt emotions such as gratitude and safety, signifying this level of
“protection.” Thus, this anecdote should cause us to consider the power of instilling an ethics of
care with our colleagues: taking time to debrief after troubling incidents in meetings and providing
advisories about similar incidents we may have witnessed could help to reduce the ambiguity and
help validate the other person. As another outcome, as we saw in Janice’s case, this reduction of
ambiguity may soothe emotions and heighten senses of safety and protection for those who
experience such confrontations.
Intersectional Ambiguity in Understanding One’s Own Behaviors and Thought Patterns in
Work Meetings
The second bucket of this theme relates to Beauvoir’s conceptualization of an individual
encompassing oppositional identities, and Crenshaw and Mason’s theorizing that these oppositional
identities can cause tension for people subjected to overlapping forces of oppression via
intersectionality. In this vein, participants who embodied minoritized identities often expressed
confusion around why they themselves were behaving in certain ways. For instance, were they feeling
insecure due to gender identity and the biases they face because of it? Or because they simply didn’t
understand a certain engineering problem? Or both? Or neither? In other words, as opposed to the
first sub-theme in which participants hypothesized about the intentions of their colleagues in work
meetings, in this second sub-theme, participants hypothesized about their own behaviors and thought
patterns in work meetings.
Anaya, my participant who was a Black woman and a bioinformatics analyst whom I
referenced earlier, shared with me how she felt discomfort at her company because it collected data

84
on various aspects of identity, health, and genetics. Anaya had shared some of the issues she had
working with that data: specifically, how she was worried that her employer’s analysis of this data
would further harm marginalized identities and populations. She said, “there are crazy downstream
effects [from this type of research]. I see these effects, and then it actually propagates to inequities
and health. People lose years of life, or they actually lose their life over situations like that.” Anaya
continued to talk to me about her distress over the ethics of these certain projects often discussed in
team meetings at her company, saying, “That's a bigger burden that I carry, specifically because of
my training and what I do. And it might be all in my head, but it's not at the same time.” With this
quote, we see Anaya experiencing some ambiguity, as she expresses simultaneous doubt and
conviction about her observations.
Anaya also recounted how she had brought up these ethical concerns about using this
demographic and genetic data to make certain business or research decisions in work meetings.
When I asked her how others responded in the meeting, she said that her colleagues either said that
they did not feel the same way, or they sent her validating messages after the meeting, which felt
futile to Anaya: “They said that they that they appreciate my point of view, but they told me this in a
Slack message and didn't say it in the actual meeting— so like, validating me after the meeting, which
I appreciate, but it doesn't help.” Here we see Anaya’s frustration that she did not receive this
support in the real-time event of the work meeting, and that words of affirmation sent after the
meeting directly to Anaya—during which bystanders were notably absent—were simply unhelpful.
Anaya’s story about airing her opinions in her work meeting and not feeling supported
should cause us to consider whose opinions are weighed more heavily than others in making
important decisions. My conversation with Logan, a white genderqueer research engineer in their
mid 20s, also helped provide some more nuance to these kinds of questions. Logan worked at a
company which mostly employed white men—especially on the engineering side of the organization.

85
In our conversation, Logan suggested that it can be ambiguous why certain people’s opinions are
taken more seriously than others. In our discussion, Logan mentioned they “personally noticed”
men speaking out more often in meetings than women or non-binary people. Dovetailing off this
observation, Logan also shared:
Another thing I notice often in meetings is how people weigh other people's
comments differently. There are a couple people on my team who have been
with the company for 18 years, or whatever. Those people also tend to skew
older, whiter, and more male, and so I think there's an interesting dynamic
that’s hard to disentangle: is somebody taking them more seriously because
they're a white man, or is somebody taking them more seriously because they're
more experienced?

Logan also followed up saying, “Part of me thinks that there is some real value that comes with that
level of experience.” Here we see Logan trying to sort out why others might take these white, male,
senior colleagues more seriously than those of other identities—and they also seem to sort through
how these different dimensions also impact Logan’s own perceptions of others. Logan refers to four
aspects in this quote: race, gender, age, and seniority at the company; and seems to
compartmentalize it into two sections: are these colleagues taken more seriously because they
embody these privileged identities under white supremacy and patriarchy? Or is it because these
workers have almost two decades of experience at the company? While we will likely not know the
exact answer, the concept of intersectional ambiguity indicates that it may represent a mix of both of
these factors. Also, we should consider how a feedback loop that promulgates underrepresentation
and minoritization likely exists in what Logan is describing. While their organization cannot go back
in time 18 years and hire people from underrepresented gender and racial/ethnic identities, Logan’s
comment shows how imperative it is for tech companies to hire and retain people of systemically
minoritized identities now, or it will remain difficult to untangle seniority from privileged identities
when considering respect for ideas in decades to come. Thus, hiring and retaining people of more
diverse identities could help to break this cycle.

86
Participants also analyzed why they did not speak up more in work meetings at their
respective tech companies: they went through a process with me of weighing which aspects of their
identity or background might be causing their reticence in meetings as it was making them feel self-
conscious. I spoke with Kelsey, a product analyst and white woman in her late 20s; she just joined a
small tech startup a month and a half before our interview. She confided in me that she had thought
frequently about how she was not talking as much in meetings as she wanted to in her current job,
and that she wished that she were speaking up as much as another woman who worked at the
company. She wondered why she was acting so quiet, noting, “I've literally thought, does it have to
do with me being a woman, and being like, ‘I don't really have anything to say?’ Or is it because I
literally just don't know what is going on in the company [because I’m new]? Maybe it has nothing to
do with me being a woman. And that's where I’m like, ‘I don't know.’”
When I asked Kelsey if she did anything to cope with her insecurities about not speaking up
as frequently as she would like, she told me that she raised her concerns with her manager. In
addition to her confiding in him that she wasn’t talking as much in meetings as she would like, she
told her manager that she was also feeling that she didn’t have a good sense of what was going on in
the company a new employee. Her manager reminded her that she had only worked there for a
month and a half, and the engineering team which had been functioning together for two years.
Kelsey told me, “And again, our team is so small, and it's mostly engineer people, so of course
they're kind of going to maybe dominate more.”
The conversation with her manager seemed to soothe some of her negative emotions about
not speaking up enough, but clearly it was still on her mind as she talked to me about it at length.
She said that although she had “no problem” speaking up in a meeting when she felt like she “knew
what she was talking about” (similar to Ji-min’s comments earlier), she also frequently felt unsure
whether she was meeting expectations, and that perhaps this factor influenced how often she spoke.

87
She continued to engage in an analysis about the reasons behind her behaviors and thought patterns
in work meetings, telling me, “And I don't know; is that just my personality? Or does it have
anything to do with that I’m not as confident in my abilities? I kind of need to get to [the point
where I can say], ‘Hey, what I’m sharing is really valuable.’” I felt proud of Kelsey for getting to this
point after her deliberations over why she felt insecure in meetings—whether it was due to being a
woman, a new employee, not having enough information about the ongoings of the company,
and/or perhaps her personality. Although she never landed on a clear answer in our conversation
(my participants rarely did when internally debating such things), she did ultimately assert that her
goal was to get to the point where she believed her opinions in meetings were “really valuable” and
was compelled to share them.
Adrian, the nonbinary white programmer whom I referenced earlier, also shared their
hesitance to share their opinion or speak up in meetings. Adrian contemplated their background and
identities and if any of them played a role in this situation.
So, if we’re talking about like me as a white non-binary AFAB [assigned female
at birth] yeah, I think identity can come into play a little bit. I was raised as
female and with the approach of, "don't speak out, just kind of chill." Which
is kind of not always to the best advantage to make sure that I am noticed in a
meeting.

It was enlightening to hear Adrian connect how they were socialized and raised as a female (in their
words)—complete with gender role expectations that discourage girls and women from being too
outspoken—to their behaviors now as a non-binary person. Adrian brought other aspects of their
identity into play when discussing why they stay on the quieter side in meetings:
But also, that's just my comfort zone and my default. As a neurodivergent
human, it also takes me a second to process: I usually listen, process, and then
respond. But usually by the time I'm ready to respond, we're moving on to
something else and it's not relevant anymore. I feel able to talk in meetings,
and yes, I think there are some barriers to that, but I also think those barriers
are nuanced.

88
Adrian recognizes how being neurodivergent inadvertently puts them at a disadvantage in some
work meetings—I call to mind their previous point that not speaking up as much in meetings may
not work to their best advantage of being noticed in a company. Thus, Adrian’s perspective as a
neurodivergent person could prompt managers to be more mindful of neurodiversity on teams—
although meetings that run quickly might seem more efficient, they also might be silencing voices
who need time to process. Adrian considers overlapping possibilities why they talk less in meetings:
their assigned gender identity and accompanying socializing agents, their experience as a
neurodivergent employee, and also their “comfort zone” of being more selective when speaking—
which may stem from these previously mentioned factors or not.
Other participants discussed needing to feel prepared for a meeting to protect themselves
from scrutiny from coworkers—these participants often tended to be women of color, such as Ji-
min whom we discussed previously. Another one of my participants, Lexi, a Black woman in her
mid 40s and a principal engineering manager at a major software company, shared the pressure she
feels to be very prepared in work meetings due to her identity and seniority. She told me,
Being in the skin that I am in and getting to the point that I have in my career,
it's tremendously important in meetings I come across as strong, competent,
and all those things. So, therefore—and I talk to people about this all the
time— there's a greater amount of rehearsal that I have before a meeting. I
can't just walk in. I find it funny; there's some coworkers I have, and they're
like, [imitates] “I just wing it and say what comes to mind!” But I'm just like,
“Absolutely not.” I spend copious amounts of time planning what I’m going
to say and how I’m going to react. I show up a certain way. Now I find it's
incredibly important that I’m overly prepared for meetings.

As a follow-up question, I then asked Lexi what she predicted might happen if she went into the
meeting like her colleagues who “just wing it” and how she would be perceived accordingly. She
shared that she feels that she has to spend a lot more time preparing for meetings so that she is at
least “95 percent right” (I recall Ji-min’s statement here that she also wouldn’t speak up in a meeting
unless she feels 100 percent right). Lexi continued to share that if she was not completely right in a

89
meeting that someone would “find fault” with what she says. In addition, Lexi perceived her
colleagues “calling it out in a more direct way” with her and being more harsh if she made a mistake
than they did with other people. But although Lexi seemed confident at first when telling me her
observations that she was treated more harshly when she was not fully prepared in meetings, she
soon started hedging. She shared,
And maybe like it's not necessarily a real thing. Like, sometimes I wonder if
this is my perception and that it may not be real. I wrestle with that, too. I
think I’ve earned enough credibility where I don't think necessarily that it’s real
[that they’re treating me different] but it's still a fear. So, yeah, I continue going
down that way [of overpreparing].

In this last quote from Lexi, we see her doubting the validity of her observations: maybe it’s all just
in her head that she is being treated more harshly when she isn’t as prepared as her colleagues.
However, she elaborates that regardless of if it is “real” or not, her fear drives her behavior and she
continues to overprepare for meetings.
This inner monologue maps onto Mason’s concept of intersectional ambiguity: specifically,
that women of color—and she notes especially Black women—can feel tension between aspects of
their identity. I restate Mason’s earlier quote that both intersectionality and ambiguity “posit identity
and experience as negotiations between (and sometimes among) oppositional poles; both disrupt
binary logics by insisting on simultaneity; and both forgo the either/or for the both/and (2018, p.
57).” Mason’s original theorizing mostly addressed the oppositional poles of identity (i.e., Black
women torn between being “guided by their Blackness or womanness” (p. 57). However, with the
interview data in this current study, we can expand upon this concept and show another way that
intersectional ambiguity can “disrupt binary logics by insisting on simultaneity:” minoritized
individuals can both feel at least partial confidence that they are experiencing some form of bias or
prejudice, and yet wonder if it’s “all in their head” at the same time.

90
Shifting to my own personal experiences, I have been learning that it is acceptable, normal,
and even healthy to feel simultaneous but perhaps contrasting emotions at the same time: happiness
and guilt; sadness and gratitude; anger and hope can all exist at once within me. I wonder, too, what
would happen if we encouraged minoritized workers to give themselves grace when grappling
between these seemingly conflicting suspicions: that maybe something racist or sexist or
homophobic or transphobic or ableist or ageist—or all of the above—is going on, or maybe it’s all
in their head. This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t validate our colleagues who suspect that they are
facing oppressive forces in a work meeting. I feel quite the opposite: I have seen very positive
outcomes when a colleague or manager has validated a participant or has even opened the
participant’s eyes to the idea that some systemic, marginalizing forces were at play (as we saw in
Janice’s case with her coworker calling her to warn her that her instigator in meetings may have
some misogynistic motives). But I also observed something surprising that I have recounted in this
chapter: minoritized workers in work meetings often feel an additional layer of emotional distress
because they experience the uncertainty if what they’re seeing is “real” or not.
So, what if we continue to spread the idea that this dual experience of belief and doubt is
normal and common? What if, in addition to telling a colleague that we also think it’s plausible that
someone is being sexist toward them in a meeting, we also say it’s completely okay to be also
wondering if “it’s real” too? And we say that those passing doubts don’t make their experiences in
work meetings less painful or less real to them? And we say that we understand why these doubts add
another layer of frustration? Perhaps this type of caring communication could start alleviating some
of the tremendous weight that stems from the forces of Mason’s intersectional ambiguity. I hope to
encourage the discourse that, especially for minoritized workers, it’s acceptable and common to feel
such contrasting emotions and beliefs at once: the burden of white supremacy and heteropatriarchy

91
alone cause enough of a burden for employees beyond the experience of doubting these forces are
“actually” present or not in work meetings.

92
Chapter 5: Group Diversity and Impacts on Behavior and Belonging
The second major theme I uncovered in my data after conducting a thematic analysis
addressed group composition and impacts on participants in work meetings. In particular, I
observed how group diversity with respect to identity in a meeting (i.e., how many people of
different races, genders, and other aspects of identity were present in a meeting) may correspond
with participants’ reports of emotional support and self-efficacy in these meetings. After coding and
collecting quotes from participants that included perspectives on group diversity in meetings and
corresponding impacts on their wellbeing, I reflected on the theories in the literature review in
Chapter 2 to see how this data may support, refute, and/or bring nuance to relevant theoretical
lenses.
One such theoretical lens to understand how participants grappled with group diversity was
Mumby’s (2005) previously discussed argument that scholars should view resistance and control in
organizations through a dialectical lens. Viewing these two forces as “mutually implicative and
coproductive” (p. 21) and understanding their corresponding tensions can lead to change and
transformation in organizational cultures. Within the context of this chapter analyzing group
diversity/composition and power dynamics, Mumby’s concept of a dialectical understanding of
control and resistance can help us to understand how “stakeholders and interest groups engage with,
resist, accommodate, reproduce, and transform the interpretive possibilities and meaning systems
that constitute daily organizational life” (p. 22). As I have stated before, one contribution of this
current study is to consider the influence that meetings have on these “meaning systems that
constitute daily organizational life”—and how these meaning systems can also be reflected in
meetings.
Let us consider Scott et al.’s (2015) previously discussed metaphor of work meetings as a
cultural ritual that shapes and reinforces organizational values, persistently socializes group

93
members, and instills and reifies power differentials. This metaphor helps to shed more light upon
Mumby’s assertion that this dialectical approach of resistance and control “insists on the
contingency of organizational life, exploring how even the most sedimented practices are precarious
and—to a certain degree—arbitrary” (p. 38). Thus, we can see how the dialectic of resistance and
control—and the tension that stems from their simultaneous existence in organizations—may have
the power to form organizational change and transformation through the vessel of work meetings.
Chapter 2 helped set the stage for this chapter by reviewing scholarship on concepts such as
masculinity, difference, the minoritization of women in organizations, and how dominant and
underrepresented parties respond to and grapple with their status in workplaces (e.g., Ashcraft, 2005;
Buzzanell, 1994; Berdahl, et al, 2018; Forbes, 2002; McDonald, 2015). Ultimately, this current
chapter will build off some of the organizational observations in this scholarship and incorporate
previously discussed scholarship on group diversity mechanisms (e.g., Mannix and Neale, 2005; Lau
and Murnighan, 1998), and zoom in to the more specific context of work meetings to see what
phenomena may arise within these environments.
A Note on Incorporating the Information Processing Approach Versus the Categorization
Approach
As previously discussed in Chapter 2, literature on group diversity typically adheres to either
the categorization approach or the information processing approach (Mannix and Neale, 2005). The
categorization approach examines the nuances and complications that may come with a group of
various identities and demographics, and the information processing approach primarily focuses on
diversity related to educational background or functional expertise instead of identity and
demographic-based diversity. My participants at times would assert that having a more diverse team
(or at least a team in which older, cisheterosexual white men did not make up most of the group)
was desirable—thus, this data may seem to fall under the more optimistic information processing

94
approach. However, I largely do not see my data as mapping onto the information processing
approach because (a) these desires contend with identity/demographics, which tend to be “at odds”
(Mannix and Neale, 2005, p. 42) with this paradigm, and (b) the desire for greater diversity did not
appear to stem from individuals seeking greater access to varying skills and contacts as this paradigm
does, but from minoritized workers wanting to feel more included and to avoid being stereotyped by
others. Because my data did not seem to map onto this information processing approach, I focused
on how my data would map onto the competing paradigm of the categorization approach.
Out-Group Members in Meetings and Susceptibility to Stereotyping
Many of my participants—who again, all embodied underrepresented gender identities
(often in addition to other underrepresented identities, such as race, neurodiversity, etc.) in tech
organizations—discussed that they felt more prone to being stereotyped by their colleagues in
meetings because they stood out as different in one or more ways. Ji-min, an Asian woman and data
scientist, explained that although she didn’t feel that her gender was important in work meetings, she
felt that others at her company paid attention to her gender because there were so few women. She
recounted that out of 100 engineers, only three were women, and she was the only woman who was
a racial minority. She told me, “If I can trust other people to not look at my gender or ethnicity, I
would not have this issue or concern. But I kind of assume that I might stand out because I look
different. It has to do with stereotypes: there are so few females in engineering or STEM. I’m afraid
that will have a negative consequence on how people view me.” When I asked Ji-min if there was
anything that would make her less fearful of being judged because of these stereotypes, she said, “If
the team were more diverse, I wouldn’t feel that way; I wouldn’t be one among few; I would be one
among many.”
Ji-min’s view that others scrutinize her in meetings because she is “one among few”
corresponds closely with the phenomenon of social categorization, in which people place themselves

95
and others into social and demographic categories. I harken back to Mannix and Neale’s (2005)
explanation of the potential negative outcomes of such social categorization, as it “activates
differential expectations for in-group and out-group members” and “creates the atmosphere for
stereotyping, in which out-group members are judged more stereotypically than in-group members
are” (p. 41). In other words, social categorization → in-groups/out-groups → stereotyping of out-
group members. Within this model, Ji-min fears that she stands out because she “looks different”
than the majority (and thereby will be sorted into the out-group), and then will be subjected to more
stereotyping due to her gender and race.
Janice, a white woman in her early 50s and a president of a small software company, also
shared that she felt animosity and exclusion in work meetings based on difference of identity. She
noted, “Oftentimes I’m the only woman on a call. Unfortunately, there are people I work with that
just don’t care for that, and I ignore it, but when every morning, someone says, ‘Okay fellas’ or
‘Alright gents,’ it can get to me.” Janice later elaborated on the hostility she faced on calls, which I
will explore later in this chapter—but it is worthwhile noting how the gendered language she faced
“every morning” in a meeting that erased her gender identity consequently made her feel that she
was sorted into an out-group. A conversation with River, a white non-binary person in their mid-40s
and a senior technical writer at a major computing company, also discussed feeling ostracized by
gendered language that only addressed men in meetings. River shared,
I’ve noticed that a lot of the traditional white male IT people are less… aware.
I’m being very nice [with how I say this] now [laughs]. And I’ve noticed in
meetings—I mentioned this to my manager last week—that I'm going to count
the number of times, he says "guys." The thing is, though, because of how I
look and how I sound, I’m “one of the boys” and that's always one of the
bigger challenges that I'm having to deal with now, where I have to put my
pronouns everywhere, like in this meeting as well.

In this quote, River explains how their appearance may cause others to misgender and categorize
them as a white man, meaning others would sort River into the dominant group in their industry.

96
Although being perceived as belonging to the in-group had its advantages, it did not outweigh the
emotional toll of feeling overlooked due to gendered language (as colloquial as it might be) for River
in this situation. Additionally, when considering Mumby’s (2005) dialectical lens of resistance and
control, we see River resisting this language that rhetorically addresses men and masculinity, while
still operating under the control of management by keeping them in the loop of this initiative.
River did expand on these advantages of being perceived as “one of the boys” among the
pain of being misgendered, and how they capitalized on these benefits to help other minoritized
employees in meetings. They shared,
I don't think my identity affects what I can get done in a meeting because I'm
in an industry where, because of how I look and how I sound, people are going
to listen to me anyway. Have I taken advantage of that? Sure. I try to be a little
bit more aware of people who are not white males in a meeting then—if
somebody, let's say a woman colleague wants to say something and it's being
spoken over, then I will try and draw attention to her. In that context it's not
about me, but I try and be more aware of who else is in that context, or that
environment and let them finish.

Thus, we see how someone categorized in an in-group—even when it is inaccurate and causes
further pain through being misgendered—can motivate them to share its accompanying benefits and
help those who may face bias in the outgroup.
The previous examples so far have addressed groups dominated by a majority—usually
white, cisheterosexual men—and how people who are outside of that majority can feel excluded or
stereotyped. Interestingly, my data showed that people in the out-group can continue to face
detriments even when there are several minoritized members in meeting. As an example of this, I
spoke with Tina, a white woman in her early 40s and a marketing communication lead at a
computing and research company. Tina shared an instance in which having more women in a meeting
with the male CEO made the CEO more hesitant to pursue works of diversity and inclusion. She
explained how she and two other women coworkers went to their CEO and recommended that the
company depict more women employees in marketing materials—specifically, they wanted to have a

97
photographer take pictures of women in leadership roles at the company so their website could
reflect their diversity. However, the presence of three women in a meeting saying that the company
had a diversity and representation issue made him skeptical that there was even a problem—even
though the company overwhelmingly employed mostly white men. Tina said, “In his eyes—as a
middle-aged white man—he’s looking around and seeing, ‘I’m in a meeting with a recruiter woman,
communications woman, and an education-department woman.’ So, he’s in a meeting with three
women telling him there’s a diversity issue.” Within the context of social categorization, this
anecdote relates to Nelson and Klutas’s (2000) assertion that when a group composition is more
diverse, the sorting behavior of categorizing people by demographics has stronger effects on the
perceptions of group members. Through this lens, the male CEO may have focused on the fact that
there were several women in the meeting (even though women were largely underrepresented in the
organization), and thus perceived the women as too sensitive about gender equity concerns.
Another example that seems to support the idea that greater group diversity may create
stronger categorization effects came from my participant Catalina, a Latina community manager in
her late 20s at a tech startup. Catalina mentioned that her work team consisted of all Latine people:
she said that because she feels comfortable with “her fellow Latinos and the diversity ratio in the
company,” her identity didn’t come to mind “at all” in work meetings. However, she detailed her
experience in situations being the only Latina in many work settings, whether it was a networking
event with investors or talking to CEOs of other startups. She said, “there are very few of us [Latine
people] in tech, so that aspect of identity definitely comes to mind in those situations because you
always want to feel like people understand your background and where you come from and the
cultural differences that are implied in these situations.” Catalina’s experience supports Stroessner’s
research (1996), which indicated that individuals in demographically diverse groups categorized
themselves by their demographic attributes more than people in more demographically homogenous

98
groups. In this case, when Catalina was present in her all-Latine tech startup, aspects of her identity
did not come to mind “at all” in work meetings—but we do see thoughts about identity and
difference activated when she was in groups of mixed identities and in which she is often a sole
Latina.
Similar to Catalina, who focused more heavily on her identity when she felt different from
others in the room, Naomi, a white woman and applied scientist at a major tech company in her
early 30s, discussed how she was the only woman on her team of eight people. Though her
experiences at her job sounded generally positive, she discussed her anxieties around sounding
“stupid” in a meeting, and how this fear might be alleviated if more women were in the room. She
shared,
If I was in a room full of women, I wouldn’t feel as bad saying stupid stuff
[laughs]. There’s always a fear of sounding like an idiot just because of the
inflection of my voice, so I feel like I can’t talk with my hands too much; I
need to tone it down. I’m not sitting in a meeting telling myself, “Don’t use
your hands.” But it’s there. And by stupid stuff, I mean more thinking out loud
and spit-balling. My thoughts aren’t always very intelligent; sometimes I take a
few steps to realize something obvious.

When I asked Naomi if any men on her team tended to think out loud, she said that some on her
team did. In response, I proposed that perhaps she wouldn’t be the only person without a fully
formed thought before speaking, so maybe she could be somewhat comforted by this commonality.
She responded, “That's true, but there's the fear that I’ll be judged more harshly. They don't mean
to; I don't think anyone was sitting there thinking ‘Oh, what an idiot woman.’ But I think just as
much as you try, it's just something that happens, even with best intentions. Yeah absolutely, I have
that fear.” Thus, Naomi’s heightened anxiety around being stereotyped as incompetent due to her
gender is activated by her awareness of being the only woman in the room. Naomi’s thought
patterns here also support Stroessner’s (1996) assertion that people in demographically diverse
groups categorize themselves by their demographic attributes more than people in more

99
demographically homogenous groups—she says if she were in a room of all women, then perhaps
she would not feel that she stands out and is being scrutinized further. In addition to literature on
group diversity, we can also look to previously discussed scholarship (e.g., Ashcraft, 2005; Ashcraft
and Pacanowsky, 1996; Buzzanell, 1994) to consider how tenets of masculinity in organizations and
Masculinity Contest Cultures (Berdahl et al., 2018) can be stoking women’s fear of scrutinization.
While the group diversity literature and gendered organizations literature have addressed these
scenarios separately, I have not come across many studies that combine the two.
One question I pose about this finding—that people felt more likely to categorize
themselves by their demographic attributes when they were in more demographically-diverse
meetings—is whether we can view this phenomenon in a positive light in certain scenarios. Previous
literature seems to take on a neutral (if not negative) tone when interpreting these situations—
scholars note that categorizing oneself into a demographic can lead to reductive perceptions or
stereotypes in a group (which I agree is a negative outcome). However, I do not see it as inherently
harmful to reflect on your own identities in a work meeting, as long as it does not perpetuate
insecurities or prejudice. For instance, I assert that it would behoove white employees to consider
their whiteness more often in meetings, as whiteness is often seen as a neutral or default state due to
forces like white supremacy and imperialism (Daniels, 2009). If, in this scenario, white people are
more aware of their whiteness and perhaps of their belonging to a dominant group in an industry,
they may remain more sensitive to minoritized workers and more willing to proverbially pass the
microphone (or any other kind of power in meetings) to those whose voices are not heard as often.
We do see this occurrence in River’s experience, in which they take advantage of the fact that people
perceive them as a white man instead of a nonbinary person to bolster the voices of women—but
this seems to be rare and perhaps it is helped by the fact that River is also part of a minoritized
group being nonbinary.

100
Social Identity Theory and “Harsher and Swifter Judgments” of Outgroup Members
Many participants not only discussed feeling stereotyped when their identity looked different
from the dominant group, but they also shared how they felt judged and scrutinized more harshly
because of said stereotypes. This finding relates to social identity theory, another device within the
categorization approach to diversity (Turner and Reynolds, 2010; Tajfel, Turner, Austin, and
Worchel, 1979; Hogg, 1992; Hogg and Abrams, 1988). As previously defined in the literature review
in Chapter 2, social identity theory explains another way in which group membership shapes self-
perceptions: as Tajfel et al. (1979) assert, groups provide a feeling of belonging within the social
world, and that social identity can shape group members’ self-esteem. While this mechanism may
seem benign at first, the motivation to preserve one’s self-esteem can lead to greater stereotyping of
group members. Importantly for this analysis, this process can lead to in-group/out-group
formations (as we previously discussed regarding social categorization theory) and lead to harsher
and swifter judgments of perceived outgroup members based on said categories. (Turner, 1982,
Tajfel & Wilkes, 1963; Schopler & Insko, 1992; Brewer,1995). From here on, I will focus heavily on
this idea that people who face stereotypes in the outgroups seem to face these “harsher and swifter
judgments,” and how this impacts these employees, and how they try to cope with these oppressive
forces.
Participants discussed ways in which they felt stereotyped due to the composition of the
group. Ji-min, an Asian woman data scientist whom I have discussed previously, shared her status as
a racial minority at the company and how subsequent hostile comments about her food further
made her feel like an outsider. She shared,
At my company, I’ve felt kind of funny being the only minority. I overheard
people talking about people having ethnic foods in the common room and
how it was offensive because they had “terrible” smells. I felt really weird
because I bring ethnic foods for lunch, so I try to eat by myself off in a corner.
I don’t think the person was trying to say anything to me specifically; I was

101
overhearing it. But I still felt weird, and it made me think—maybe I shouldn’t
bring ethnic foods for lunch; maybe I should bring a sandwich.

Here we see Ji-min adjusting her behavior due to these xenophobic comments from her coworkers
who are mostly white men: she considers changing what kinds of foods she will bring to work, and
she isolates “off in a corner” by herself to eat.
Although this account from Ji-min refers to general office conversation and not a work
meeting in particular, we should consider how the emotional effects of this instance may influence
her insecurities about being the only “racial minority” in her team and subsequent work meetings.
On a broader scale, if we consider how social categorization takes on the following pattern of social
categorization → in-groups/out-groups → stereotyping of out-group members (as described in Mannix and
Neale, 2005), Ji-min’s coping mechanism adds nuance to this proposed cycle. As an Asian woman in
a department of mostly white men data scientists, she feels ostracized and part of an out-group from
the start. She then experiences xenophobia and stereotyping (even if via indirect comments) due to
judgments for her food of Asian origin “smelling terrible.” Ji-min then tries to mitigate the situation
by eating alone (further ostracizing herself from the group)—which perhaps causes her to become
even more of an outsider, as she is not forming social connections at lunch with her colleagues.
Thus, Ji-min’s story provides an example of social categorization by displaying a feedback loop in
which minoritized group members may (understandably) remove themselves from distressing
situations, and therefore become even more of an out-group.
Gendered Judgment for Displaying Emotions in Meetings
Women participants repeatedly encountered harsher judgment or bias when they expressed
strong emotions. This result relates to Brescoll’s (2016) assertion that people can penalize women
leaders for displays of emotion, particularly when these sentiments convey dominance, such as anger
or pride. Additionally, role congruity theory (Eagly and Karau, 2002) can apply here, as it states that
when women leaders show agentic behavior such (e.g., assertive, direct, and unafraid of

102
confrontation), people may penalize them for violating expectations that they must show communal
(i.e., stereotypically feminine) traits, such as being gentle, warm, and passive. I want to expand these
theoretical lenses to women who may not be in leadership positions, but who may feel over-
observed (in the words of Kanter, 1977b) because they are one of few women in a department or
team (I recall Ji-min’s previous comment that she assumes she “stands out” because she “looks
different” as one of few women engineers and as the only woman of color).
One of my participants who felt anxiety around expressing emotions and possibly receiving
negative backlash in meetings was Alison, a white woman in her late 30s and a director of product
engineering at a software startup (though she also talked at length about her past experiences in
bigger tech companies). Alison shared that in large meetings that she had participated in, she felt that
conversations became more contentious if she expressed any level of frustration in the group. She
shared how she had a few “big conversations” with managers who were often older men in which
they told her that they didn’t like the way that she said something in a meeting, or who thought she
came off too strong. She still found those interactions “very upsetting” years later, and that they
made her feel misunderstood. Alison also viewed these confrontations were unproductive, saying,
“It can be really hard for me if [negative feedback] is just cut and dry, like, ‘You need cut that shit
out.’ That's very hard to work with and it doesn't really give me a base level understanding of how to
operate. it's not something that I can internalize.” Alison then directly tied her fear of facing
backlash when expressing more negative emotions to gender stereotypes. She reflected,
I’ll go through this thought process if I find myself being passionate or intense
about something in a meeting, and then afterwards, worrying if I was “too
much” about it. Then my follow-up thought is often, "Does everyone think
about this? Or is this something that only women have to think about?" I know
there are stereotypes that male employees tend not to have to worry about how
they come off—they're allowed socially to be more aggressive. So, it's not
necessarily something that weighs on me all the time, but it's a consideration
that influences me or that I think about sometimes.

103
Thus, similar to the stories we heard in Chapter 4, Alison spends time and energy worrying about
how she comes across in meetings when showing emotions, and whether she will be stereotyped due
to her gender. This pattern represents an emotional drain that we continue to see minoritized
employees face—again, we can harken back to Kanter’s (1977b) study in which women employees
in corporations felt “over-observed” in work meetings being one of only a few women on a team in
a crowd of men. I recall Kanter’s quote that “women could not remain anonymous or hide in the
crowd; all their actions were public. Their mistakes and their relationships were known as readily as
any other information. It was impossible for them to have any privacy within the company” (p. 972-
973). Although this piece was published 45 years previous to this dissertation, we continue to see
these themes of minoritized employees (though the original study focused more on women) feeling
this sense of “over-observation” or scrutiny.
Another one of my participants, Kelsey, a white woman in her late 20s and a product analyst
at a software startup, also encountered negative feedback for supposedly acting emotionally. After
an issue with a product at Kelsey’s previous workplace that was negatively impacting their
customers, Kelsey and her team set up a meeting with their CEO to share their concerns and to urge
leadership to help fix the problem to meet the needs of the customers. Kelsey recounted,
We had the meeting, and then afterward my manager came back to us and was
like, “Hey, we got some feedback from the senior leadership team. We just
want to make sure that we're not responding to all this in an emotional way.”
My team was all just women and one non-binary team member, and we're all
just like, what the heck? You know, that made us emotional. I just remember
being really frustrated; it bothered me that the takeaway from our meeting, was
like, “You all need to not care so much about this.”

Although we do not know the intentions of the managers who gave Alison and Kelsey this negative
feedback after expressing strong emotions in meetings, we do concretely see both of these
participants refer to gender in their retrospective sensemaking of the situation: Alison says she
wonders if only women need to worry about dialing back their emotions in meetings, and Kelsey

104
refers to the gender composition of her team when expressing that they felt upset for receiving what
they perceived as unfair feedback. Another theoretical viewpoint that can help us interpret these
experiences is bounded emotionality (Mumby and Putnam, 1992), as discussed in Chapter 2. It
appears that several of the tech organizations in my data could have benefitted from taking a
feminist bounded emotionality approach to emotions in the workplace: instead of chastising
employees for emotional expression (as seen in my participants’ stories), the organizations could
have improved the wellbeing of its workers by recognizing the beneficial properties of emotions.
Swift(er) and Harsh(er) Judgment via Intersectionality: Rhonda’s Story
In addition to acknowledging the experiences of Alison and Kelsey, it is important for me to
state that although white women may be penalized for displaying intense emotions in meetings—
especially stereotypically masculine emotions like aggression and frustration (as theorized by
Brescoll, and Eagly and Karau)—women of color, especially Black women, often receive
compounding judgment due to racist biases as well as sexist ones. For instance, let us recall
Livingston, Rosette, and Washington’s (2012) assertion that “…Black women occupy not only one,
but two roles that are incongruent with expectations regarding leadership, the assumption underlying
this prediction is that they will be dually penalized when expressing agency” (p. 355). As we
discussed in depth in Chapter 4, Crenshaw’s (1989) concept of intersectionality shows how, when a
person embodies simultaneous identities that are punished by hegemonic forces, it results in
suffering that is more than the sum of its parts.
One of my participants, Rhonda, a Black and Filipina woman in her early 50s, discussed her
experiences as an executive director at a tech-based nonprofit, as well as her previous career as a
senior software engineer. She shared,
You have to be diplomatic. We are not allowed, as Black women, we're just
not—if we get too emotional or involved, we're the angry Black woman. I have
a daughter. I don't want her to go to a company and not fully engage and be
herself—I want her to bring her authentic self. But then it's like, I don't know

105
if people want me to bring my 100 percent Black woman to work [laughs]. I
can bring you 80 percent, because you're not going to always understand that
kind of culture or communication. So internally and externally, it has been a
lot. And it has been a driving force for me.
Here we see Rhonda considering how she must comport herself at work to navigate intersectional
biases, and also contemplating how she wants to guide her own daughter to be successful and feel
safe at work—showing that these questions about bias in meetings can have influence across
generations.
Rhonda discussed with me in further detail about her long career in tech companies, in
which she noted mostly white men comprised the engineering side and the teams she was involved
with. She recounted many challenging scenarios and brought an intersectional lens to our
conversation, saying, “For me, I dread meetings—and this is back when I was in tech. Particularly,
my voice and experience is always from a Black woman. Not just woman, and not just a Black
person, but from a Black woman.” Rhonda described how she felt like her presence and identity
contrasted against the other people in her meetings. Since one of her company’s clients was
associated with the U.S. Department of Defense, she said, “What I saw in front of me was mostly
suits and military uniforms, so you know, I was trying to get everybody on the same page. I
remember always needing to have support from the men around me to help facilitate all those kinds
of meetings. It was exhausting, to say the least.”
Rhonda elaborated on one of the men who helped her to endure the difficulties of gaining
respect as a Black woman in tech company meetings. She shared that she had a “champion” in her
manager and Vice President of the company at the time, and the two of them would create strategies
to make sure Rhonda was heard and listened to in meetings in which she led a feature or product.
She detailed, “Sometimes I gave an idea in a meeting, and then it kind of blew over, and then
someone else would pick up my idea and say it. My VP and I had an arrangement, if you will, for
him to say in the meeting, ‘You know, I'm glad you mentioned that, because maybe it wasn't very

106
clear when Rhonda mentioned it.’” This “arrangement” represented an idea that arose in a
conversation that the two routinely had together before the official group meeting—she said that the
two of them would always meet beforehand to strategize on their communication in order to help
Rhonda gain the rightful focus of the group.
In fact, in one of the most poignant points I heard from across all of my participants,
Rhonda elaborated on how much effort she put into her work meetings in tech companies as a
Black woman. She noted how her “champion” manager knew the kinds of personalities would be in
whatever room that Rhonda was about to present to—and he would share that perspective with
Rhonda, because as she noted, he was the one who hired her and wanted her to be successful. She
talked about this additional labor Rhonda and her manager regularly performed to help her navigate
the power dynamics in these meetings:
So, we had a “before” meeting, the meeting, and then we have a meeting after
the meeting to kind of debrief and say, ‘How’re you doing? How do you think
that went? What do you need help with?’ and those things. So, from my
perspective as a Black woman, if I have one meeting, I actually have three. If
I have 10 meetings that week, it's actually thirty because of the extra
preparation and debriefs. You know, it wears you down.
Especially in this moment of our conversation, I was very aware of my whiteness and the
privilege that accompanies it: although I had experienced hardships occasionally when leading
meetings as a woman, I had never faced so much disrespect, skepticism, or prejudice that I needed
to triple the number of meetings in my week to prepare for such barriers. I was simultaneously angry
that Rhonda had to take on this much more work due to intersecting forces of oppression she faced
in her job and impressed at the problem-solving that she and her manager personified to counteract
it. Additionally, although the process of preparing for and debriefing after meetings may be taught as
in some business schools, we should consider how people who study STEM may be less likely to
encounter these recommendations, thus potentially missing out on interventions to improve toxic
cultures in the tech industry.

107
I asked Rhonda if she recalled how this strategy of scheduling a before-and-after set of
meetings started. Retrospectively, I shouldn’t have been surprised that this rhythm all started with an
upsetting encounter Rhonda had in a meeting.
There was an incident—one instance I just remember vividly—where the team
was just raining down [criticism] on me in a meeting. Then my VP was like,
"Whoa, whoa, whoa—let's take a break." He pulled me aside after that and
said, “What in the world? I’m so sorry that you had to experience that.” I was
pretty cool, because I was like, “Listen, it's just part of what I have to go
through.” But he was really shocked. He asked, “I'm sorry—well, what can I
do?” and I said, “Well, you know let's try this and see what happens.” And
then that's how the whole cadence started.
Many layers in this last quote from Rhonda stick with me, including: the “shock” her manager felt as
even a mere bystander to the disparagement Rhonda faced in the meeting, Rhonda’s contrasting
stoicism after facing such disparagement (she was used to it as a Black woman), and the two
individuals coming together as a united front to brainstorm how to help assuage issues in the future.
Rhonda emphasized that her manager put in these extra hours to strategize with her not because he
was taking pity on her, but because it was a win-win for the company also. She explained, “So, it's
twofold. It's great that he was there to say, ‘What in the world's going on?’ and look out for me. But
also, he knew that I deliver, and the clients really love me, and that he can never put those other
guys [in the meeting] in front of the client.” This quote poignantly addresses the two aspects that
this study seeks to address: (1) how work meeting communication impacts both the emotions and
self-efficacy of minoritized employees, and (2) how interventions should aim to make employees feel
safe and included and help them to fully demonstrate their competence at work despite barriers.
Contending with the “White Men” Faultline
As we saw in Rhonda’s story earlier, she discussed how being in tech with “mostly white
men” led to her feeling ostracized and further contending with compounding forces like racism and
sexism. In previous quotes throughout this chapter, a common thread among many of my
interviews was how participants navigated meetings with mostly “white men.”

108
I want to put this common force of “straight white men” into conversation with Lau and
Murnighan’s (1998) concept of faultlines, as I overviewed in Chapter 2 in the review of literature. The
authors assert that analyzing simultaneous multiple identities can add important nuance when
examining demographic diversity (and what I consider identity-based diversity as this term considers
how individuals see themselves as well), as it can predict what social schisms can form within diverse
groups. Thus, one of the potential outcomes of a group with demographic and identity-based
diversity is a faultline—or a dividing line formed from the compound of more than one
characteristic, like gender, race, or age. Lau and Murnighan assert that these faultlines can fracture a
group into subgroups based on these traits. Although the authors originally discuss faultlines in the
context of which groups might form alliances or closer relationships among demographics, I have
not seen in the faultlines literature how the specific faultline formed from a majority of white, cis-
heterosexual men can impact minoritized employees, especially through lenses like heteropatriarchy
and white supremacy.
As I discussed in the review of literature, some scholars have started pointing toward the
need for more explicit discussions of oppressive forces like white supremacy and heteropatriarchy
without naming them outright. Thatcher and Patel (2012) assert that future researchers should
attempt to “more explicitly understand power dynamics” (p. 994)—though in the ten years since this
article was published, I have not witnessed much expansion on this goal in organizational literature.
Liu et al. (2019) suggest that “future researchers could explore whether differences in
advantage/disadvantage due to group members’ intersectionality influence the impact of faultlines
on group information processing, conflict, and performance” (p. 212). However, even conducting a

109
search function in an article for terms like “patriarchy” or even just the word “white” in the
documents for many of these articles do not yield meaningful or even any results.
6

In my data, 15—or half—of my participants mentioned a majority of “white men” or
varying offshoots like “straight white men” or “middle-aged white men” or “older white men”
without my prompting, and discussed how they had to actively assert their own competence and
look after their wellbeing among this dominant demographic. Mentions were nearly equally spread
out among Black women, white women, white nonbinary people, South Asian women, and Asian or
Asian-American women.
7
It may not seem surprising that so many participants mentioned white
men considering how much this demographic dominates the tech industry (as previously discussed
in Chapter 2). However, what is surprising to me as a researcher is how little this specific faultline of
white men is discussed in group diversity scholarship, despite it spurring such widespread attention
or even strife for minoritized employees. This lack of attention to white men in group diversity
research again shows the justification to bridge this sphere of literature with literature on gendered
organizations and masculinity. As I have stated previously, there exists a wide body of research on
men who quantitatively dominate organizations and how this may impact masculinity in cultures
(such as Acker’s (1990) seminal work, which shows how masculinity and men tend to be valued over
femininity and women in both C-suites and in working-class contexts). Thus, bridging group
diversity viewpoints—such as social categorization, (Mannix and Neale, 2005) which helps explain
stereotyping and in-group/out-group mechanisms—with perspectives on gendered organization and

6
I do not necessarily fault the authors for not naming such forces outright—I think academia in general, especially in
spaces like organizational communication and behavior and its corresponding journals may feel it’s too risky (so to
speak) to outright critique such dominant forces that often facilitate the success of many academics.

7
Note that I differentiate “South Asian” and simply “Asian” because of how participants answered the pre-interview
questionnaire.

110
masculinity helps to provide a more nuanced view into why these minoritized workers appear to be
negatively affected in work meetings.
I observed participants paying ample attention to the sub-group of white men and their
overrepresentation, as was the case with my participant Max—an interim CTO and white nonbinary
woman in their late 30s. Max told me that at an executive leadership level in tech, they were
sometimes “quite aware” of aspects of their identity, but usually in contrast to who else was in the
meeting. They shared that they were often the youngest person, often the only openly queer person,
often the only woman, and almost always the only non-binary woman in the room. Max continued
to share about the extra weight that this sole representation brought upon her:
Especially now I'm at this level of seniority where I'm on the executive team
at the C-level, like I’m often “the different one” in whichever lens you want to
pick. To be honest, then I’m feeling like I have to therefore represent other
employees who are underrepresented. And that feeling of—I don't just have
to advocate for myself here, I have to advocate for anybody who's different
from what the average is in this room. Which is, you know, is a 10-years older
than me, straight white dude. I'm becoming very aware of that responsibility.

In this quote, I was fascinated to hear about Max’s sense of loyalty and duty to people who weren’t
even in the meeting room. Instead of only focusing on who was present in contrast to Max’s
identities, Max also noticed who was absent. When we look at Max’s perspective through the lens of
faultlines, we see Max associating with people who do not necessarily look exactly like them, but
with people who are “different from what the average is in this room”— the faultline of older,
straight white men. Max’s perspective thus helps expand the theory of faultlines: it shows us how
minoritized employees may not necessarily form alliances with people whose demographics match
up neatly with their own, but rather, form alliances with people whose demographics contrast against
the overrepresented majority (e.g., usually white men).

111
Another participant, Delilah, a director of engineering and Chinese-American woman in her
mid-30s, spoke to me about her strategies for finding people whom she could trust at work. She
shared,
Tech is a male-dominated world and very white. So, I generally connect very
well with other people of color. And people of color more so than women
because I feel like a lot of white women don't quite get it. They try to connect
with me on some level, and I’m like, yeah, but, you're part of the problem also
[laughs]. If I’m in a meeting or if I know what team I'll be working with, I
generally have a network of people of color that I can kind of suss out, and
see, are we on the same page? I don't ever feel alone when I’m in those types
of meetings [with mostly white men], because I'm intentional about those
networks.
Similar to my conversation with Max, I found it interesting that Delilah focused more on
which groups she did not connect with (e.g., white people) rather than choosing alliances based on
people with similar demographics/identities, as a faultlines perspective may suggest. She mentioned
that one of her closest colleagues was a Black man from the Southern United States, and that the
two of them would coordinate how to navigate meetings which were dominated by mostly white
men. Delilah shared how her forming a network with other people of color in the tech companies
caused her to feel a certain sense of responsibility to advocate for minoritized people who had
differing identities from her, which was similar to Max’s previously discussed sense of duty. Delilah
said, “Because I generally find that network [of people of color], I'm very thoughtful about that I
should never abuse this network. And so, if there are things going on like Black Lives Matter, for
instance, I make sure that I hold up my end of the bargain and I speak on it. I support my people
and vice versa.”
Here we see Delilah directly calling her colleagues of color—which I should note signifies
quite a wide demographic — “my people.” Again, this perspective resembles how Max felt a kinship
with colleagues who differed from the “average” person in a meeting (i.e., an older, white man),
despite this subgroup spanning a wide variety of identities. It is also important to acknowledge the

112
complicated emotions that minoritized workers may feel from embodying different identities than
the overrepresented group in meetings. When I spoke with Max, the interim CTO and nonbinary
woman, I asked them how they felt when they experienced a sense of duty to advocate for
underrepresented people in meetings who weren’t even in the room. They responded,
On a bad day, it's words it's like “anxious” and “lonely” and “afraid,” even,
sometimes. I’m worried that I’m going to hurt the message by being
consistently the one who's bringing it up as well—like sometimes you look like
you're always banging that drum. That can feel negative as well. I think on a
good day or in a positive version of a meeting, I’m trying to help people be
heard or help people be taken into account. I don't know if “resolute” is an
emotion, but it is a feeling. I’m determined to put a stake in the ground.
This quote demonstrates how considerations of demographic diversity, advocacy, and faultlines
often accompany a focused inner dialogue about how minoritized workers are being perceived—
which again, can take up mental bandwidth and ultimately leave less time and energy for actually
reaching one’s goals and doing one’s job.
Thus, this data seems to complicate the original framing of faultlines: that people who have
similar compounding identities may form sub-groups based on these traits. What I see instead is
how minoritized employees strategically form alliances and trust with those who are not a part of the
overrepresented majority of white men. In other words, what seems to be missing from existing faultlines
literature (in addition to and in conjunction with its explicit lack of focus on white supremacy and
heteropatriarchy) is the following idea: it’s not always about forming bonds based on what you look
like: sometimes, you form bonds based on what you don’t look like. It’s not always about which
similar cultural references, or languages, or physical features you share with someone: sometimes, it’s
about what benefits you don’t receive because of society’s upholding of whiteness and maleness and
heterosexuality. It’s not always about finding kinship with people whose identities neatly overlap
yours: sometimes, it’s about forming alliances with underrepresented people whom you are willing

113
to advocate for and whom you can lean on to survive hegemony, bias, and prejudice in your
company.
I want to note that I doubt that most white men in these situations actively notice
themselves forming a faultline or a subgroup along identity lines (perhaps due to the invisibility of
whiteness and the dominance of men), even though people outside of this group certainly see this
faultline as an ostracizing and concerning force. In fact, if I were to ask white men if they feel that
they have formed a sub-group with other white men, I bet most would hesitate to confirm it—or
perhaps they would even actively deny it. I do not think this response would be deceptive, as again, I
do not believe most men are conscious of this phenomenon (perhaps a problem in itself, which I
will soon elaborate on). However, regardless of the intentions of white men in meetings or how
interpersonally close they feel to others within their demographic, my data suggests that minoritized
workers widely perceive white men as forming a faultline in meetings—a faultline that creates a fracture
between white men and other employees, thereby prompting concrete emotional concerns and
considerations when it comes to how minoritized workers must conduct themselves in meetings.
This theorizing relates back to my previous discussion of intersectional ambiguity in Chapter
4. We will likely never know the intentions, perceptions, or beliefs of people in meetings who caused
my participants to feel undermined or self-conscious in work meetings based on their minoritized
identities. However, I see it as inherently valuable to look at this end result: that minoritized workers
feel undermined or self-conscious in work meetings on the basis of their identities. We can look to
previous literature that discusses gendered organizations, masculinity, and women as a minority (e.g.,
Acker, 1990; Rutherford, 2001; Forbes, 2002) and consider how these contexts in work meetings can
negatively impact the wellbeing of women. However, in this previous literature, gender has sat at the
forefront of discussion rather than the idea of difference: McDonald (2015) states, “From a queer
perspective, organizations are thus not just inequality regimes (Acker, 2006), they are also

114
normalizing regimes” (p. 319). Thus, it is crucial to consider how these “normalizing” hegemonic
factors discussed in this chapter—like white supremacy and ableism—also play a role in the psyches
of minoritized employees in addition to gender, and how it is necessary for leadership to consider
how faultlines formed from overrepresented identities might be (intentionally or unintentionally)
creating discomfort or distress among their less privileged workers.

115
Chapter 6: Virtual Meetings, Technology Affordances, and
Occupational/Personal Identity
The third theme that my analysis uncovered addressed participants’ attitudes toward virtual
meetings, their perceptions of affordances and limitations of technology in virtual meetings, and
how virtual meeting technology may impact participants’ occupational identities and personal
identities. While we have discussed personal identity widely throughout this dissertation (e.g.,
relating to one’s sense of self, often tied to demographics such as gender, race, sexuality, and more),
occupational identity is also key in this context. MacKenzie, Marks, and Morgan (2017) define
occupational identity as the shared perception of an occupation’s distinct attributes and values,
which the occupational community thereby supports and reproduces (and refers to studies like
Strangleman, 2012; Strangleman, 2001, Bechky, 2006; and Salaman, 1971 which address this concept
in depth). However, although many scholars have addressed occupational identity in research,
MacKenzie et al. remark on how little research exists on the role of technology’s interaction with
occupational identity. The authors posit that a technology affordances perspective can bridge this gap
between discussions of technology and occupational identity, as the technology affordances
perspective focuses on the opportunities and benefits that certain technologies can provide to their
users (MacKenzie et al. 2017 refer to Hutchby, 2001; Bloomfield et al., 2010; Stoffregen, 2003; and
Volkoff and Strong, 2013).
Gibson (1979) wrote early works that influenced the affordances perspective: in the context
of ecology, he theorized that an object’s affordances differ among those who use it. MacKenzie et al
provide an example to depict how affordances of technologies might also vary among the learned
skills of the users: “to the average computer user, a laptop might present the affordances of word-
processing a document, sending an email or browsing the Internet; to a skilled computing

116
professional the affordances presented by a laptop could also include programming, coding and
analysis” (p. 736). Ultimately, in MacKenzie et al.’s own 2017 study on the occupational identities of
older telecommunications engineers, the authors found that the physical nature of earlier
technologies gave engineers opportunities to fix problems via skilled use of tools, but when the
technology later turned digital, it denied the engineers the previous affordances to apply such hands-
on abilities. As a result, key aspects of the older engineers’ occupational identity were weakened.
Thus, the authors build upon Hutchby’s (2001) argument that technology both enables and constrains
how different parties can use it, by showing how these benefits and limitations can therefore impact
occupational identity.
MacKenzie et al.’s article connecting technology affordances and occupational identity was
published before the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, this framework provides us ample opportunities
to study the working world in the midst and aftermath of the pandemic and widespread migration to
remote work. This chapter therefore demonstrates how the affordances of virtual meeting
technology can impact and be impacted by occupational identities of workers—specifically, minoritized
workers in tech companies. Secondly, I will discuss how the affordances of virtual meeting
technology can impact and be impacted by the personal identities of workers (e.g., self-concepts
involving gender, race, ability, etc.) and how these aspects relate to power dynamics.
Intersectional Critical Race Technology Studies, Technology Affordances, and Personal
Identity
Related to the second goal of this chapter—to analyze how the technology affordances of
virtual meetings relate to the personal identities of minoritized workers in tech—is the lens of
intersectional critical race technology studies (ICRTS) (Noble and Tynes, 2015). As I previously
discussed in Chapter 2 in the review of literature, ICRTS provides “an epistemological approach to
researching gendered and racialized identities in digital and information studies” which “offers a

117
lens, based on the past articulations of intersectional theory, for exploring power in digital
technologies and the global Internet(s)” (p. 3). Also as discussed previously, Noble and Tynes
declare that aspects of identity such as gender, race, and sexuality are central to (and often invisible
in discussions of) conceptualizations of the internet, and that the goals of ICRTS can counteract
narratives of post-raciality and colorblindness and other factors which increase power differentials
and inequity.
Computer-Mediated Communication and its Impact on Interactions
As a last bit of background before diving into the results for this chapter, I will briefly
discuss the role of computer-mediated communication in virtual meetings and postulations on its
impact on employee interactions. Scholarship is mixed as to whether communication online (such as
online work meetings or work chat platforms) is beneficial or detrimental to relationships. Walther
(1996, 2007) postulated that users of CMC can benefit from its distinctive technological interface
and features to positively impact relationships—a framework called the hyperpersonal CMC model.
Considering an online meeting platform such as Zoom, observers of a meeting can take advantage
of some of the program’s technological features in order to better connect with their colleagues and
stay on top of projects. For instance, Zoom meetings can be recorded for attendees to watch later
(or access later if they were not able to attend the meeting live), and premium versions of the
software provide an automatic audio transcript that users can read as well. When comparing this to
an in-person meeting in which people’s utterances can be missed, people are not heard correctly, or
their contributions were misremembered, tools like Zoom provide concrete data that has the
potential to benefit understanding between colleagues.
However, the other side of this argument is that CMC may make impression management
more difficult to control. One reason is the lack of nonverbal cues (Kiesler, Siegel, & McGuire,
1984)—when considering online meetings, this could stem from people who turn their webcam off,

118
or whose audio quality is bad due to a poor internet connection. Particularly if someone skims
through a Zoom meeting transcript (which would be much quicker than watching an hour-long
video, so may be justifiable or common), they may miss the nuances of the meeting. Additionally,
scholars note that impressions over CMC can develop outside of the senders’ intentions or
control—observers may pay closer attention to context cues and language outside of the sender’s
intentions (Walther, 1992, Baym, 1995). Additionally, impression management may be particularly
difficult to control on online work meetings due to issues of surveillance. Compared to in-person
meetings around a conference table in which people can only carefully look at one person at a time,
people in online work meetings are less aware of whom is watching them and when. As we will see
with the interview data, participants’ opinions were mixed as to whether they believed they
benefitted from or experienced hardship due to technology in virtual meetings.
Virtual Meeting Technology Affordances for Underrepresented Identities
Several of my participants discussed how aspects of virtual meetings often benefitted people
of various underrepresented identities. In this section, I will overview how the data demonstrated
perceived virtual meeting technology affordances for parents, nonbinary people, people with
physical disabilities, and women.
Virtual Meeting Technology Affordances for Parents
As I discussed in the literature review in Chapter 2, theoretical frameworks like the lack of fit
model (Heilman and Okimoto, 2007) show that mothers can be penalized in industries dominated
by men, such as tech companies. However, there may be hope with the rise of virtual meetings, as a
few of my participants mentioned the benefits they reaped as parents from the online meeting
platforms. One of my participants, Naomi, an applied scientist and white woman in her early 30s,
talked about being a mom to a toddler, and how she used a feature on her virtual meeting platform
to blur her background, which worked well because her son’s room functioned as her office while

119
her son was at daycare. Looking through the lens of technology affordances, Naomi is using the
background blur to simultaneously enact her occupational identity (i.e., applied scientist) and an
aspect of her personal identity (i.e., a mother).
The way that virtual meetings allowed workers to bridge their occupational and personal
identities was also reflected in perspectives from my participant Laura—a chief product officer and
white woman in her late 50s. Laura shared how her company was very friendly to people who
wanted to work remotely. She said,
The [remote-friendly] environment means you can attract a workforce that
seeks more flexibility, like working parents—and not just mothers. In our
employee base, many people may be primary caregivers because they can be
remote and stay home. Often, folks will schedule meetings around bus stop
pickups, and you’ll often see a kid floating in and out of a meeting.

Another participant, Delilah, a director of product and a Chinese-American woman in her mid-30s,
remarked that the previous tech company she worked for was very open to working online, and
many employees felt comfortable being on video calls. She elaborated, “And that [openness to
having online meetings] helps a lot to hire different people at the company, like people with mobility
issues and families.” My participant Emily also supported Delilah’s assertion that virtual meetings
could accommodate people with families. When I asked Emily, a white woman in her late 20s, to
confirm her current job title, she made me laugh when saying that she was a “diaper engineer” at the
moment, as she was currently a full-time mother to three daughters. In her previous role as a senior
software engineer however, Emily noted her preferences for online meetings versus in-person ones.
She remarked, “I like virtual meetings, but that’s for the selfish reasons of not having to commute so
I can have more work life balance and be with my kids.” The feminist scholar in me had a visceral
reaction to Emily calling her desires to spend more time with her kids and to have a balance as
“selfish”—I tried to lightheartedly reassure her that this was not a self-centered goal, but one that I
saw as noble and promoting care.

120
We had a laugh over the exchange, but ultimately, Emily’s verbiage that suggests her duty as
a mother were “selfish” reflects the widespread perspective in tech companies that work comes first,
and family comes second—even with virtual meetings and more flexibility on the rise. Thus, the
technology affordances perspective may argue that virtual meeting technology straightforwardly
benefits underrepresented employees, like mothers. However, using a more critical lens such as
ICRTS, which focuses on gendered and racialized experiences in relation to the internet, we can
think about how misogynistic views that undervalue the work of mothers (e.g., Davis, 1983; Wong,
2017) may complicate our views of the benefits of remote meetings.
Virtual Meeting Technology Affordances for Nonbinary Employees
The theme of technology affordances also came up regarding the display of pronouns. My
participant River, a senior technical writer and a white nonbinary person in their mid-40s,
overviewed the different technological mechanisms available for them to share their pronouns (or
not) in virtual meetings. They shared, “When I enter a meeting on Zoom, it now says, ‘Hey do you
want to share your pronouns? It may not be safe for you to do so.’ That's their thing. So, I have a
checkbox marked that says, please prompt me each time I join a meeting if I want to share my
pronouns.” I appreciated River overviewing this with me and I was heartened that a tech platform
like Zoom would consider user safety in providing a choice to disclose pronouns or not in different
scenarios. River also discussed the platform features for pronouns within their company’s internal
software. They noted,
If I’m logged into my internal [company] account, my pronouns are all over
the place, because that's a choice you get to make when you create your
account. Your pronouns are everywhere, including in email and meetings. If
you type an @ symbol and start typing [my name], it autocompletes
“they/them.” You would have to physically delete that if you wanted to. My
pronouns are front of mind, and that was an intentional choice.
In this quote, I noticed how River talked often about the autonomy they had in being able to choose
to display their pronouns. This observation relates back to the aspect of the technology affordances

121
perspective in which it doesn’t matter so much that affordances simply exist, but it matters that
users can realize these benefits and capitalize on these features. Here, River is able to use two
different kinds of pronoun-features: one which allows them to select when to display their
pronouns, and the other which allows them to display their pronouns all around the company’s
internal system.
River elaborated that their use of these features was not for convenience or self-expression,
but to make a statement that advocated for inclusion despite differences. They stated,
“Even though I don't want to be an activist anymore, I do still want to be an activist. I still want
people to be aware that, whether we like it or not, there are still going to be people who are different
from us.” Again, ICRTS simultaneously sheds light on River’s experience as a minoritized employee
and expands the affordances perspective to show how workers can utilize tech to affirm their
personal identities and the identities of others while also enacting their occupational identities as an
employee.
Virtual Meeting Technology Affordances For People With Physical Disabilities
Earlier in this chapter, I brought up my participant Delilah’s observation that workplaces
that are open to having virtual meetings attract workers who desire more flexibility, like parents and
people who may grapple with “mobility issues.” Her perspective calls to mind another set of users
who capitalize on the affordances of virtual meeting technology: people with physical disabilities.
Max, an aforementioned nonbinary woman participant, discussed their physical disability and its
impact on their experiences in in-person meetings. Max shared,
My identities that are top of mind in a meeting depend on which intersectional
lens I’m most in the minority. So, when there’s a meeting in a room that's not
very comfortably set up and I’m having a bad day disability-wise, then that
aspect of my identity is very, very, very evident. When there are weird chairs,
or the tables are a strange height—or when you turn up to the meeting and
sometimes there aren't enough chairs for everybody, and whoever arrives last
has to stand for the hour…I'm like, I'm not doing that: my knees will dislocate
and that's not a good idea.

122

Through the lens of intersectionality, Max embodied many minoritized identities at work, sharing
with me that they were a nonbinary woman, physically disabled, neurodivergent, and a lesbian. Max
in the above quote states how this physical disability and that aspect of identity is often activated in
their psyche when the physical room for a meeting is not set up comfortably. Thus, it shows the
power that an in-person meeting can have for Max’s physical disability to be “very, very, very
evident.” In contrast, a virtual meeting often allows group members to participate in a way they find
physically comfortable, which could serve as an important affordance for folks with physical
disabilities.
River, my aforementioned participant who discussed their use of tech features that displayed
pronouns, also brought up their interest in accessibility features for virtual meetings, such as
automated transcriptions and captions that display at the bottom of the screen in real time.
However, River also talked about the constraints of virtual meetings for people with physical
disabilities: they recounted how a colleague of theirs said that they got migraines when people in
virtual meetings blurred their backgrounds. River noted, “Sometimes I will forget to change it—but
if I’m in a meeting with that person, I won’t blur that background.
My participant Rhonda, an executive director of a tech nonprofit (previously a former senior
software engineer) and a Black/Filipina woman in her 50 whose experiences we discussed in
Chapter 5, also affirmed how virtual meetings could help people with physical disabilities. She
shared that her passion for advocating for people with disabilities in work contexts was related to
her care for her own family: her sister was blind, she had two nephews in wheelchairs with muscular
dystrophy—and one of whom was autistic, and her husband had limited mobility in his left hand.
Rhonda praised “inclusive practices” for accessibility, also mentioning Zoom’s automated feature of
captions at the bottom of a screen in virtual meetings, like River.

123
However, Rhonda also emphasized that a virtual meeting platform in and of itself does not
solve all accessibility problems. She shared, “When you have blind or visually impaired people in the
audience—I've learned over the years—if you're going to share video, you can't just say, ‘On the
right, you see this.’ Yes, but not everybody can see on the screen.” Rhonda also shared the
complications of the chat feature that’s ubiquitous in many virtual meeting platforms. She discussed
how she had a student in a virtual meeting with a physical disability that prevented him from using
the chat feature, so his mother typed for him. In this meeting, participants were limited to participate
via only the chat (an option in meeting platforms, one I have especially observed in broader
broadcasts), so Rhonda lamented that if this student “could just unmute himself, it would have been
easier for him to really engage in the conversation.” Thus, while an affordances approach might look
at how users can benefit from certain technological features of virtual meeting platforms, the lens of
ICRTS—which considers intersectional and minoritized identities and their relation to online
spaces—causes me to emphasize that tech features alone are not enough to make virtual meetings
accessible. Instead, meeting facilitators and participants should take an ethics of care approach to see
where the technology actually constrains disabled users and how they can create solutions to
enhance inclusivity. Rhonda reflected this perspective, saying, “So, you have to think about different
ways [to be inclusive], especially if you're virtual—not everybody can do a chat. I believe in those
practices and making sure that everybody can really contribute in a way that makes them feel
comfortable and bringing their contributions to reality.”
Virtual Meeting Technology Affordances for Women: Appearance-Related Concerns
Another benefit of virtual meetings that several women participants mentioned was having
to worry less about their appearance, and how worrying less about this aspect gave them more
mental bandwidth to do their jobs. Kelsey, a product analyst and white woman in her late 20s,

124
became audibly passionate saying she had a “rant” about how women face uneven expectations to
wear makeup.
That's something I’ve been fighting, especially since the pandemic, where I was
like, you know what? I’m not gonna wear makeup. Makeup is a stupid, stupid
thing. I really hate it. I’ve had so many conversations with people about this. I
feel like as a woman, I can't show up to a meeting if I don't have makeup on;
if I do, I’m considered unprofessional, or I don't look put together. Men
should also be wearing makeup to look put together! It's incredibly sexist. It's
so insane. I think about the money and time that I spend on stuff as well—all
of it. It's so weird when you take a step back away. It's so, so, so, weird. It
perpetuates these attitudes that women don't look as professional.

I was struck by how baffled and angry Kelsey sounded in this quote when reflecting on expectations
women faced about their appearance that men did not. When we dug a little deeper, some of her
emotion around this issue stemmed from an experience she had at a job in college at a car
dealership. Her manager called her into his office one day and told her that some of the guys on the
floor mentioned that Kelsey looked a little tired when she came into work, and suggested that she
put on a little makeup in the future. Kelsey reflected, “At the time I was so young, I had no idea—I
was like, ‘Oh I’m so embarrassed!’ But now, when I look back on that, I’m like, that was an
incredibly sexist thing to do.” However, Kelsey felt a sense of relief and transformation that with the
pandemic causing many workers to migrate online, she was being more conscientious about these
pressures around makeup. She shared, “So that's something with online meetings that I appreciate:
now I’m so much more comfortable without makeup. I'm going to try working on it where I could
go out in public or go eventually go back to work in an office or something and not need to feel like
I need to put it on.”
Though Kelsey and I had the most in-depth discussion about makeup, other women
discussed their satisfaction with not having to worry so much about their appearance in online
meetings. Jaishree, a customer success lead and business operations manager at a tech company, and
a South Asian woman in her early 30s, shared: “Virtual life and working remotely has shown me

125
how good it can be. I don’t have to worry anymore about how I’m presenting myself, and the
discomfort with wearing pants. I think that has really helped me to open up more brain space.” I
was intrigued here to see Jaishree directly connect how worrying less about her appearance and
clothes gave her more mental bandwidth. She also discussed how she used most of the digital tools
in virtual meeting platforms, and shared, “I love the touch up filter [for my video]. We all know
we’re going to be looking at ourselves in the meeting! [laughs]” Thus, Jaishree still has some aspects
of her appearance top of mind, but uses the affordances of the virtual meeting features like the
touch-up filter to feel better about her appearance instantly.
8

Similar to Jaishree’s comment on the discomfort of wearing pants, my participant Ji-min, a
data scientist and Asian woman in her early 30s, also said, “Virtual meetings are easier for me and
less stressful. In a virtual meeting they only see my face. Right now, I’m wearing pajama pants! I
tend to now wear more casual clothes; not like jeans, or other tighter clothes.” While on the surface,
I am aware that people of all genders—including men—may benefit from wearing more
comfortable clothes during virtual meetings than in-person ones, I want to connect these comments
to an earlier perspective from Ji-min that pointed out the gendered aspect of clothing in meetings.
She shared,
My company is very white and very male. People have commented about
women coworkers’ dresses, and how women shouldn’t wear dresses or
leggings at work. I’m used to being in heavily male-dominated fields, so I never
really dressed that feminine to begin with. Outside of work, I will do things
like wear dresses occasionally, but I can’t imagine wearing one into work. It
would attract undue attention and people would start to look at me like I’m
not competent.

This quote helps to contextualize Ji-min’s perception that virtual meetings are “easier” and “less
stressful”—she can wear what she wants in a virtual meeting, and is not considering these types of

8
However, I do wonder the implications of us looking at ourselves in virtual meetings (as Jaishree suggests we all do) for
hours on end through a touch-up filter—perhaps this can decrease confidence when we see ourselves in a non-filtered
lens.

126
perspectives from white men about what women should wear. Instead, she can focus more on her
job at hand. This relates to Kanter’s (1977b) position that women can feel “over-observed” in
meetings as they are acutely aware of being a minority—and my data suggests that virtual meeting
technology affordances may mitigate this pressure.
While the conversations I have discussed in this section so far discuss the affordances that
minoritized workers appreciate in virtual meeting platforms, it is also important for me to address
that being on camera instead of in person is not a universal experience—especially for Black and
brown people. Lexi, a principal engineering manager and a Black woman in her mid-40s, shared:
I think the camera feature is always tricky [laughs]. Because Black women and
their hair—it's a whole thing, like “Is my hair camera ready?” But then also
there are some subtle nuances with technical features. I think we really learned
in the pandemic with cameras, that people of color need good lighting, or you
come across terrible. We learned that lighting for people of color is not
flattering by default, and little things like that come across that people didn't
think about. So, the cameras in virtual meetings are the one thing that I think
is sometimes a negative for various reasons.

Thus, through the lens of ICRTS, Lexi’s perspective as a Black woman demonstrates how people of
color (especially those with highly-melanated skin), may feel more self-conscious about their
appearance in virtual meetings because of white supremacy embedded in camera technology. Lewis
(2019) discusses unconscious bias that is built into photography—and explains how photography
design designates light skin as a standard and other skin tones as requiring correction. Historically,
white models were used as the standard to create the chemical baseline for film technology.
However, Lewis posits that racial bias is embedded in digital cameras as well, noting, “If the light
source is artificial, digital technology will still struggle with darker skin. It is a merry-go round of
problems leading to solutions leading to problems.” She also references computer scientist and
digital activist Joy Buolamwini, who along with other scholars like Timnit Gebru, has critiqued and
called to rectify algorithmic bias in digital imaging technology, which leads to errors in facial

127
recognition software when detecting people with highly-melanated skin (Buolamwini and Gebru,
2018; also discussed in Trahan, 2020).
Ultimately, Lewis asserts, “Photography is not just a system of calibrating light, but a
technology of subjective decisions” (pp. 12). This point relates to Noble’s research which shows
how decision-making processes in the creation and maintenance of computer algorithms lack a
social and human context, and that this absence has implications for anyone who engages with
algorithmic-related technologies (which, I argue, is most of us, whether we know it or not). Noble
illustrates how this dearth of human context in coding decisions leads to damaging results—literally,
search results—as she presents data that demonstrates how Google search inquiries produce and reify
racial and gender bias through the links and images it connects to said searches. Benjamin (2019)
also criticizes tech companies, their façade of neutrality, and the ensuing damage: she notes that “the
desire for objectivity, efficiency, profitability, and progress fuels the pursuit of technical fixes across
many different social arenas” (p. 26).
Connecting to points forwarded by Noble, Benjamin notes that although people may argue
that tech bias is allegedly unintentional and is subconscious, it is crucial to remember that “there is
no way to create something without some intention and intended user in mind” (p. 60). Circling
back to Lexi’s unease that she will look “terrible” without having proper lighting, we can see how
perspectives from Lewis, Noble, Benjamin, Buolamwini, and Gebru use an ICRTS lens to argue
how racially-biased design and white supremacy are at the root of what may seem like an incidental
aspect of one’s virtual meeting experience.
Virtual Meeting Technology Affordances for Less Outspoken People and Resulting Gender
Dynamics
One theme that arose was how virtual meetings made participants feel less aware of their
gender, and therefore led to a higher frequency of speaking up in meetings. I spoke with Naomi, my

128
aforementioned participant and applied scientist who used the blur feature to make her son’s
bedroom into her office. She shared that she mostly preferred virtual meetings to in-person ones,
noting, “Sometimes, you realize that a person you’re talking to is noticing that you’re a woman.
They’re not necessarily hitting on you, but you can tell that they’re noticing, as opposed to listening
to my idea. Like they’re thinking, ‘This is a woman talking to me.’ This is taken away in a virtual
meeting where I’m just a talking head on a screen.”
While Naomi discussed her observation that people pay her ideas more attention in virtual
meetings because they aren’t distracted by her being a woman, another participant, Julia, a full stack
software developer and a white/Latina woman in her late 20s, directly tied her gender to confidence
and respect in meetings. She shared,
I feel like my team started to respect me way more when we were virtual. I had
more opportunities, and I felt more comfortable when I interjected. My team
was really bad about having video on all the time. It somehow felt like we were
a bunch of voices in the ether talking. So I thought, I’m just going to say what
I’ve got. I’m less aware of being a woman.

When looking through a technology affordances lens, we can consider how the ability to cameras off
in a meeting can impact impacting power dynamics because it makes differences in identity less visible.
Because of this nuance, I am cautious to look at Julia’s experience in a wholly positive light: perhaps
she as an individual woman is gaining more respect and confidence in meetings when her gender is
not so apparent, but from a systemic perspective, I could see this pattern as furthering bias. What
does it mean when we cannot physically see the women or femme people we respect in a meeting?
How does that impact our views toward women and femmes when the camera is on, or when we’re
back in person? This consideration makes me less confident that the technology affordance of
turning cameras off will lead to systemic progress for minoritized workers, especially when the
mechanism here is that concealing one’s appearance makes them more confident because their
identity isn’t as visible.

129
While I felt ambivalent hearing about how turning cameras on and off—or even just having
a screen as a buffer between a minoritized worker and the other person they’re meeting with—plays
a role in power dynamics and senses of identity, I felt optimism about virtual meeting technology’s
role in helping quieter employees in meetings. Through the lens of role congruity theory (Eagly and
Karau, 2002) as discussed in Chapter 2 and Chapter 4, we can consider how women and girls are
expected to fulfill their gender role expectations by espousing traits like cooperation and mildness—
and girls may speak less often in classrooms because of this socialization (Fredericksen, 2000). Thus,
many women may not feel comfortable interjecting or being assertive in a meeting to have their
voices heard.
My data supports this point, as several of my participants noted their discomfort being
assertive in meetings, and how virtual meeting technology like the hand-raising tool—which puts a
hand symbol next to a user’s name and queues the order in which people raised their virtual hands—
encourages them to speak up. Ten participants—representing a third of my participant pool—
explicitly mentioned their affinity for the hand-raising tool and how this technology helped to
promote fairness and inclusion for meeting participants. Noelle, a research engineer and a Native
American/white woman in her mid-30s, shared how even before her company went online, she
would physically raise her hand in the room when she wanted to speak. She spoke to me about how
she contended with social anxiety, and although raising her hand helped give her certainty, it still
gave her “butterflies” in her stomach from nerves. However, virtual meetings were helpful for her:
she said, “People who like to talk a lot are hindered in virtual meetings, and quieter ones have more
of an advantage. The people who talk a lot told me, ‘I can’t wait ‘til we’re back in person and I can
just respond when I have a thought!’” In contrast, Noelle shared, “But virtual meetings are an
advantage for me because I know how to jump in, I clearly have a place in line, and I know I get to
speak.”

130
Although so many of my women and nonbinary participants praised the hand-raising tool
for helping quieter people to speak up in meetings, I should state that one’s propensity to be
outspoken is obviously not inherently gendered—I imagine that many quiet men also appreciate the
orderly nature of tools like the hand-raising tool as it makes it easier to interject. However, when
considering lenses like ICRTS and role congruity theory, we can surmise that white men have not
often been penalized for interjecting or speaking up in groups, because unlike women, this would not
violate prescribed gender norms of being more passive.
Additionally, women of color may face compounding backlash for being assertive in
meetings due to gender and racial stereotypes, and therefore may be even more hesitant to interject
in a meeting. To refer to Livingston, Rosette, and Washington (2012) again, since “Black women
occupy not only one, but two roles that are incongruent with expectations regarding leadership,”
they may be “dually penalized when expressing agency” (p. 355)—in this context, being assertive to have
their voices heard in a meeting. Lexi, my participant who was a principal engineering manager and a
Black woman in her mid-40s, shared how she often did not feel the liberty to speak spontaneously in
meetings because of biases: she felt the need to be fully prepared whenever she spoke as a Black
woman, or she would be unfairly perceived as incompetent, as she discussed back in Chapter 4.
I think this has to do with the whole preparation thing—I don't always speak
up. I may not always say what comes off like the top of my mind. Like, some
others on my team are very free to say, "I’m just spitballing here." However, I
might do that in another way, like after the meeting. I will not do it in a public
forum like that. Sometimes I will post what I have to say in our chat and, every
now and then I have a couple of people that will say “Oh, Lexi said something
in the chat.” And then I’ll go off mute and say something.
In this situation, Lexi is hesitant to interject in a meeting because she isn’t as outspoken. But there is
a crucial mediator in this equation: she is not as outspoken because she is facing the forces of
intersectionality. The perspectives of ICRTS and technology affordances help shed light on Lexi’s use
of the chat feature in this case. Because of intersectional forces of oppression, she feels hesitant to

131
speak up in the virtual meeting, so she uses the chat feature instead. Thus, she is capitalizing on the
affordances of the virtual meeting technology, and ultimately is encouraged by her team to unmute
herself and share her thoughts. Again, I fantasize about a world in which Lexi does not feel inhibited
to share her perspectives spontaneously because she does not face racist and sexist bias—but
because that is the reality, perhaps we can view these specific tech features in virtual meetings as
beneficial for some minoritized workers as they can help navigate potentially risky situations.
Virtual Meeting Technology Affordances as Avenues for Bonding and Resistance
Another aspect of virtual meeting platforms that participants remarked on was their
opportunities for backchannels or gossip. My participant Lexi—who we discussed earlier as using
the chat feature as she did not feel at liberty to speak spontaneously for judgments as being a Black
woman—showed how gossip could be a force of fun and resistance in office settings. When I asked
how she coped with negative emotions in a meeting, she shared,
I don’t do it often, but we have these backchannels of, like gossip. I’ll pull a
coworker aside and vent, “Oh my god, why are we here?” It’s helpful
validation. Obviously, no one wants to speak up in a meeting and say publicly,
“This is a big waste of our time,” so in your mind, you’re thinking, “Am I the
only person who is thinking this is wasting my time?” I ask the other person,
“Do you think this dumb?” And they say, “Oh my god, yes this is stupid!”
Since we’re working remote, I just ping them; I’ll just directly message them.
Sometimes we’ll do a call after, but it’s more fun just messaging each other
back and forth, saying like, “This is dumb!”

Lexi’s experience relates to work by Steele (2015), who acknowledges that gossip is often whittled
down to a “trivial communicative act” due to the behavior historically being connected (and
stereotyped) to women. However, Steele asserts that gossip has served as an act of resistance against
oppressive and dominant forces, and marginalized groups can partake in it as a subversive practice
(Chidgey, Payne, & Zolb, 2009; Wickham, 1998). Additionally, Steele notes that in her chapter’s
focus of Black women’s gossip blogs, “the online space may serve as a site of unification for a group
of women who may otherwise be separated by geography or socioeconomic status” (p. 88). Though

132
this current study focuses on virtual meetings instead of spaces like gossip blogs, I am particularly
interested in how such resistive practices on the internet allow minoritized workers to bond together
as an act of comfort and/or resistance, regardless of their physical location as remote workers. It
shows how even though some virtual spaces can reinforce modes of oppression (as discussed by
Noble, 2017, Benjamin, 2017, and Lewis, 2019), they can also offer certain unique affordances to
fight against these said modes.
In Chapter 5, as I analyzed identity-based power dynamics among group composition, I
recalled how my participant Delilah, a director of product and a Chinese-American woman,
discussed how she actively sought connections with other people of color in her workplaces. Similar
to Lexi, Delilah also shared how she would use virtual chat features to vent to other coworkers. She
shared how she leaned on her coworkers to cope with frustrating meetings also: “I kind of suss out
people [with whom I can] make that eye contact across the room. Or send a slack DM. Or just type
the eye emoji, like ‘Are you seeing this? I'm seeing this!’ You know, someone who you can kind of
debrief with.” I was intrigued in this account how Delilah sending only an eyes emoji could signify
so much—and it reflected my own experiences sending backchannel messages with my trusted
coworkers during group meetings.
In another instance, Delilah shared an upsetting memory of a meeting in which she was
blatantly interrupted by a white man. I asked her what she did to cope with this situation. She
shared, “I made a face like are you serious—is this happening? I DMed one of my friends in the
meeting, saying, did that just happen? And they said, ‘That just happened!’ Then I let it go.” We can
further analyze Delilah and Lexi’s propensity to use chat features to find validation and feel a sense
of belonging in meetings through looking at literature. This relates to Swaab, Phillips, and Schaerer’s
(2016) finding that secret conversation opportunities in virtual teams can make majority opinion
leaders feel less powerful and more likely to consider minority opinions. Though this study was

133
published before virtual meetings became so prevalent, it is easy to see a connection between the
authors’ “secret conversation opportunities” and today’s ubiquitous chat features in virtual meeting
platforms. Additionally, although Swaab et al. focused on opinion leaders and not power involving
identity and demographics, my interview data shows how secret conversation channels in online
spaces like virtual meetings may influence minoritized women’s power or confidence in meetings.
Constraints of Hybrid Meeting Technology and Ostracization of Those on the Screen
Thus far, I have discussed how my data has demonstrated the affordances of virtual meeting
technology for minoritized workers. However, in addition to considering aspects like uneven access
to high-speed internet when working remotely, we should also consider how certain meeting
environments might penalize a remote worker—and these penalties may not always outweigh the
affordances. One of the more common themes I heard from participants regarding their opinions of
in-person versus virtual meetings was a disdain for hybrid meetings—or in other words, meetings in
which some people congregated together in person in a conference room while one or more people
joined the meeting virtually via a meeting platform. While I expected my participants to elaborate on
how these hybrid setups were maybe a little awkward or hard to facilitate, several of them explained
that their discomfort went one step further and recounted how hybrid meetings often resulted in the
ostracization of those joining virtually.
Logan, a white, genderqueer research engineer in their mid 20s, shared, “One of the ways I
feel most excluded or different in a meeting as a remote participant—which I don't know how to
mitigate—is the socializing before and after the beginning. I come into the meeting, and I can hear
people socializing and having a good time but, I can only sort of vaguely hear what they're saying.”
Within the framework of technology affordances, we can consider how the virtual meeting
platform’s limited capability to pick up audio in a conference room for remote participants can
prevent remote employees from more casual socializing with their colleagues—which can be key to

134
forming connections and visibility at work. Here we see someone who is highly skilled in computing
and software environments who still laments that they “don’t know how to mitigate” this issue—
again, showing how the constraints of the meeting technology can impact how an employee views
oneself in a team or organization (in this case, “excluded” or “different”).
Another one of my participants, Kelly, a director of product at a major tech company and a
white woman in her mid-30s, had similar views toward hybrid meetings as Logan. Kelly shared her
perspective that everyone being remote or everyone being in person in a meeting helps to “make it an
even playing field.” Kelly talked about some of her frustrating experiences when she was a remote
employee joining virtually into a physical conference room of people. In particular, she talked about
how hard it was not hearing what people were speaking about, being looped into jokes, or
experiencing things that just happened in the office, like when a fire alarm went off right before a
meeting and people were talking about it. She wished that instead of changing the subject or failing
to inform virtual attendees what was going on, that they would put effort into including them into
“the local experience,” as she put it. She shared, “I wonder what they're talking about in person, and
I feel like I’m out of the loop. And that out of the loop feeling I think can contribute to the power
dynamic differential if it isn't sort of addressed.” I was fascinated to hear Kelly’s perspective that a
hybrid meeting could directly lead to power differentials in her eyes. She elaborated more on how
she felt ostracized if she called into a meeting versus being there in person:
It's painful. Take your favorite teen movie or TV show. They always have a
scene where some group of kids is talking in the hallway, and someone walks
up and tries to join the conversation. People either don't notice them, or they
do, and they change the subject. The funny thing about fully online meetings
is literally everybody feels like they're the person walking up to the
conversation trying to join when everyone's remote. But when only some people
are online, then it’s more like a conversation you're trying to butt into.
On a more positive note, Kelly discussed how these isolating experiences in hybrid meetings could
later foster more empathy when one became a facilitator of a hybrid meeting: if one has been

135
overlooked as a virtual participant in this environment, they may better understand the many
sensitivities that online attendees experience. She said, “There's a lot of this subconscious
vulnerability when you join a virtual meeting, whether you're cracking a joke, or saying something
you feel strongly about, or just trying to put your two cents in. You’re like, ‘Are people listening?’ or,
‘Is the sound on?’ There are all sorts of things that go through your head.”
Kelly was one of several participants who discussed concepts related to this “subconscious
vulnerability” that online participants experienced in hybrid meetings. Another participant, Noelle, a
research engineer and a Native American/white woman in her mid-30s, shared a similar perspective.
She said,
For the group meetings, I was really glad when we went all online because in
just about all of our group meetings, there's at least one person who's remote.
So, they were kind of like second-class participants because of that—it's hard
to jump in when you've got all these people in a room just jumping around and
talking. So, I was really happy when we went all online because it leveled the
playing field for everybody. I was always thinking about the poor people that
weren't in the room, and how the people in the room would take over.

Noelle also remarked that she didn’t just feel bad for others in that situation, but she also
experienced the exasperation firsthand as an online participant in a hybrid meeting, saying, “[The
people in person in the meeting] just start going, and then we're just sitting here watching them have
a conversation online and it’s frustrating.”
When I was coding my data, I was struck by the similarities between Kelly and Noelle’s
language about how every participant being online in a meeting—versus a hybrid environment—
“evens the playing field” or “levels the playing field.” Another participant, Max, an interim CTO and
white nonbinary woman in their late 30s, also discussed that one of their greatest aims in their role
was to help everyone be “on even footing, whichever way that is possible.” Max said, “This hybrid
approach is the worst of all worlds,” and, “I wish I could just forbid this hybrid thing, because I just
don't think it works. And I’ve tried so many ways to make it work, and I’ve never found it to be

136
successful. So, in the absence having of way better tech, that's what I would do.” Max’s mention of
the absence of “better tech” relates to the constraints within the technology affordances perspective:
the technological features (or lack thereof) influence how Max plans and interacts in meetings. Max
elaborated on how they tried to make a hybrid meeting work, sharing how they would change the
way they sat in a room during a hybrid meeting to always see who was on the screen, and they would
interject for people online who had tried to speak up and weren’t being heard. Max saw these
practices to advocate for online participants in hybrid meetings as a part of their “responsibility to
try to role model inclusion.”
As I wrote this dissertation in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, I predict that the
implications of these results will increasingly touch the everyday lives of many workers as
workforces continue to migrate online. Through theoretical frameworks like technology affordances
and ICRTS, we see a nuanced picture of the pros and cons of these ubiquitous virtual meeting
platforms. A number of underrepresented groups in tech industries—such as mothers, nonbinary
people, and people with physical disabilities—do express experiencing benefits from virtual meeting
technologies. However, when we consider aspects like webcams that tend to prioritize whiteness, as
scholars like Lewis, Buolamwini, and Gebru have provided evidence for, as well as online
participants in hybrid meetings (who may more likely be parents or people with physical disabilities)
feeling like “second-class” group members, it shows how questions of access and equity vary among
employee identity. Thus, this analysis calls for users of virtual meeting technology to avoid seeing
these features as “neutral” or as universally equipped to handle accessibility issues or treat all users
the same—for as this data shows, inequities remain in the technology despite its many affordances.

137
Chapter 7: Discussion
Now that I have provided an overview of my data analysis in the previous three chapters, I
will use this chapter to discuss interpretations, implications, limitations, and recommendations for
future research. I wanted to study work meetings so I could analyze how such a quotidian type of
event (one that occurs multiple times in one day for many employees) may influence power
dynamics, emotions, inclusion, psychological safety, senses of identity, and self-efficacy among
employees. From my own experiences in work meetings and from hearing experiences from my
colleagues, my intuition told me that work meetings could impact many psychological facets for
minoritized employees. However, I did not fully understand the internal mechanisms of this
equation. It is clear that work meeting communication transpires, and employees consequently
emerge from work meetings with new information, experiences, emotions, or understandings of
themselves and their organizations. But what exactly happens in that black box between a work
meeting occurring and its impact on employees? What types of thoughts run through the heads of
employees before, during, and after said meetings? How can the perspectives of minoritized
employees in work meetings help us to understand how to propose interventions that improve the
wellbeing of people who must survive under the often-difficult conditions of capitalism? In the
following discussion, I overview how this study contributes novel understandings for these types of
questions.
Factors that Hinder or Foster Wellbeing of Minoritized Workers in Meetings
The first research question in this dissertation asked: What common factors in work meeting
communication hinder or foster the wellbeing (i.e., inclusion, psychological safety, and self-efficacy)
of minoritized employees? My main finding that addresses this question is that work meeting
communication can reflect and/or reify forces like white supremacy, patriarchy, and
intersectionality—thereby impacting the wellbeing of minoritized employees. While I was not

138
surprised to hear that minoritized employees encountered distressing forces in work meetings like
stereotyping, hostility, and bias, I was surprised to hear so often about the uncertainty or doubt that
participants underwent about these incidents. Many of the women and nonbinary workers in tech
companies I talked to embodied simultaneous, systemically marginalized identities, which are framed
by now widely-discussed theories like intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989). One new concept that this
study brings to the table is how minoritized employees seem to experience and express aspects of
intersectional ambiguity (Mason, 2018) when making sense of work meetings. Mason’s insightful
synthesis of Beauvoir’s concept of ambiguity (1948) and Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality
again shows how both perspectives “posit identity and experience as negotiations between (and
sometimes among) oppositional poles; both disrupt binary logics by insisting on simultaneity; and
both forgo the either/or for the both/and” (2018, p. 57). As I have previously mentioned, Mason
mostly considers oppositional poles of identity (i.e., Black women torn between being “guided by
their Blackness or womanness” (p. 57). However, this current study expands upon Mason’s concept
of intersectional ambiguity—not only by focusing on the completely different context of work
meetings—but by showing how people with compounding minoritized identities can simultaneously
feel confident that they are facing bias or prejudice, and yet wonder if it’s “all in their head” at the
same time. I witnessed this intersectional ambiguity when minoritized workers had trouble
deciphering the actions and intentions of colleagues in work meetings, and also their own behaviors
and thought patterns in work meetings. These two buckets also expand upon previous theory by
showing how uncertainty and the unsettling resulting emotions can both relate to internal and
external forces.
When it comes to this first research question of how work meeting communication may
impact the wellbeing of employees, I see how the experience of uncertainty shown by my
participants can impact employees’ sense of psychological safety (Edmondson, 1992): it can be

139
common to feel on uneven footing due to the chaos of not knowing what aspects of one’s identity
are being targeted. My data shows how some employees may be comforted if other employees have
more information on the intentions of the perceived offender—for instance, if they tend to
scrutinize women across several meetings. It may seem somewhat counterintuitive that someone
would gain psychological safety when hearing evidence that corroborates their perceptions of bias.
However, when we can consider the anxiety and frustration with oneself that participants reported
when having so many doubts, it makes more sense that receiving information—even if negative—
can bring stability. Additionally, I see how experiencing intersectional ambiguity can impact
participants’ self-efficacy: they may be less likely to do their job and meet their goals when they are
distracted by these questions. I even observed more direct instances in which experiencing
intersectional ambiguity caused workers to stop performing certain tasks at work, like Ji-min, who
said that while she wasn’t sure which part of her identity was facing discrimination (her race, gender,
education, or all of the above), she decided she would “never” speak up in a meeting without being
100% sure of something again for fear of being ridiculed after facing humiliating experiences in
work meetings.
Another important implication of the power that intersectional ambiguity has on minoritized
employees is on hiring and retention. Let us recall Logan’s anecdote of trying to sort out why they
respected the ideas of white, male, senior colleagues more than colleagues of other identities. Are
these colleagues taken more seriously because of their whiteness and maleness, or because of their
experience at the company? From this data, we should consider how a feedback loop that
propagates underrepresentation and minoritization exists in many work meetings. The fact that
meeting participants may be unable to decouple seniority status from influences of white supremacy
and heteropatriarchy shows how urgent it is for tech companies to hire and retain people with
systemically minoritized identities. Respecting someone’s ideas because they have been at a company

140
for two decades might make sense, but when the only people who have stuck around so long at a
company are white men, it may reinforce harmful power dynamics wherein white men are seen as
the most competent or respectable. Thus, as I stated previously, the hiring and retention of people
with diverse identities could help to break this cycle—and could help reduce experiences of
intersectional ambiguity—and therefore foster wellbeing for minoritized workers.
One remedy that could soothe some of the pain of intersectional ambiguity and its
accompanying uncertainty is reassuring people who are experiencing doubt about their experiences
in meetings. So many participants expressed aspects like insecurity and guilt when discussing their
thought patterns related to intersectional ambiguity. With this data in mind, I assert that messaging
should be more widespread that such doubt is acceptable and normal, that such doubt does not
undermine how minoritized workers may feel about the experience in the future, and that such
doubt does not make the experience any less painful. As I mentioned in Chapter 4, the burden of
white supremacy and heteropatriarchy alone cause enough of a burden for employees beyond the
experience of doubting whether these forces are “actually” present or not in work meetings.
Another remedy that could foster the wellbeing of minoritized workers is openly discussing
and introducing concepts such as intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989) and intersectional ambiguity
(Mason, 2018) more widely in organizational cultures. I recall my experience with Ji-min, and how
she expressed the comfort and validation she felt learning about intersectionality. While those of us
in academic and activist spheres may encounter materials and conversations on intersectionality on a
near-daily basis, we may forget how many people in industry are not as familiar with this term, and it
could be liberating for many minoritized workers to keep it top of mind as they navigate through
challenging experiences in work meetings.
Composition of Groups and Impacts on the Wellbeing of Minoritized Employees

141
My second research question asked: Does the demographic composition of a work team
influence the wellbeing (i.e., inclusion, psychological safety, and self-efficacy) of minoritized
employees in work meetings? I analyzed my data through the tenets of the categorization approach
to understanding group diversity—a main facet of which proposes out-group members are more
often suspectable to stereotyping. Perspectives from my participants strongly supported the
framework that social categorization leads to the formation of in-groups and out-groups, which
often ultimately results in stronger stereotyping, and harsher and swifter judgments of out-group
members (Turner, 1982, Tajfel & Wilkes, 1963; Schopler & Insko, 1992; Brewer, 1995).
One way that participants perceived that they were being sorted into an out-group is through
gendered language used in meetings, such as a facilitator addressing “gents,” or guys,” despite there
being group members besides men. I see this as a contribution to existing literature, as I have not
seen studies that directly correlate gendered language in work meetings to feelings of exclusion and
ostracization (whether the speaker intends it or not). My data suggests that people in work meetings
should be mindful of such language, even if they code everyone as men, for example. For instance,
my nonbinary participant River said that they look like they’re “one of the boys,” and thus have to
constantly contend with being misgendered, despite displaying their pronouns often on internal
systems.
Another theme that my data contributes to the body of scholarship on group diversity and
work meetings is evidence of a feedback loop that strengthens ingroups and outgroups. In addition
to gendered language in meetings that erased their identities, one way that participants felt as though
they were being sorted into out-groups was through facing outright hostility around cultural
differences. I recall my participant Ji-min—who shared that she was the only woman and racial
minority on the engineering team—feeling judged when hearing comments about her “terrible
smelling” “ethnic food.” Ji-min coped with this distressing experience by thereafter eating alone “in

142
a corner.” From this example, we can think about how Ji-min’s understandable survival response led
to her removing herself from an upsetting situation, and therefore plausibly reinforcing the divide
between in-groups and out-groups. Thus, when thinking about my research question about how
group diversity can impact employee wellbeing, we can consider how Ji-min feeling
underrepresented on her team and being relegated to an out-group could impact her sense of
inclusion, psychological safety, and self-efficacy. While the effects on inclusion and psychological
safety may seem more obvious (i.e., she feels anxiety around being judged when doing something
critical to everyday functions, like eating), I see this phenomenon impacting Ji-min’s sense of self-
efficacy too. If we consider how bonds with coworkers can make it easier to accomplish goals at
work and to find confidence in meetings (as we saw in Chapter 5), it becomes even more concerning
that Ji-min feels ostracized during lunchtime, when she could potentially be forming relationships
with coworkers. Thus, the data supports the idea that cultural insensitivities and xenophobia can
make a minoritized group member feel even more ostracized and can exacerbate negative outcomes
posited from the social categorization approach.
Let us again recall a tenet from social categorization literature that out-groups are more
prone to stereotyping and harsher and swifter judgments. In addition to minoritized group members
feeling ostracized and thus removing themselves from certain situations at work, another coping
mechanism worth mentioning is how some of my participants used diligent preparation to fight
against anticipated harsh judgments in work meetings. I was struck by how my participant Rhonda, a
Black woman and former senior software engineer, described that for every meeting she had
scheduled, she would often schedule a meeting before and after that event to prepare and debrief on
what happened. She shared that this strategy was meant to combat the prejudice she expected as a
Black woman in meetings of mostly white men—here we see minoritized employees preparing for
meetings to combat bias that those of privileged demographics do not face. We can see how the

143
time and energy put into this preparation could take a toll on aspects of wellbeing like self-efficacy
and psychological safety: not only do minoritized employees have anxiety around the criticism they
may face in a meeting (re: psychological safety), but this preparation ends up competing with other
demands, like doing tasks listed in one’s job description.
Minoritized employees, especially women, also felt harsher judgment for expressing
emotions in meetings—especially emotions that had a more angry or frustrated tone. Scholars such
as Eagly and Karau (2002) and Brescoll (2016) discuss how women in leadership positions face
undue judgment for showing emotions in meetings or acting assertively. However, I hope that this
current study can expand upon this scholarship by showing how similar effects can happen to
women who are not only in leadership roles, but who are highly visible because they are one of the
few women on their team, and thus can attract more attention and scrutiny. For instance, my
participant Ji-min shared how she feels she “stands out” because she “looks different” as one of few
women engineers and as the only woman of color in her group. Thus, this study bridges group
diversity research via the categorization approach with studies on women, leadership, and emotions
to show how employees who are minoritized in teams and team meetings may attract more attention
because they are a minority, and how this can compound with other factors like bias and sexism.
Above all, I consider my most important contribution to RQ2—which again, considers how
group composition in meetings may impact employee wellbeing—to be my expansion upon Lau &
Murnighan’s (1998) concept of faultlines. The data and analysis show that minoritized employees
can feel at odds against a perceived faultline specifically comprised of white men, and they may seek bonds
with other minoritized employees to cope with feeling underrepresented and to seek shared
understandings with colleagues. In contrast to what a faultlines perspective would predict however,
is that minoritized employees seemed to bond with other minoritized employees in the wake of the
dominant sub-group of white men, even if their identities don’t overlap very much. For instance, my

144
participant Delilah, a Chinese-American woman, shared that she felt like people of color understood
her better than women overall (noting how white women don’t quite “get” the challenges she faces).
In contrast, Delilah noted her closeness with a Black man on her team, and how they would have
each other’s backs in work meetings that were dominated by white men. Again, while faultlines
scholarship might predict that Delilah would try to form bonds with those who match her
demographics more closely, the bonds that minoritized employees seem to seek instead are often
formed in contrast to the dominant and overrepresented group. In other words, when faced with
even a high quantity of white men in a meeting, it seemed to spur loyalty and advocacy among
minoritized employees.
It is surprising to me how little faultlines literature addresses the specific faultline of white
men, despite it taking up cognitive space for so many minoritized employees. Fifteen—or half—of
my participants mentioned unprompted how their workplaces and meetings were dominated by
“white men.” Regardless of the intentions of white men in meetings, my data indicates that
minoritized workers widely perceive white men as forming a faultline in meetings anyway—thereby
prompting concrete emotional concerns when it comes to how minoritized workers must conduct
themselves in meetings (such as my participant Max, who noted they felt “anxious” and “afraid”
when they did not feel like other minoritized employees were in the room).
This concept that we may not know the intentions of white men (e.g., whether they do form
strong bonds with each other on purpose) but that minoritized employees feel emotions related to
their overrepresentation anyway relates to intersectional ambiguity (Mason, 2018). Again, we cannot
read minds to fully know the intentions, perceptions, or beliefs of people in meetings who caused
my participants to feel undermined or self-conscious in work meetings. So, I focus more on the end
result of these negative impacts on the wellbeing of minoritized employees, and call for us to

145
consider how systemic forces like white supremacy and heteropatriarchy play a role in the psyches of
minoritized employees.
As my findings in Chapter 4 on intersectional ambiguity reinforce a need for hiring and
retaining more people like more women, nonbinary people, people of color, disabled people, and
more in industries like tech, this expansion upon faultlines theory in Chapter 5 also calls for a similar
change. The idea that minoritized employees facing a sea of white men in meetings can impact their
psychological safety and sense of inclusion helps to demonstrate how greater representation (and
retention) of diverse employees may improve the wellbeing of minoritized employees in work
meetings.
Virtual Meetings and Technology Affordances and Constraints Across Identities
My third and final research question asked: How do virtual meetings impact the wellbeing
(i.e., inclusion, psychological safety, and self-efficacy) of systemically minoritized employees
compared to in-person meetings? This study took a novel approach by combining the theoretical
perspectives of technology affordances and Intersectional Critical Race Technology Studies (ICRTS)
lens (Noble and Tynes, 2015) to show how some underrepresented employees (i.e., women,
nonbinary people, parents, people with disabilities) may benefit or struggle from the tech features in
virtual meeting platforms. One contribution from this chapter was its analysis of how people of
varying minoritized identities showed different themes relating to the affordances and constraints of
virtual meeting technology—again showing a synthesis of theoretical frameworks from technology
affordances and ICRTS.
Affordances for Nonbinary Workers
My data showed that nonbinary people benefitted from the ability to choose where and
when (to have pronouns displayed in a virtual meeting. The autonomy to choose how to
communicate gender identities and also when to communicate this in meetings (which can be helpful

146
in environments that do not feel welcoming for gender non-conformists) appeared to positively
impact the wellbeing of nonbinary participants. This sense of control and opportunity to have their
gender validated seemed to positively impact senses of psychological safety and inclusion. Let us
also consider how intersectional ambiguity discussed in Chapter 4 can take up a lot of mental
bandwidth for nonbinary employees: my nonbinary participant Adrian recounted how they weren’t
sure if they were facing hostility in meetings due to being inaccurately perceived as a woman and
thus facing stereotypes that they were incompetent, or accurately being perceived as nonbinary, and
thus as “weird.” The ability to express one’s pronouns in meetings could help employees have their
gender affirmed—or at least take control over the expression of it—and thus can open up mental
bandwidth to focus on the job at hand, thereby improving self-efficacy at work. This data indicates
that, through virtual meeting tech affordances, nonbinary participants can simultaneously fulfill their
occupational identities as tech workers while expressing their gender identity via these platform
features.
Affordances for Mothers
All participants who indicated that they were parents in my study were women, so I will
focus on how my data shows benefits for mothers who work in tech. My participants who were
mothers discussed how they had less commute time with virtual meetings versus ones in person, so
they could spend more time with their children. However, although it seemed that virtual meetings
afforded mothers more time with their children, I still observed mothers connecting their
appreciation of these features to feeling “selfish.” When reflecting back on the review of literature
and how tech industries can be hostile environments for working mothers (based on aspects like the
lack of fit theory (Heilman, 1995), or how tech industries tend to value youthfulness and long hours
from workers), this finding should cause us to have some mixed feelings about how virtual meetings
may benefit parents. Yes, working remotely may be less strenuous for parents in some ways—but if

147
they are still facing cultural messages in companies that finding a work-life balance and spending
time with their children is “selfish,” then we should avoid looking at online meetings as a utopic
advance, and rather, as a more nuanced environment.
Affordances and Constraints for People with Physical Disabilities
My data indicated that employees with physical disabilities could use the technology of
virtual meetings to ensure a more physically comfortable space and avoid the uncertainty of whether
a conference room would accommodate their needs (such as my participant Max who felt very
ostracized when a conference room had “weird chairs” that would not accommodate their needs).
However, my data showed how virtual meetings sometimes hindered the self-efficacy of those with
physical disabilities when the facilitation was not thought through (e.g., someone who cannot type
due to a disability should be welcomed to unmute themselves instead of being limited to the chat
function). Thus, the data reminds us that tech features alone cannot foster feelings of inclusion and
self-efficacy for employees with disabilities—it also requires a human thoughtfulness to consider
what accommodations can best suit meeting participants. This finding relates to ICRTS, whose
framework pushes against viewing technology as a purely neutral force without considering the
human, subjective drivers behind it. I have not come across much scholarship that explicitly
mentions its connection to ICRTS which analyzes the experiences of people with disabilities and
other minoritized identities and technology (as I have here, in analyzing the experiences of women
or nonbinary people with disabilities)—thus, this study contributes to existing literature in this way.
Affordances for Less Outspoken Employees and Corresponding Gender Dynamics
A third of my participants mentioned how they appreciated the hand-raising tool in virtual
meetings because of how it brought order and equity in meetings. Some participants directly
discussed a gender dynamic in this equation, sharing their perception that women tend to be quieter
in meetings, so this technology especially helped women feel more confident in speaking up. This

148
scenario relates to research that shows how girls and women are more often socialized to not
interject, and be cooperative. (Fredericksen, 2000). As I mentioned in Chapter 6, I am confident that
quiet white men, for instance, can also benefit from virtual meeting features in getting their voices
heard. However, it becomes a question of identity and equity when white men are not equally
penalized for speaking up in the same way that women are for being assertive (via role congruity
theory, Eagly and Karau, 2002; gender bias for emotions, Brescoll, 2016). Thus, my data indicates
how features like the hand-raising tool in virtual meetings can help even the playing field for
underrepresented identities in meetings and help such employees to have their voices heard, when
some women can be socialized to stay quiet. Referring back to my research questions, I therefore see
how virtual meeting features can help improve minoritized employees’ senses of psychological safety
(e.g., because they may feel less nervous about disagreeing or asking questions), inclusion (e.g., some
of my women participants noted they felt more respected in online meetings) and self-efficacy (as
speaking up can help them attain their goals more in meetings).
As a caveat to the above findings however, I was concerned about a remark in which
participants said that online meetings made them more confident because they felt “less aware of
being a woman,” especially when they could turn their cameras off. As I mentioned in Chapter 6, I
do worry that not physically being able to see underrepresented women in meetings due to cameras
being off—despite them being outspoken!—might promulgate stereotypes and bias, and not address
systemic issues in meetings related to power and equity. Thus, we should be critical of messages that
universally celebrate women’s confidence in meetings when it is at the expense of being seen and
coded as women.
Additionally, another complication to this finding is how Black women may be doubly
punished for being outspoken in meetings (as posited by Livingston, Rosette, and Washington,
2012). As I discussed in the context of RQ2 and group demographic composition impacting

149
employee wellbeing, perspectives from Black women participants showed a need to be extra
prepared in meetings before speaking up. My participant Lexi, a Black woman, shared she would
more likely use the chat feature than unmuting herself in a meeting—not because she was shy, but
to protect herself from prejudice if not having a fully-formed thought. Thus, we can consider how
virtual meeting features might have a more nuanced relationship to employees who face extra
scrutiny under the harsh gaze of intersectionality—thereby influencing senses of inclusion,
psychological safety, and self-efficacy.
White Supremacy Embedded in Virtual Meeting Technology
Other perspectives from the data showed how employees with intersecting minoritized
identities (such as women of color) contended with challenges from virtual meeting technology: in
particular, Black women discussed how webcams made highly-melanated skin look “terrible”
without proper lighting, and this added unease to their virtual meeting experiences. This observation
contrasted the experiences of participants who were not Black, who said they felt liberated not
having to care so much about putting on makeup or what they wore on camera in virtual meetings
compared to the pressures they felt in person. They felt that this “opened up their brain space,”
which we could think about in relation to improving their self-efficacy—they could focus on and
accomplish things in their jobs without this mental clutter.
The contrast in which meeting participants with lighter skin did not have to think about
lighting in virtual meetings in the same way that people with highly-melanated skin did ties into
ICRTS’s concept of algorithmic oppression: specifically, the idea that technologies are not neutral,
but guided by subjective, human decisions (and are often signal and reify forces like patriarchy and
white supremacy) (Noble, 2017; Benjamin, 2019; Buolamwini and Gebru, 2018; Lewis, 2019). These
scholars show us that the concept that cameras were not designed for Black and Brown individuals
is not new. However, this study contributes to this discourse by connecting this concept to the

150
ubiquitous events of work meetings—and in the wake of COVID-19, should cause us to consider
how white supremacy embedded in cameras can impact the wellbeing of racially minoritized
employees when working remotely.
Virtual Meeting Technology as a Mode for Resistance
One more positive aspect that minoritized employees discussed in relation to virtual meeting
technology was how aspects in virtual meetings like a private chat feature helped minoritized
employees to strengthen ties with each other, give and receive validation, and gossip. For example,
several participants who were women of color noted how they would often use chat features in
meetings to communicate something that bothered them—whether they perceived the meeting was
a waste of time, or if they sent an “eyes” emoji to signal that they were observing something
troubling in a meeting. Through an ICRTS perspective, this pattern relates to Steele’s (2015)
assertion that gossip is often reduced to a “trivial communicative act” since it’s historically
connected (and stereotyped) to women—however, gossip has posed as an act of resistance against
hegemonic forces, and marginalized groups can participate in it as a subversive practice. This finding
also relates to Swaab, Phillips, and Schaerer’s (2016) argument that secret conversation opportunities
in virtual teams can make majority opinion leaders feel less powerful and more likely to consider
minority opinions. Data from this current study can expand on this idea by showing how
minoritized identities (not just in relation to majority/minority opinion-holders) might work to upend
hegemonic power dynamics with features like the chat.
A Distaste for Hybrid Meetings and the Relegation of “Second Class” Virtual Participants
One of the more surprising findings related to RQ3 was how many participants across many
different identities and professional roles expressed a strong disdain for hybrid meetings—or
meetings in which some people were physically congregated together in a meeting space, and some
people joined on a screen via an online meeting platform. While I was less surprised about people

151
complaining about feeling inconvenienced by glitchy technology, I found it very enlightening how
participants saw something more serious happening in hybrid meetings: the ostracization of
employees who joined online. My data described hybrid meeting participants who joined online as
“second class participants” or as a kid who is left out or bullied in a teen movie. If we consider who
is more likely to want to participate remotely (we can recall our previous conversation around the
affordances that nonbinary people, physically disabled people, and parents benefited from in virtual
meetings), we should consider these implications. What does it mean when people who generally
feel less safe/included/able to reach their goals in a physical office setting get turned into “second
class” participants when they participate virtually in the meeting? I predict that these phenomena
create a feedback loop in which minoritization leads to further out-group relegation (relating to our
discussions with RQ2). When facilitators do not make careful and caring decisions when they use
virtual meeting technology (again, a consideration of ICRTS), they could make minoritized people
feel further excluded.
Study Limitations and Future Directions
One limitation in this study is that I chose to study a very narrow set of participants: women
and nonbinary people who work in tech companies. I recognize that this choice contrains how
generalizable this study is when attempting to understand the experiences of people with minoritized
identities in work meetings. I chose to focus on people with underrepresented identities in tech
companies because—as I discussed in the literature review—tech often comprises organizational
cultures that are propped up by white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and pernicious aspects of
capitalism (e.g.., exploitation of employees, emphasizing competition over community care).
However, tech companies and the type of roles I studied here also signify a more elite, higher-status
industry with generally highly-educated people and with higher socioeconomic statuses than many
others—so, this study cannot currently speak to other industries, though I hope to address this in

152
the future. One of the industries I hope to address in a next phase of research is library science: this
sphere contrasts the tech industry in many ways, including its non-profit approach and its tendency
to employ mostly women. Thus, I see it as potentially generative to compare the experiences of
workers in library science to those in the current study who in contrast, navigate a highly capitalist,
male-dominated sphere such as tech.
Another limitation of the study was that I did not choose to interview any men. Part of this
decision considered scope—I already collected so much rich data from studying women and
nonbinary people alone, and as feminist scholars assert, it is fruitful studying the experiences of
women without comparing them to men. However, I strongly believe that patriarchy hurts men as
well: for instance, we can consider how fathers may have an even greater expectation to put in long
hours at work instead of staying home with their children. Thus, it would be productive as a next
step to interview men in tech companies about their experiences as well. Additionally, many
participants saw the presence of an overrepresentation of white men as a threatening force. While I
empathize with this perception, I also want to hear the perspectives of people in this demographic
to see how they experience work meetings—even if the ultimate goal in doing so is to still advocate
for and analyze the experiences of minoritized workers in relation to this data. I harken to studies I
mentioned in Chapter 2—Ashcraft’s (2005) study interviewing commercial airline pilots and
understanding how “privileged professional men engage gendered threats” (p. 67) and Kvande and
Rasmussen (1994), who analyzed how men in male-dominated organizations responded to women
intruders. In future iterations of my research in which I aim to interview men, I will look to studies
such as these to analyze more privileged perspectives without overshadowing the experiences of
those whose stories are not often told, such as minoritized workers.
As I mentioned in Chapter 3, I also see limitations pertaining to my three recruitment
strategies: recruiting within my own network, strategic/snowball sampling, and cold-messaging

153
participants on social media. As for recruiting with my own network and strategic/snowball
sampling, I recognize how taking more of a convenience sampling approach could make the study
less generalizable. Because I'm working within an interconnected network in this scenario (my own
connections, as well of connections of my connections), it is likely that I am hearing the perspectives
of a more homogeneous sample because people may have similar opinions to their referrals and
colleagues. One response to this limitation is that perhaps I should have wholly cold-messaged
people on social media, as I did for a subset of my participants. Interviewing 30 people that do not
know anyone else in the sample could have led to greater diversity of experiences and perspectives.
However, I also think that limitations also exist in contacting people who show up in search results
on social media. Harkening back to Noble’s (2017) concept of algorithmic oppression, it would be
misguided to look at a list of results of people on social media as a neutral sampling technique —
instead, we must consider what subjective decisions or even bias may be built into the code that
displays us potential participants. Thus, while I see cold-messaging participants on social media as
perhaps one of the most generalizable sampling methods—and one that I may employ in the
future—I do not see it as a solution that solves all sampling problems.
The results of this study are also constrained by the relatively small sample size of
participants—and especially the small sub-sample of nonbinary participants. Research shows that as
of 2021, 1.2 million LGBTQ people in the United States identified as nonbinary. One could argue
that this sub-population constitutes only 0.4% of the U.S. population (for those who are out as
nonbinary, at least) (Wilson and Meyer, 2021), thus potentially making it difficult to find nonbinary
participants who work in tech for this study. However, I see this somewhat small representation
making it even more important to hear the voices of nonbinary people when it comes to their
experiences in work meetings. While this current study only interviewed four participants who
identified as nonbinary or genderqueer, I plan to conduct an entire study focusing on the

154
perspectives of this sub-population, and would hope to partner with a nonbinary scholar on this
study. Additionally, this current study grouped together women and nonbinary participants to
overall analyze the experiences people with minoritized gender identities in work meetings.
However, limitations come with this decision—although I did see commonalities in data between
women and nonbinary people (and I had a nonbinary woman participant, Max, who identified as
both), it could also be argued that they should comprise different studies so as not to conflate the
patterns of perspectives in these groups.
The last limitation I will discuss is my decision not to triangulate the interview data with
ethnographic data at this point in the research agenda. As stated in Chapter 3, I chose to employ in-
depth interviews as my method in order to uncover counter-stories of participants and to tell “the
stories of those people whose experiences are not often told (i.e., those on the margins of society)”
(Solórzano and Yosso, 2002, p. 32). However, I recognize that this study could gain perspective
from observing people in work meetings—if not my current participants, at least other people who
were willing to be involved. I do believe subjectivities are valid in their own right to be analyzed, and
my main point of study prioritizes the inner worlds of and the aftermath of meetings on employees,
rather than observing meetings from a bird’s eye view. However, I hope in future studies to gain
access to a team in which I could understand both the internal aspects (i.e., perspectives of meeting
participants) and external mechanisms (i.e., how a meeting looks from the outside). This
ethnographic component would also help me to better understand aspects of the group dynamic,
whereas this current study prioritizes perceptions of interpersonal and group dynamics without talking
to every person on a work team.
Thus, based on these current limitations and inspiration for how to build upon these ideas at
hand, I have many future studies in mind on the topic of minoritized employees’ experiences and
wellbeing in work meetings, including components I have mentioned thus far in this section. To

155
recap, these ideas include interviewing men in tech organizations, conducting an
ethnographic/fieldwork study to triangulate my interviews with observations of work meetings,
interviewing nonbinary people for a standalone study, and studying workers with minoritized
identities experiences in other types of industries, such as more women-dominated spheres like
library science.
Concluding Statements
As I stated previously, the general topic of work meetings has rarely been studied in
communication or organizational literature. This shortage is somewhat baffling to me, especially for
how often meetings occur, and how often employees talk about them (even anecdotally, in my own
experiences). My data in this study and my casual conversations with people outside of this project
have reinforced my observations that people talk (or often vent) about meetings not only to their
coworkers—but to their families, their friends, and even their therapists. Work meetings serve as
focal points that punctuate our days: I often think about my workday in the context of what
meetings I have scheduled, and everything else seems to fall into place around these events. When
my husband asks me about how my day went, I talk to him about my meetings. I talk about who
said something funny, who said something brilliant, or who said something offensive in a meeting. I
talk about why a meeting’s glitchy technology made me want to scream, why I was happy that I
facilitated a meeting well, or why I was worried about some cryptic comments my boss made in a
meeting. I tend to remember noteworthy meetings far longer than most work projects I have
completed. While this is my perspective as the author of this dissertation, the stories of the 30
employees who were generous enough to talk to me about how they felt about work meetings
indicate that I am not alone in feeling this way.
With all these perspectives in mind, I circle back to my assertion that researchers ought to
analyze work meetings more often. But even more specifically, I assert that the perspectives and emotions

156
of employees in work meetings should be centered more often in this already small slice of scholarship.
I understand the need for research that looks at variables like efficiency and profitability of
meetings—but for those of us who seek to integrate critical theory and organizational
communication, I believe more of a priority should be placed on the wellbeing and survival of
employees in daily environments. Thus, this study makes an important contribution to both critical
and organizational literature by unpacking an everyday event that happens for so many people—and
how the occurrence of work meetings can impact and reify forces like power dynamics, mental
health, self-efficacy, inclusion, and safety for employees.
As one of my personal values in research is to be accessible and applicable to daily life, I
leave my readers with a brief list of interventions and aspects to be mindful of in work meeting
communication: all of these recommendations stem from patterns I analyzed in the perspectives of
minoritized employees in work meetings in this study. I hope that readers will consider
implementing some (or all!) of these ideas in the future in order to create a more just, equitable, and
enjoyable working world.
1. Soothe people who are experiencing doubt that their troubling experiences are “all in their
head.” Promote messages that doubt around offensive incidents is acceptable and normal,
and that this doubt does not make the experience any less painful.
2. Refer to and educate employees on concepts like intersectionality. When minoritized
workers with compounding identities become familiar with the concrete concept of
intersectionality, it can help reduce feelings of self-doubt and frustration with oneself for
having trouble interpreting sources of bias and discrimination.
3. Remember that when employees have more assurance that they are facing bias, it can bring a
sense of cognitive “protection.” Taking time to debrief after troubling incidents in meetings

157
or warning colleagues of repeat offenders (e.g., via a whisper network) could help to reduce
the ambiguity and help validate the other person.
4. Stick up for colleagues in a meeting, not just after. When bystanders see someone sticking up
for someone else, it has compounding effects. Participants shared that getting validation
after a meeting “didn’t help,” but having someone stick up for them in a meeting would have
had a positive impact.
5. Exemplify inclusivity by sharing your own pronouns, if you feel comfortable/safe to do so.
Do not require or directly ask employees to share pronouns—but by you sharing your own,
you may be crafting a more welcoming environment for people who are prone to being
misgendered.
6. Hire and retain minoritized employees today (time is of the essence!). This action helps work
toward a goal in which not all senior people in meetings in 10 years are still white men—
when they are, it is hard to delineate respect for experience/seniority versus privileged
demographics.
7. Managers need to be more mindful of neurodiversity on teams—although meetings that run
at a breakneck speed might seem more efficient, they also might be silencing voices who
need time to process.
8. Consider how faultlines formed from overrepresented identities might be (intentionally or
unintentionally) creating discomfort or distress among their less privileged workers. Connect
colleagues who are not white men (and pay mentors for their time or lighten other
workloads). Hire white men who seem mindful about issues like race, gender, etc.
9. Keep an eye out for cycles in which minoritized employees are ostracizing themselves more;
do not approach with blame or pity, but see how you can integrate your team better. Keep

158
an eye out for microaggressions, and consider opportunities for cultural appreciation like
sending out a Google form to ask for lunch catering suggestions.
10. Dissuade gendered language in meetings. Try to avoid “you guys,” “fellas,” or language that
erases nonbinary people, like “ladies and gentlemen.”
11. Be thoughtful about hybrid meetings—and especially be considerate of people joining
online. Remember that people participating online may be missing a lot of cues in the
conference room, and so it is inclusive to loop people in on aspects that may not be obvious
for those who are not there in person.
12. Realize that a virtual meeting does not automatically mean that it’s accessible. Check in with
employees about their needs and keep them confidential (i.e., blurred backgrounds causing
migraines, live captioning, unmuting versus chat).
13. Think about how to incorporate affordances from online meetings into in-person spaces,
like hand-raising or designating a queuing system for people who want to speak.
14. Provide a technology budget for those working from home if possible. This could help
upend inequalities that occur due to virtual meeting technology: for instance, people with
highly-melanated skin would have the option to buy webcams that are not only designed for
light-skinned people. At the very least, do not comment on aspects of people’s virtual
presence that don’t impact the work itself, for instance, the lighting in someone’s video.
15. Realize that some employees face bias when speaking in meetings: Some minoritized
employees face extra scrutiny and stereotyping when they voice their opinions in meetings.
Consider other ways to enhance visibility and consideration for promotions, raises, and
more, such as focusing on someone’s contributions outside of meeting settings as well.

159
References
Acker, J. (1990). Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: A theory of gendered organizations. Gender & Society, 4,
139–158.
Acker, J. (2006). Inequality regimes: Gender, class, and race in organizations. Gender & Society, 20(4),
441–464. doi:10.1177/0891243206289499.
Afsar, B. & Masood, M. (2018). Transformational Leadership, Creative Self-Efficacy, Trust in
Supervisor, Uncertainty Avoidance, and Innovative Work Behavior of Nurses. The Journal of
Applied Behavioral Science, 54(1), 36–61.
Allen, J.A., Lehmann-Willenbrock, N., & Landowski, N. (2014). Linking pre-meeting
communication to meeting effectiveness. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 29(8), 1064–1081.
https://doi.org/10.1108/JMP-09-2012-0265
Allen, J. A. & Rogelberg, S.G. (2013). Manager-led group meetings: a context for promoting
employee engagement. Group and Organization Management, 38, pp. 543-569.
Allen, J. A., Tong, J., & Landowski, N. (2020). Meeting effectiveness and task performance: Meeting
size matters. Journal of Management Development, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print).
https://doi.org/10.1108/JMD-12-2019-0510
Allyn, B. (2020) Google Employees Call Black Scientist's Ouster 'Unprecedented Research
Censorship'. National Public Radio. Retrieved from:
https://www.npr.org/2020/12/03/942417780/google-employees-say-scientists-ouster-was-
unprecedented-research-censorship
Ancona, D., & Caldwell, D. (1992). Demography & design: Predictors of new product team
performance. Organization Science, 3, 321–341.
Applebaum, B. (2016, June 09). Critical Whiteness Studies. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education.
Retrieved 6 Nov. 2020, from
https://oxfordre.com/education/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.001.0001/acrefor
e-9780190264093-e-5
Ashcraft, K. L. (2005). Resistance Through Consent?: Occupational Identity, Organizational Form,
and the Maintenance of Masculinity Among Commercial Airline Pilots. Management
Communication Quarterly, 19(1), 67–90. https://doi.org/10.1177/0893318905276560
Ashcraft, K. L., & Allen, B. J. (2003). The Racial Foundation of Organizational Communication.
Communication Theory, 13(1), 5–38. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2003.tb00280.x
Ashcraft, K. L., & Pacanowsky, M. E. (1996). “A woman’s worst enemy”: Reflections on a narrative
of organizational life and female identity. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 24(3), 217–
239. https://doi.org/10.1080/00909889609365452
Ashcraft, C., McClain, B., & Eger, E. (2016). Women in Tech. NCWIT’S Workforce Alliance.

160
Bandura, A (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a Unifying Theory of Behavioral Change. Psychological
Review. 84(2), 191–215.
Baran, B. E., Shanock, L. R., Rogelberg, S. G., & Scott, C. W. (2012). Leading Group Meetings:
Supervisors’ Actions, Employee Behaviors, and Upward Perceptions. Small Group Research,
43(3), 330–355. https://doi.org/10.1177/1046496411418252
Barker, L., Mancha, C., & Ashcraft, C. (2014). What is the impact of gender diversity on technology
business performance? Research summary. (Rep.). Boulder, CO: National Center for
Women & Information Technology.
Beauvoir, Simone de. (1948). The Ethics of Ambiguity. Translated by Bernard Frechtman. New York:
Citadel.
Barnshaw, J. (2008). Race. In R. T. Schaefer (Ed.), Encyclopedia of race, ethnicity, and society (Vol.
1, pp. 1178-1093). SAGE Publications, Inc., https://www-doi-
org.libproxy1.usc.edu/10.4135/9781412963879.n446
Baym, N. K. (1995). The emergence of community in computer-mediated interaction. In S. G. Jones
(Ed.), Cybersociety: Computer-mediated communication and community (pp. 138–163). Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage.
Bechky, B.A. (2006) Talking about machines, thick description, and knowledge work. Organization
Studies, 27(12), 1757–1768
Beck, S. J., & Keyton, J. (2009). Perceiving strategic meeting action. Small Group Research, 40, 226-
246. doi:10.1177/1046496408330084
Benjamin, R. (2019). Introduction: The New Jim Code. In Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for
the New Jim Code. Polity.
Bennett, J. (2019). How History Changed Anita Hill. The New York Times.
nytimes.com/2019/06/17/us/anita-hill-women-power.html
Berdahl, J., Cooper, M., Glick, P., Livingston, R., & Williams, J. (2018). Work as a Masculinity
Contest. Journal of Social Issues, 74, 422–448. https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12289
Bloomfield, B.P., Latham, Y. and Vurdubakis, T. (2010). Bodies, technologies and action
possibilities: When is an affordance? Sociology, 44(3), 415–433.
Brescoll, V. L. (2016). Leading with their hearts? How gender stereotypes of emotion lead to biased
evaluations of female leaders. The Leadership Quarterly, 27(3), 415–428.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2016.02.005
Brewer, M. (1995). Managing diversity: The role of social identities. In S. Jackson & M. Ruderman
(Eds.), Diversity in Workteams, pp. 131–159. Washington, DC: APA Books.
Brown, D. (2018). Google Diversity Annual Report 2018. Retrieved from:
https://diversity.google/annual-report/

161
Buolamwini, J., and Gebru, T. (2018). Gender Shades: Intersectional Accuracy Disparities in
Commercial Gender Classification." Proceedings of Machine Learning Research, 81, 1–15.
Buzzanell, P. M. (1994). Gaining a Voice: Feminist Organizational Communication Theorizing.
Management Communication Quarterly, 7(4), 339–383.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0893318994007004001
Byrne, D. (1971). The attraction paradigm. New York: Academic Press.
Castleberry-Singleton, C. (2018). Growing Together at Twitter. Retrieved from:
https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/growingtogetherattwitter.ht
ml
Cech E. A. & Waidzunas T. J. (2021). Systemic inequalities for LGBTQ professionals in STEM.
Science Advances, 7(3). https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abe0933
Charmaz, K. (2005). Grounded Theory in the Twenty First Century: Applications for Advancing
Social Justice Studies. In The Handbook of Qualitative Research (pp. 507–535).
Charmaz, K. (2014). Constructing Grounded Theory. Sage.
Cheney, G., & Ashcraft, K. (2007). Considering “The Professional” in Communication Studies:
Implications for Theory and Research Within and Beyond the Boundaries of Organizational
Communication. Communication Theory, 17(2), 146–175. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-
2885.2007.00290.x
Chidgey, R., Payne, J. G., & Zolb, E. (2009). Rumours from around the bloc. Feminist Media Studies,
9(4), 477–491.
Christian, A.J. (2015) Video Stars: Marketing Queer Performance in Networked Television. In (Eds.)
S. Noble & S. Roberts. (2015). The intersectional Internet: Race, sex, class and culture online. Peter
Lang Publishing, Inc.
The Clayman Institute for Gender Research. (2008). “Climbing the Technical Ladder: Obstacles and
Solutions for Mid-level Women in Technology." Stanford University. Retrieved from:
https://gender.stanford.edu/publications/climbing-technical-ladder-obstacles-and-
solutions-mid-level-women-technology
Cockburn, C. (1981). The Material of Male Power. Feminist Review, 9(1), 41–58.
Collins, P. H. (2002). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment.
Routledge.
Connell, R. W., & Messerschmidt, J. W. (2005). Hegemonic masculinity: Rethinking the concept.
Gender and Society, 19(6), 829–859.
Correll, S. J., & Mackenzie, L. (2016) “To Succeed in Tech, Women Need More Visibility.” Harvard
Business Review. https://hbr.org/2016/09/to-succeed-in-tech-women-need-more-visibility

162
Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the Intersection of race and sex: A Black feminist critique of
antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory, and antiracist politics. University of Chicago
Legal Forum, 139–167.
Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against
Women of Color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241-1299. doi:10.2307/1229039.
Cross, S. E., & Madson, L. (1997). Models of the self: self-construals and gender. Psychological Bulletin,
122(1), 5–37. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.122.1.5
Daniels, J. (2009). Cyber racism: White supremacy online and the new attack on civil rights. Lanham, MD:
Rowman and Littlefield.
Daniels, J. (2015). The Trouble With White Feminism: Whiteness, Digital Feminism, and the
Intersectional Internet. In The intersectional Internet: Race, sex, class and culture online. Noble, S. U.,
& Tynes, B. M. (Eds.). Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.
Davidson, S. (2016). Gender inequality: Nonbinary transgender people in the workplace. Cogent Social
Sciences, 2(1), 1236511. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2016.1236511
Davies, P. G., Spencer, S. J., Quinn, D. M., & Gerhardstein, R. (2002). Consuming images: How
television commercials that elicit stereotype threat can restrain women academically and
professionally. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(12), 1615–1628.
doi:10.1177/014616702237644.
Davis, A. Y. (1983). Women, Race & Class (1st Vintage Books ed). Vintage Books.
Davis, K. (2008). Intersectionality as buzzword: A sociology of science perspective on what makes a
feminist theory successful. Feminist Theory, 9(1), 67–85.
de la Peña, C. (2010). The history of technology, the resistance of archives, and the whiteness of
race. Technology and Culture, 51(4), 919–937.
Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J. (2012). Critical race theory: An introduction. NYU Press.
Delmar, R. (2010). What is Feminism? In W. K. Kolmar & F. Bartkowski (Eds.), Feminist theory: A
reader (3rd ed, pp. 24–33). Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.
Deutscher, P. (2008). The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir: Ambiguity, Conversion, Resistance.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Dorsey, J. C. (2003). “It Hurt Very Much at the Time”: Patriarchy, Rape Culture, and the Slave
Body-Semiotic. In L. Lewis (Ed.), The Culture of Gender and Sexuality in the Caribbean, 294–322.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
Dunbar-Hester, C. (2014). Low power to the people: pirates, protest, and politics in FM radio
activism. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

163
Dwyer, S., Mesak, H., & Hsu, M. (2005). An Exploratory Examination of the Influence of National
Culture on Cross-National Product Diffusion. Journal of International Marketing, 13(2), 1-27.
doi:10.1509/jimk.13.2.1.64859
Eagly, A. H., & Karau, S. J. (2002). Role congruity theory of prejudice toward female leaders.
Psychological Review, 109(3), 573-598.
Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams. Administrative
Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383.
Edwards, P. (2003). Industrial Genders: Soft/Hard. In N. E. Lerman, R. Oldenziel, & A. Mohun
(Eds.), Gender & Technology: a Reader (pp. 177–203). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press.
Ely, R. J., & Meyerson, D. E. (2000). Theories of Gender in Organizations: A New Approach to
Organizational Analysis and Change. Research in Organizational Behavior, 22, 103–151.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0191-3085(00)22004-2
Faulkner, W. (2007). ‘Nuts and Bolts and People’: Gender-Troubled Engineering Identities. Social
Studies of Science, 37(3), 331–356.
Fredericksen, E. (2000). Muted Colors: Gender and Classroom Silence. Language Arts, 77(4), 301–
308. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41483069
Fontana, A., & Frey, J. (2014). The Interview: From Neutral Stance to Political Involvement. In
Qualitative Research in Business and Management. SAGE Publications.
Forbes, D. A. (2002). Internalized masculinity and women’s discourse: A critical analysis of the
(Re)production of masculinity in organizations. Communication Quarterly, 50(3–4), 269–291.
https://doi.org/10.1080/01463370209385664
Fowler, S. (2017). Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber. Retrieved from
https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-one-very-strange-year-at-
uber
Gibson, J.J. (1979). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. London: Houghton Mifflin.
Glass, J. L., Sassler, S., Levitte, Y., & Michelmore, K. (2013). What's so special about stem? A
comparison of women's retention in stem and professional occupations. Social Forces, 92(2),
723-756.
Graf, N., Fry, R., & Funk, C. (2018). 7 Facts about the STEM workforce. Pew Research Center.
Retrieved from: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/01/09/7-facts-about-the-
stem-workforce/
Grant, R. (2015). Silicon Valley's Best and Worst Jobs for New Moms (and Dads). The Atlantic.
Retrieved from: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/03/the-best-and-
worst-companies-for-new-moms-and-dads-in-silicon-valley/386384/

164
Halliday, C. S., Paustian-Underdahl, S. C., Stride, C., & Zhang, H. (2022). Retaining Women in Male-
Dominated Occupations across Cultures: The Role of Supervisor Support and Psychological
Safety. Human Performance, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/08959285.2022.2050234
Hancock, A.-M. (2007). Intersectionality as a Normative and Empirical Paradigm. Politics & Gender,
3(2), 248–254. doi.org/10.1017/S1743923X07000062
Harrison, L. A., & Lynch, A. B. (2005). Social role theory and the perceived gender role orientation
of athletes. Sex Roles, 52(3-4), 227-236.
Heilman, M. E. (1983). Sex bias in work settings: The lack of fit model. In B. Staw and L. Cummings
(Eds.), Research in Organizational Behavior (Vol. 5, pp. 657–674). Greenwich, CT: JAI
Press.
Heilman, M. E. (1995). Sex stereotypes and their effects in the workplace: What we know and what
we don’t know. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 10, 3–26.
Heilman, M. E. (2001). Description and prescription: How gender stereotypes prevent women’s
ascent up the organizational ladder. Journal of Social Issues, 57, 657-674.
Heilman, M. E., & Okimoto, T. G. (2007). Averting penalties for women’s success: Rectifying the
perceived communality deficiency. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92, 81–92.
Heilman, M. E., Wallen, A. S., Fuchs, D., & Tamkins, M. (2004). Penalties for success: Reactions to
women who succeed at male gender-typed tasks. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89(3), 416–427.
doi:10.1037/0021-9010.89.3.416
Hicks, M. (2017). Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost
Its Edge in Computing. MIT Press.
Hill, A. (2015). Anita Hill speaks: How to avoid the next Ellen Pao case. Fortune.
https://fortune.com/2015/04/06/anita-hill-ellen-pao/
Hired. (2019). “The State of Wage Inequality in the Workplace.” Retrieved from:
https://hired.com/page/wage-inequality-report
Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s consequences, international differences in work-related values.
Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications.
Hofstede, G. (1991). Cultures and organizations: software of the mind. London: McGraw-Hill.
Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture’s consequences: comparing values, behaviors, institutions and
organizations across nations (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.
Hofstede, G. (2011). Dimensionalizing Cultures: The Hofstede Model in Context. Online Readings
in Psychology and Culture, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1014
Hogg, M., & Abrams, D. (1988). Social identification. London: Routledge.

165
Hogg, M. A. (1992). The social psychology of group cohesiveness: From attraction to social identity. New York:
Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Hutchby, I. (2001) Technologies, texts and affordances. Sociology, 35(2), 441–456.
Inzlicht, M., & Ben-Zeev, T. (2000). A threatening intellectual environment: Why females are
susceptible to experiencing problem-solving deficits in the presence of males. Psychological
Science, 11(5), 365–371. doi:10.1111/1467-9280.00272.
Isaac, C., Lee, B., & Carnes, M. (2009). Interventions That Affect Gender Bias in Hiring: A
Systematic Review. Academic Medicine: Journal of the Association of American Medical
Colleges, 84(10), 1440–1446.
Jackson, S. (1992). Team composition in organizations. In S. Worchel, W.Wood, & J. Simpson
(Eds.), Group process and productivity (pp.138–173). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Jeanes, E. (2019). Bounded Emotionality. In A Dictionary of Organizational Behaviour. Oxford
University Press. Published online at
https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780191843273.001.0001/acref-
9780191843273-e-19.
Kanter, R. M. (1977a). Men and Women of the Corporation. Basic Books.
Kanter, R. M. (1977b). Some Effects of Proportions on Group Life: Skewed Sex Ratios and
Responses to Token Women. American Journal of Sociology, 82(5), 965–990.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2777808
Karakowsky, L., McBey, K., & Miller, D. L. (2004). Gender, Perceived Competence, and Power
Displays: Examining Verbal Interruptions in a Group Context. Small Group Research, 35(4),
407–439. https://doi.org/10.1177/1046496404263728
Kauffeld, S., & Lehmann-Willenbrock, N. (2012). Meetings Matter: Effects of Team Meetings on
Team and Organizational Success. Small Group Research, 43(2), 130–158.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1046496411429599
Keith, E. (2015). “55 million: a fresh look at the number, effectiveness, and cost of meetings in the
U.S.” Lucid Meetings Blog. Retrieved from: https://blog.lucidmeetings.com/blog/fresh-
look-number-effectiveness-cost-meetings-in-us
Kelly, J. R. & Jones, E. E. (2012). Investigating emotions and affect in groups. In A. B. Hollingshead
& M. S. Poole, Research methods for studying groups and teams. Taylor & Francis/Routledge.
Kiesler, S., Siegel, J., & McGuire, T. W. (1984). Social psychological aspects of computer-mediated
communication. American Psychologist, 39(10), 1123–1134. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-
066X.39.10.1123

166
Kirk-Brown, A. & Van Dijk, P. (2016). An examination of the role of psychological safety in the
relationship between job resources, affective commitment and turnover intentions of
Australian employees with chronic illness. International Journal of Human Resource
Management, 27(14), 1626–1641. https://doi-
org.libproxy1.usc.edu/10.1080/09585192.2015.1053964
Koch, S. C., Müller, S. M., & Sieverding, M. (2008). Women and computers. Effects of stereotype
threat on attribution of failure. Computers & Education, 51(4), 1795–1803.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2008.05.007
Kolhatkar, S. (2017). The Tech Industry’s Gender Discrimination Problem. The New Yorker.
Retrieved from: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/20/the-tech-industrys-
gender-discrimination-problem
Korsmeyer, C. (2020). "Feminist Aesthetics." In Zalta, E. N. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Retrieved from: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2020/entries/feminism-aesthetics.
Kvande, E., & Rasmussen, B. (1994). Men in male-dominated organizations and their encounter
with women intruders. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 10(2), 163–173.
https://doi.org/10.1016/0956-5221(94)90018-3s
Lau, D. C., & Murnighan, J. K. (1998). Demographic Diversity and Faultlines: The Compositional
Dynamics of Organizational Groups. The Academy of Management Review, 23(2), 325.
https://doi.org/10.2307/259377
Levin, S. (2017). Uber hires Eric Holder to investigate sexual harassment allegations. The Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/21/uber-hires-eric-holder-to-
investigate-sexual-harassment-allegations
Lewis, S. (2019). “The Racial Bias Built Into Photography.” The New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/lens/sarah-lewis-racial-bias-photography.html
Lin, Y.W (2006). A techno-feminist view on the Open Source Software development. Encyclopedia
of Gender and Information Technology, p. 1148-1153
Liu, X., Park, J., Hymer, C., & Thatcher, S. M. B. (2019). Multidimensionality: A Cross-Disciplinary
Review and Integration. Journal of Management, 45(1), 197–230.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206318807285
Livingston, R. W., Rosette, A. S., & Washington, E. F. (2012). Can an Agentic Black Woman Get
Ahead? The Impact of Race and Interpersonal Dominance on Perceptions of Female
Leaders. Psychological Science, 23(4), 354–358. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611428079
Löfgren, K. [kentlofgren]. (2013). Qualitative analysis of interview data: A step-by-step guide [Video file].
Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRL4PF2u9XA&ab.
MacKenzie, R., Marks, A., & Morgan, K. (2017). Technology, Affordances and Occupational
Identity Amongst Older Telecommunications Engineers: From Living Machines to Black-
Boxes. Sociology, 51(4), 732–748. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26558651

167
Mannix, E., & Neale, M. A. (2005). What Differences Make a Difference?: The Promise and Reality
of Diverse Teams in Organizations. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 6(2), 31–55.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1529-1006.2005.00022.x
Mason, Q. (2018). Intersectional Ambiguity and the Phenomenology of #BlackGirlJoy. In (Eds.) S.
C. Shabot, & C. Landry. (2018). Rethinking Feminist Phenomenology: Theoretical and Applied
Perspectives. (pp. 51-68). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Mayo, C. (2005). Certain privilege: Rethinking white agency. In C. Higgens (Ed.), Philosophy of
education 2004 (Urbana, IL: Philosophy of Education Society).
McDonald, J. (2015). Organizational Communication Meets Queer Theory: Theorizing Relations of
“Difference” Differently. Communication Theory, 25(3), 310–329.
https://doi.org/10.1111/comt.12060
McGrath, J., Berdahl, J., & Arrow, H. (1995). Traits, expectations, culture, and clout. In S. Jackson &
M. Ruderman (Eds.), Diversity in Workteams (pp. 47–68). Washington, DC: APA Books.
Metcalfe, B., & Linstead, A. (2003). Gendering Teamwork: Re-Writing the Feminine. Gender, Work
& Organization, 10(1), 94–119. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0432.00005
Miles, M., Huberman, A. M., & Saldaña, J. (2019). Qualitative Data Analysis: A Methods Sourcebook.
SAGE Publications.
Molla, R. (2019). “The gender wage gap is smaller in tech, but it will hurt the economy more.” Vox.
Retrieved from: https://www.vox.com/2019/4/2/18290482/gender-wage-tech-economy-
hired
Mumby, D. K. (2005). Theorizing Resistance in Organization Studies: A Dialectical Approach.
Management Communication Quarterly, 19(1), 19–44.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0893318905276558
Mumby, D. K., & Putnam, L. L. (1992). The Politics of Emotion: A Feminist Reading of Bounded
Rationality. Academy of Management Review, 17(3), 465–486.
https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1992.4281983
Murnighan, J. K. & Lau, D. C. (2017). “Faultlines.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Business and
Management. Doi: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190224851.013.60
Murphy, P. (1988). Social Closure: The Theory of Monopolisation and Exclusion. Oxford University Press:
Oxford.
Nakamura, L. (2008). Digitizing race: Visual cultures of the Internet. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.
The National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES). (2019). Women, Minorities,
and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering (WMPD) Report. Retrieved from:
https://nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?org=NSF&cntn_id=297944

168
Nelson, L., & Klutas, K. (2000). The distinctiveness effect in social interaction: Creation of a self-
fulfilling prophecy. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 126–135.
Noble, S.U. (2017) Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. NYU Press,
New York, NY.
Noble, S. U., & Tynes, B. M. (Eds.). (2015). The intersectional Internet: Race, Sex, Class and Culture Online.
New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.
O’Leary, L. (2020). “A Black A.I. Ethicist on Her Experiences at Google—and Her Controversial
Departure.” Slate. Retrieved from: https://slate.com/technology/2020/12/google-timnit-
gebru-paper-black-employees.html
O’Neill, T. A., & Allen, N. J. (2012). Team Meeting Attitudes: Conceptualization and Investigation
of a New Construct. Small Group Research, 43(2), 186–210.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1046496411426485
Parks-Stamm, E., Heilman, M., & Hearns, K. (2007). Motivated to Penalize: Women's Strategic
Rejection of Successful Women. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2(34), 237-247.
Perales, F., Ablaza, C., & Elkin, N. (2022). Exposure to Inclusive Language and Well-Being at Work
Among Transgender Employees in Australia, 2020. American Journal of Public Health, 112(3),
482–490. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306602
Phillips, K. W., Rothbard, N. P., & Dumas, T. L. (2009). To Disclose or Not to Disclose? Status
Distance and Self-Disclosure in Diverse Environments. Academy of Management Review, 34(4),
710–732. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.34.4.zok710
Pompper, D. (2011). Fifty years later: Mid ‐career women of color against the glass ceiling in
communications organizations. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 24(4), 464–486.
https://doi.org/10.1108/09534811111144629
Purdie-Vaughns, V., & Eibach, R. P. (2008). Intersectional invisibility: The distinctive advantages
and disadvantages of multiple subordinate-group identities. Sex Roles, 59, 377–391.
Rosette, A. S., Leonardelli, G. J., & Phillips, K. W. (2008). The White standard: Racial bias in leader
categorization. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(4), 758–777. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-
9010.93.4.758
Rudman, L. (1998). Self-promotion as a risk factor for women: The costs and benefits of
counterstereotypical impression management. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
74(3), 629-645.
Rutherford, S. (2001). Organizational cultures, women managers and exclusion. Women in
Management Review, 16(8), 371–382. https://doi.org/10.1108/EUM0000000006289
Salaman, G. (1971). Two occupational communities. Sociological Review, 19(3), 389–399.

169
Schopler, J., & Insko, C.A. (1992). The discontinuity effect in interpersonal and intergroup relations:
Generality and mediation. In W. Stroebe & M. Hewstone (Eds.), European Review of Social
Psychology, 3, pp. 121–151. New York: Wiley.
Schuster, C., & Martiny, S. (2017). Not Feeling Good in STEM: Effects of Stereotype Activation
and Anticipated Affect on Women’s Career Aspirations. Sex Roles, 76(1–2), 40–55.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-016-0665-3
Schwartzman, H.B. (1986). The meeting as a neglected social form in organizational studies. Research
in Organizational Behavior, 8, pp. 233-258.
Scott, C. W., & Myers, K. K. (2010). Toward an integrative theoretical perspective on organizational
membership negotiations: Socialization, assimilation, and the duality of structure.
Communication Theory, 20, 79–105. doi: 10.1111/j.1468–2885.2009.01355.x
Scott, C., Allen, J.A., Rogelberg, S.G. and Kello, J. (2015). Five theoretical lenses for conceptualizing
the role of meetings in organizational life. In Allen, J.A., Lehmann-Willenbrock, N. and
Rogelberg, S.G. (Eds), The Cambridge Handbook of Meeting Science, Cambridge University Press,
New York, pp. 21-47.
Scott, C. W., Shanock, L. R., & Rogelberg, S. G. (2012). Meetings at Work: Advancing the Theory
and Practice of Meetings. Small Group Research, 43(2), 127–129.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1046496411429023
Sekaquaptewa, D., & Thompson, M. (2003). Solo status, stereotype threat, and performance
expectancies: Their effects on women’s performance. Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology, 39(1), 68–74.
Selvarajah, S., Deivanayagam, T. A., & Lasco, G. (2020). Categorisation and Minoritisation. BMJ
Global Health, 12(5). doi:10.1136/ bmjgh-2020-004508
Shim, S.-H., Livingston, R., Phillips, K. W., & Lam, S. S. K. (2020). The Impact of Leader Eye Gaze
on Disparity in Member Influence: Implications for Process and Performance in Diverse
Groups. Academy of Management Journal, amj.2017.1507.
https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2017.1507
Singh, B., Winkel, D., & Selvarajan, T. (2013). Managing diversity at work: Does psychological safety
hold the key to racial differences in employee performance? Journal of Occupational and
Organizational Psychology, 86. https://doi.org/10.1111/joop.12015
Solórzano, D. G., & Yosso, T. J. (2002). Critical Race Methodology: Counter-Storytelling as an
Analytical Framework for Education Research. Qualitative Inquiry, 8(1), 23–44.
doi.org/10.1177/107780040200800103
Stanciu, A. (2017). Stereotype-based faultlines and out-group derogation in diverse teams: The
moderating roles of task stereotypicality and need for cognition. The Journal of Social Psychology,
157, 352-365.

170
Steele, C.K. (2015). Signifyin’, Bitching, and Blogging: Black Women and Resistance Discourse
Online. In The intersectional Internet: Race, sex, class and culture online. Noble, S. U., &
Tynes, B. M. (Eds.). Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.
Steele, C., & Aronson, J. (1995). Stereotype Threat and the Intellectual Test Performance of African
Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(5), 797.
https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.69.5.797
Stoffregen, T.A. (2003). Affordances as properties of the animal-environment system. Ecological
Psychology, 15(2), 115–134.
Strangleman, T. (2001). Networks, place and identities in post-industrial mining communities.
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 25(2), 253–267.
Strangleman, T. (2012). Work identity in crisis? Rethinking the problem of attachment and loss at
work. Sociology, 46(3), 411–425.
Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. M. (1990). Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and
Techniques. Sage Publications, Inc.
Streitfeld, D. (2015). Ellen Pao Loses Silicon Valley Bias Case Against Kleiner Perkins. The New
York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/28/technology/ellen-pao-
kleiner-perkins-case-decision.html
Stroessner, S. (1996). Social categorization by race or sex: Effects of perceived non-normalcy on
response times. Social cognition, 14, 274–276.
Swaab, R. I., Phillips, K. W., & Schaerer, M. (2016). Secret conversation opportunities facilitate
minority influence in virtual groups: The influence on majority power, information
processing, and decision quality. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 133, 17–
32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2015.07.003
Tajfel, H., Turner, J. C., Austin, W. G., & Worchel, S. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup
conflict. Organizational identity: A reader, 56-65
Tajfel, H., & Wilkes, A. (1963). Classification and quantitative judgment. British Journal of Psychology,
54, 101–113.
Taras, V., Kirkman, B. L., & Steel, P. (2010). Examining the impact of Culture’s consequences: A
three-decade, multilevel, meta-analytic review of Hofstede’s cultural value dimensions.
Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(3), 405–439. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018938
Thatcher, S. M. B., & Patel, P. C. (2012). Group Faultlines: A Review, Integration, and Guide to
Future Research. Journal of Management, 38(4), 969–1009.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206311426187
Trahan, E (2020). “Documentary 'Coded Bias' Unmasks the Racism of Artificial Intelligence.”
WBUR. https://www.wbur.org/news/2020/11/18/documentary-coded-bias-review

171
Tsui, A., & O’Reilly, C. (1989). Beyond simple demographic effects: The importance of relational
demography in superior-subordinate dyads. Academy of Management Journal, 32, 402–423.
Turkle, S. (2005). The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit (20th anniversary ed., 1st MIT
Press ed). Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Turner, J. (1982). Toward a cognitive definition of the group. In H. Tajfel (Ed.), Social identity and
intergroup relations. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Turner, J. (1985). Social categorization and the self-concept: A social cognitive theory of group
behavior. Advances in group processes (Vol. 2, pp. 77–121). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
Turner, J. C., Oakes, P. J., Haslam, S. A., & McGarty, C. (1994). Self and Collective: Cognition and
Social Context. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20(5), 454–463.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167294205002
Turner, J. C. & Reynolds, K. J. (2010). "The story of social identity". In T. Postmes; N. Branscombe
(eds.). Rediscovering Social Identity: Core Sources. Psychology Press
Tynes, B.M., Schuschke, J., & Noble, S. U. (2015) Digital Intersectionality Theory and the
#Blacklivesmatter Movement. In The intersectional Internet: Race, sex, class and culture online.
Noble, S. U., & Tynes, B. M. (Eds.). Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2020) “Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey.”
Retrieved from: https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat39.htm
Volkoff, O. and Strong, D.M. (2013). Critical realism and affordances: Theorizing it-associated
organizational change processes. MIS Quarterly 37(3), 819–834.
Walther, J. B. (1992). Interpersonal effects in computer-mediated interaction: A relational
perspective. Communication Research, 19, 52–90.
Walther, J. B. (1996). Computer-mediated communication: Impersonal, interpersonal, and
hyperpersonal interaction. Communication Research, 23, 3–43.
Walther, J. B. (2007). Selective self-presentation in computer-mediated communication:
Hyperpersonal dimensions of technology, language, and cognition. Computers in Human
Behavior, 23(5), 2538–2557. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2006.05.002
Weber, M., Roth, G., & Wittich, C. (1978). Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Weick, K. E. (2000). Emergent change as a universal in organizations. In: M. Beer and N. Nohria
(eds.), Breaking the Code of Change (pp. 223-242) Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Wickham, C. (1998). Gossip and resistance among the medieval peasantry. Past and Present, 160(1), 3–
24.

172
Williams, K., & O’Reilly, C. (1998). The complexity of diversity: A review of forty years of research.
In B. Staw & R. Sutton (Eds.), Research in organizational behavior, 21, pp. 77–140. Greenwich,
CT: JAI Press.
Williams, M. (2018). Facebook 2018 Diversity Report: Reflecting on Our Journey. Retrieved from:
https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/07/diversity-report/
Wilson, B. and Meyer, I. (2021). “Nonbinary LGBTQ Adults in the United States.” UCLA School of
Law Williams Institute. https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-
content/uploads/Nonbinary-LGBTQ-Adults-Jun-2021.pdf
Winquist, J., & Larson, J. (1998). Information pooling: When it impacts group decision making.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 371–377.
Witz, A. (1992). Professions and Patriarchy. Routledge, London.
Wong, J. (2017). 'Moms are persona non grata': are tech startups hostile to working mothers?
Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jun/26/silicon-valley-
tech-startups-working-mothers
Woodcock, A., Hernandez, P. R., Estrada, M., & Schultz, P. W. (2012). The consequences of
chronic stereotype threat: Domain disidentification and abandonment. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 103(4), 635–646. doi:10.1037/a0029120.
Zacharek, S., Dockterman, E., & Edwards, H. S. (2017, December). Time Person of the Year 2017:
The Silence Breakers. TIME.

173
Appendix A: Online Artifacts About Work Meetings
Figure 3
An Instagram comic about a cat facing anxiety before going into a meeting.

Note. This is from @cat.oons on Instagram.
Figure 4
An Instagram post about taking a nap while pretending to be in a Zoom meeting.

174
Note. From the Instagram account @teachfortheculture.
Figure 5
A Twitter post encouraging shortening meetings.

Note. From Twitter user @likaluca.
Figure 6
A Twitter post about requesting the purpose of a meeting.

Note. From Twitter user @quidditch424.
Figure 7
A Twitter post about appreciating details in a calendar invite.

175

Note. From Twitter user @mysteryspoons.

176
Appendix B: Questions in Pre-Interview Questionnaire
• How long have you worked in your current *industry*? (e.g., software)
• How long have you worked at your current organization?
• How many hours a week would you estimate you typically spend in meetings at your current job?
• What are your gender identity and pronouns?
• What is your age?
• What is your racial/ethnic identity?
• Are there any other aspects of your identity that you would like to share? (e.g., nationality,
religion, sexual orientation, parental status....). As with the other questions, this is optional.
• Is there anything else you'd like to share with Sierra?

177
Appendix C: Interview Guide
Broader role type and company culture
• How would you describe the culture at your current company? By culture, you could
consider speaking on how they seem to treat employees, what the environment feels
like, the values they seem to care about. Again, this stays confidential!

General meeting questions

One aspect I’m particularly interested in understanding more about is your experiences in
work meetings at your current company. Although I recognize that the term “work meeting”
is really broad, I’m envisioning an interactive meeting (for example, not a one-way streamed
broadcast conference call) with a group of three or more people centered around some
shared goals or topics of discussion related to work. This term can apply to virtual or in-
person meetings.

• How would you describe your general attitudes toward work meetings at your
current job? For example, are they something you think are useful or not useful; are
they something you look forward to or dread? I recognize this may differ based on
what meeting you’re thinking about, so however you want to answer the question.
o [Based on their answer, ask follow up questions about why they see meetings
positively or negatively… try to dig deeper into that reasoning.]

Descriptions of positive/negative meeting experiences

• Can you think about a time where you experienced really positive emotions in a work
meeting? What was the source of those positive feelings?

• In the same theme as the previous question, can you think about a time where you
experienced more negative emotions in a work meeting? What was the source of
those negative feelings?
o Did you do anything to cope with these negative feelings? (i.e., debrief with a
trusted colleague, vent to a family member or friend, bring up your concerns
with a supervisor, etc.?). If yes, what did you do, and if no, why not?

Demographic diversity of team – themes of exclusion/inclusion along race and gender

• How would you describe the demographic makeup of the team in some of your
most common meetings or the ones that stick out in your mind the most? Is it pretty
diverse across gender, race, age, role type, etc.? Or more homogeneous?

178
o Do you think the level of demographic diversity in meetings influences how
people interact or are treated in meetings? Or is diversity not really a factor?

• Do you ever reflect on aspects of your own identity such as gender, race, age, role, in
relation to your work meetings?
o For instance, do you think aspects of your identity tend to influence your
emotions in or about a meeting? Or is your identity not really a factor in your
emotions in and toward work meetings?
o Similarly, do you think aspects of your identity influence your feelings of how
much you can achieve your goals in a meeting (i.e, participating,
communicating necessary information, determining plans)? Or is your
identity not really a factor in achieving what you want to achieve in work
meetings?

• Based on your experiences and observations (and perhaps based on any insights
from your colleagues), how much do you feel that work meetings at your company
present environments that are welcoming or exclusionary toward potentially
minoritized team members such as women and people of color?

Technological affordances

• How much do you think your emotions toward your work meetings depends on
whether meetings are in-person or virtual? Why or why isn’t the online/in-person
dynamic a factor in your eyes?

• What are your attitudes toward the features in online meeting platforms that don’t
exist in in-person meetings? Ex: Zoom chat, touch-up features, hand-raising, ability
to turn camera/audio off/on?
o Do you think these features are beneficial or hindering to underrepresented
employees? Why or why not?

Imagining/envisioning better meetings along lines of psychological safety/self-efficacy/emotion

• If you were in charge of designing better meeting practices or communicating certain
priorities in meetings, what would you do? (By “better,” I mean things like making
employees feel higher senses of safety, inclusion, and ability to reach their goals.)
How would you imagine the meeting working?

179
Appendix D: Participant Summary
Table 2
Participant Summary Qualitative Data
Category Self-identification Participants Percentage
Gender "woman" or "female" ("she/her") 26 87%
"genderqueer" or "nonbinary" ("they/them") 3 10%
"non-binary woman" ("she/they") 1 3%
Race/ethnicity "white" 19 63%
"white/native American" 1 3%
"white African" 1 3%
"white/Latina" 1 3%
"Latina" 1 3%
"Black" 4 13%
"Black and South Asian" 1 3%
"Asian" or "South Asian" 7 23%
Other self-
reported
information
Queer 5 17%
Neurodivergent 3 10%
Immigrant 2 7%
Parent 5 17%
Role Computing/engineering 17 57%
Noncomputing 13 43%
Level Non-management 17 57%
Manager 5 17%
Director 4 13%
Executive 4 13%

Table 3
Participant Summary Quantitative Data
Age
minimum 25 years
median 32 years
maximum 52 years
Time in industry
minimum 6 months
median 5.25 years
maximum 30 years

180
Time at current organization
minimum 1 month
median 1.25 years
maximum 21 years
Time in meetings
minimum 3 hours
median 10.75 hours
maximum 40 hours

181
Appendix E: Analysis Summary
Table 4
Analysis Summary Table
Categories Example Codes Example Quote
Intersectionality/
Ambiguity
interpreting
experiences
Ambiguity,
condescension,
competence,
asking questions

Given that I have all of those identities it’s hard
to tell [what’s going on]. There have been other
cases at work where people ask me if I know
something really basic or not. It might not be
because I’m female or minority, but because I
have a different background. It’s a double
whammy. I have a PhD in a science background;
everyone else has a computer science
background. So, people have asked me whether I
know simple things or not. They assume I don’t
know it. I don’t know if it’s due to gender and
race. They don’t ask other people basic
questions. It’s happened multiple times.

Composition
of Group
Impacts
Self-conscious,
nonverbal cues,
stereotypes,
sexism,
gender
composition_men

If I was in a room full of women, I wouldn’t feel
as bad saying stupid stuff [laughs]. There’s always
a fear of sounding like an idiot just because of
the inflection of my voice, so I feel like I can’t
talk with my hands too much; I need to tone it
down. I’m not sitting in a meeting telling myself,
“Don’t use your hands.” But it’s there. And by
stupid stuff, I mean more thinking out loud and
spit-balling. My thoughts aren’t always very
intelligent; sometimes I take a few steps to realize
something obvious.

Computing/ Non-
Computing roles
gender
composition_women,
computing vs. business
admin,
ambiguity

I think we actually have more females on my
team. Which is really cool, but it does feel a little
segregated because I am a project manager and
most of them are female. And then the engineers
are males, and it's just like, breaking those
barriers is very difficult.

Concrete
perceptions
Eating/food,

182
of bias awareness being
minority,
feeling excluded,
microaggressions
At my company, I’ve felt kind of funny being the
only minority. I overheard people talking about
people having ethnic foods in the common room
and how it was offensive because they had
“terrible” smells. I felt really weird because I
bring ethnic foods for lunch, so I try to eat by
myself off in a corner. I don’t think the person
was trying to say anything to me specifically; I
was overhearing it. But I still felt weird, and it
made me think—maybe I shouldn’t bring ethnic
foods for lunch; maybe I should bring a
sandwich.

Judgment for
Emotions /
Emotional
Labor
Judgment for
emotions,
anger/frustration,
feeling misunderstood,
gender
composition_women

We had the meeting, and then afterward my
manager came back to us and was like, “Hey, we
got some feedback from the senior leadership
team. We just want to make sure that we're not
responding to all this in an emotional way.” My
team was all just women and one non-binary
team member, and we're all just like, what the
heck? You know, that made us emotional. I just
remember being really frustrated; it bothered me
that the takeaway from our meeting, was like,
“You all need to not care so much about this.”

Hybrid
Meetings
Feeling excluded,
hybrid meetings,
cliquey,
feeling heard_no

For the group meetings, I was really glad when
we went all online because in just about all of our
group meetings, there's at least one person who's
remote. So, they were kind of like second-class
participants because of that—it's hard to jump in
when you've got all these people in a room just
jumping around and talking. So, I was really
happy when we went all online because it leveled
the playing field for everybody. I was always
thinking about the poor people that weren't in
the room, and how the people in the room
would take over.

Appearance/
clothes/
hair/
makeup
Sexism,
makeup,
money,
unequal expectations
by identity

That's something I’ve been fighting, especially
since the pandemic, where I was like, you know
what? I’m not gonna wear makeup. Makeup is a
stupid, stupid thing. I really hate it. I’ve had so
many conversations with people about this. I feel
like as a woman, I can't show up to a meeting if I

183
don't have makeup on; if I do, I’m considered
unprofessional, or I don't look put together. Men
should also be wearing makeup to look put
together! It's incredibly sexist. It's so insane. I
think about the money and time that I spend on
stuff as well—all of it. It's so weird when you
take a step back away. It's so, so, so, weird. It
perpetuates these attitudes that women don't
look as professional.

Preparation
as protection
to counter
bias
After meetings,
before meetings,
preparing for meetings,
intersectionality

So, we had a “before” meeting, the meeting, and
then we have a meeting after the meeting to kind
of debrief and say, ‘How’re you doing? How do
you think that went? What do you need help
with?’ and those things. So, from my perspective
as a Black woman, if I have one meeting, I
actually have three. If I have 10 meetings that
week, it's actually thirty because of the extra
preparation and debriefs. You know, it wears you
down.

Psychological
Safety
Psychological safety,
intersectionality,
advocacy,
stigma as ego depletion

There was an incident—one instance I just
remember vividly—where the team was just
raining down [criticism] on me in a meeting.
Then my VP was like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa—let's
take a break." He pulled me aside after that and
said, “What in the world? I’m so sorry that you
had to experience that.” I was pretty cool,
because I was like, “Listen, it's just part of what I
have to go through.” But he was really shocked.
He asked, “I'm sorry—well, what can I do?” and
I said, “Well, you know let's try this and see what
happens.” And then that's how the whole
cadence started.

Remote Work –
pros/cons
among identities
Remote work,
cameras,
respect,
frequency of speaking

I feel like my team started to respect me way
more when we were virtual. I had more
opportunities, and I felt more comfortable when
I interjected. My team was really bad about
having video on all the time. It somehow felt like
we were a bunch of voices in the ether talking.
So I thought, I’m just going to say what I’ve got.
I’m less aware of being a woman.

184
Stereotypes/
Stereotype threat
Stereotypes,
feeling perceived,
gender
composition_men,
racial diversity,
intersectionality

If I can trust other people to not look at my
gender or ethnicity, I would not have this issue
or concern. But I kind of assume that I might
stand out because I look different. It has to do
with stereotypes: there are so few females in
engineering or STEM. I’m afraid that will have a
negative consequence on how people view
me…If the team were more diverse, I wouldn’t
feel that way; I wouldn’t be one among few; I
would be one among many.

Other identities that
face barriers in
meetings (besides
gender/race)
Feeling perceived,
body size,
self-conscious,
ambiguity

I'm a little bit larger—like, I’m average. I was
working at a fitness tech company and I think
that there are definitely body-image things that
come up with how you're presenting yourself, or
how you have to hold yourself, or even just
feeling a little bit uncomfortable, like, “What are
they focused on while I’m talking?”

Visibility
Makeup/hair/dress,
unequal expectations
by identity,
feeling perceived,
sexism

My company is very white and very male. People
have commented about women coworkers’
dresses, and how women shouldn’t wear dresses
or leggings at work. I’m used to being in heavily
male-dominated fields, so I never really dressed
that feminine to begin with. Outside of work, I
will do things like wear dresses occasionally, but
I can’t imagine wearing one into work. It would
attract undue attention and people would start to
look at me like I’m not competent.

Positive
stories/advocating
for others
Sticking up for others,
feeling heard_yes,
feeling included

I think on a good day or in a positive version of
a meeting, I’m trying to help people be heard or
help people be taken into account. I don't know
if “resolute” is an emotion, but it is a feeling. I’m
determined to put a stake in the ground.

Abstract (if available)

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Conceptually similar

PDF

Forests, fires, and flights: examining safety and communication practices within aerial firefighting teams

PDF

Building a unicorn: management of innovation, collaboration, and change in a Silicon Valley start-up

PDF

The data dilemma: sensemaking and cultures of research in the media industries

PDF

Adjusting the algorithm: how experts intervene in algorithmic hiring tools

PDF

Cosmopolitan logics and limits: networked discourse, affect, and identity in responses to the Syrian refugee crisis

PDF

Networked misogynoir: a critical technocultural discourse analysis of gendered anti-Blackness in the Black digital public sphere

PDF

Outsourcing the home: the role of identity in remote work arrangements

PDF

Crowdsourced art: activating creative participation in online spaces

PDF

The bi-directional impact of work-family conflict and family-work conflict on entrepreneurs, executives and organizations in high stress careers

PDF

Entanglements of the Asian identity: visibility and representation in the United States

PDF

Leadership psychological safety: exploring its development and relationship with leader-member exchange theory

PDF

"We belong": women of color in technology (WOCT)

PDF

The coevolution of multimodal, multiplex, and multilevel organizational networks in development communities

PDF

New theoretical and research directions for foresight scenario work: narratives, sensemaking, and networks

PDF

These are their stories: two decades of Showrunner production, content, and context in Law & Order: SVU

PDF

"Wonders and wishes": contexts and influences of Black millennials' childhood television viewership

PDF

Collaboration, capacity, and communication: Leaders’ perceptions of innovative work behavior across hybrid and remote work environments

PDF

Living with the most humanlike nonhuman: understanding human-AI interactions in different social contexts

PDF

Well-being, employee effectiveness, and organizational support: community college administrators during the COVID-19 pandemic

PDF

Addressing the challenges of employee retention: a qualitative analysis of job satisfaction and perceptions of advancement by marginalized women in the insurance industry

Asset Metadata

Creator Bray, Sierra (author)

Core Title A seat at the table: navigating identity, power, and safety in work meetings

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Communication

Degree Conferral Date 2022-08

Publication Date 07/28/2024

Defense Date 06/15/2022

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag inclusion,intersectionality,OAI-PMH Harvest,organizational culture,power,psychological safety,technology,work meetings

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Riley, Patricia (committee chair), Hollingshead, Andrea (committee member), Jenkins, Henry (committee member), Noble, Safiya (committee member)

Creator Email sierrabr@usc.edu,sierrakbray@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC111375570

Unique identifier UC111375570

Legacy Identifier etd-BraySierra-11035

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Bray, Sierra

Type texts

Source 20220729-usctheses-batch-963 (batch), University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright. The original signature page accompanying the original submission of the work to the USC Libraries is retained by the USC Libraries and a copy of it may be obtained by authorized requesters contacting the repository e-mail address given.

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu