The workplace as a site of abortion surveillance

Fiona Bloomer, Danielle Mackle, Nóirín MacNamara, Claire Pierson and Stephen Bloomer

Gender, Work and Organization, 2024, vol. 31, issue 6, 2549-2567

Abstract: Analysis of the experiences and resulting inequalities in reproductive health in the workplace has generated studies of pregnancy, miscarriage, menstruation, fertility and menopause. One issue that has remained outside of this literature is abortion. How abortion is talked about (or not talked about), experienced and perceived as a workplace issue were the central questions in our research undertaken in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland in 2017. Our study comprised a survey (3180 respondents) followed by a series of online focus groups (61 participants) with trade union members from a broad range of workplaces, with the aim of investigating how abortion was positioned in workplaces within legally restrictive regimes. We conceptualize how self‐disciplining, silence and abortion stigma are reproduced in workplaces, drawing on a feminist Foucauldian framework to examine disciplinary power. We examine evidence of how, in conservative societies, abortion talk is suppressed, and we generate new theoretical knowledge on how disciplinary power undermines resistance to anti‐abortion norms and demonstrate the function of the normalizing gaze in the workplace. We conclude by offering avenues for future research on abortion stigma and disciplinary power, to extend further knowledge and conceptual framing of abortion as a workplace issue.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.13100

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:31:y:2024:i:6:p:2549-2567

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 ().