Reproducing the Privilege of White Femininity: An Intersectional Analysis of Home Care

Abstract

Research elucidates the gendered and racialized assumptions and practices embedded within occupational organizations but has considered less how race and gender mutually constitute the structure of the organization. The research that does interrogate how both race and gender structure organizational life for Black workers tends to focus on predominately White professional workplaces in the United States, where a White masculine or White feminine worker norm pervades. Drawing on interviews with Black African home care workers in Portugal, the author theorizes from the vantage point of Black women’s experience of work and elucidates how their narratives point to the several layers by which race and gender are embedded in organizational structures and practices that privilege White femininity in a non-U.S. work setting in which Black women make up the majority of the workforce. Black women reveal how White women colleagues’ scrutinize their labor performance unfairly, thwarting their opportunities for advancement and achieving respectful treatment within workplaces. Along with these interpersonal interactions, antiracial ideologies about the nature of the work also aid in racializing a gendered workplace that in turn makes invisible the racial tensions on the job. This research suggests that the Whiteness of an organization persists despite the “types” of workers that occupy the organizational space.