“Still the White Man's World?” Exploring Visible and Invisible Intersectional Dynamics and Aesthetic Labor‐Related Inequalities Among English Language Teachers in the UAE Education Sector

Milena Tekeste, Dennis Nickson and Anastasios Hadjisolomou

Gender, Work and Organization, 2025, vol. 32, issue 6, 2197-2210

Abstract: Research on the gendered lived experience of female self‐initiated expatriates (SIEs) in the MENA region is limited and limiting. Although research has informed us that gender and other intersections such as race and nationality play a pivotal role in shaping one's working and private life in the MENA region, it is limiting in illustrating the role of tri‐racial aesthetic labor which encompasses both visible and invisible intersectional characteristics. In this article, we examine the extent to which tri‐racial aesthetic labor manifests itself in the employment experiences of female SIEs employed in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) private education sector. Drawing on the accounts of 30 individuals with varying intersectional identities, we demonstrate how individuals can be discriminated against by both visible intersections such as accent, race, and gender, as well as invisible intersections such as nationality. We further discuss how this tri‐racial dynamic of aesthetic labor is embedded in organizations' meso‐level HR practices and influences hiring practices and other outcomes such as pay. We offer a novel perspective on the existing knowledge about aesthetic labor and broaden our understanding of the intersection of nationality, accent, and race in the understudied context of the UAE.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.13274

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:gender:v:32:y:2025:i:6:p:2197-2210

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0968-6673

Access Statistics for this article

Gender, Work and Organization is currently edited by David Knights, Deborah Kerfoot and Ida Sabelis

More articles in Gender, Work and Organization from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().