Women’s experiences of racial microaggressions in STEMM workplaces and the importance of white allyship

This article explores how gender interacts with race, ethnicity, and/or culture tostructure the microaggressions experienced by visibly and culturally diverse womenin Australian science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medical (STEMM)organisations. Our aim is to disrupt the normative erasure of race from theworkplace diversity context by focusing on these women’s experiences. Weconducted 30 semi-structured interviews with women in academia, industry, andgovernment who self-identify as women of colour or as culturally diverse. We usean intersectional lens to show that the challenges experienced by visibly andculturally diverse women cannot simply be subsumed under gender. Rather, raceand gender intersect to create overlapping and interdependent systems ofdiscrimination and disadvantage. These issues are largely unintelligible in STEMMfields as science is positioned as gender- and race-neutral. Consequently, despitetheir devastating impact, racial microaggressions may be invisible to members ofthe dominant racial group—those most likely to be the peers and managers ofvisibly and culturally diverse women. White managers and peers can act as allies towomen of colour in STEMM by respecting and amplifying their concerns. Learning torecognise and confront racial microaggressions can help make science workplacesmore inclusive of all scientists