Rachel's 10.28 Discussion Questions

1) Clair (1993) discussed framing techniques employed by women when describing their experiences with sexual harassment in the workplace and illustrated that subjugated groups actively participate in reproducing dominant organizational ideologies.

As I read this article, I recalled one of our earlier class discussions in which some students questioned the authority of the critical-interpretivist researcher to “speak for” others. If I remember the conversation correctly, some students expressed frustration with the idea that the researcher “knew better” than his/her research participants. While I agree that ethical researchers should do their best to accurately represent the perspectives of their research participants, I can’t help but believe that (as was the case with the women in this article) some people fail to see their own oppression and the ways in which they reinforce their own domination.

• Do you agree that the language we use each day reinforces/maintains the dominant structure, and that we often participate in contributing to hegemony? Why or why not?
• If so, how do you attempt to rectify this in your personal life, research, and teaching?
• If not, how do you make sense of the insights offered in this article? Should Clair simply have reported the women’s responses without having attributed them to the larger cultural discourse that tends to sequester stories of sexual harassment? What is the role of the critical thinker when discussing sensitive issues, such as sexual harassment, the vocabulary of which tend to be controlled by the dominant group?

2) Martin (1990) used deconstruction from a feminist perspective to analyze interpretations of the Caesarean story to “illustrate how feminist perspectives have the capacity to disrupt the usual terms of organizational discourse, transforming its content, premises and objectives” (p. 356).

I always know I’m going to enjoy a piece when its author considers deleting parts of it for being too taboo…

• Whose interests are served by the suppression of organizational gender conflicts?
• What meaningful new insights about organizational communication might be gained if we were to stop framing the feminist perspective as a “special interest”?