Intersectional Inequalities and Invisibilization in Organizations: The Case of Indian Beauty and Wellness Services

Abstract

Discourses on social inequalities and the processes that sustain, reproduce, and reify them have been a long-standing area of scholarship. This paper focuses its attention on intersecting inequalities at workplaces and the organizational processes that support and enable their invisibilization. Building on this idea of invisibilization, we take a critical look at the active and conscious work done to keep inequalities hidden within organizations. In doing so, we understand and advance invisibilization as a twin concept that is primarily framed as a power equation but also acts as a visual illusion that obfuscates inequalities. We discuss this obfuscation by exploring intersectional inequalities within the Indian beauty and wellness services (BWS), a majorly unorganized sector that has a visible workforce of women migrants belonging to indigenous communities from the northeast region of the country. Using frameworks of Intersectionality, New Racism, and Othering, we argue that hiring within the BWS normalizes a heteropatriarchal-savarna gaze of the indigenous other, where women are routinely racialized and sexualized to be inducted within the industry. Further, this case study exemplifies how visible frames of gender inequalities invisibilize other ethno-racial, and regional inequalities within workplaces. Building on these findings, we suggest that organizations invisibilize inequalities by (a) co-opting a progressive vocabulary; (b) performing a normalizing function; (c) creating obfuscation; and (d) building a visual facade. Finally, this study contributes by broadening our theoretical understanding of invisibilization, especially in the context of intersectional inequalities, wherein inequalities are normalized through everyday practices within organizational hiring and training, among others.