I Can('t) Talk About It At Work: Stigma Entanglement and the Epistemic Vulnerability Paradox

Heidi Reed

Gender, Work and Organization, 2026, vol. 33, issue 2, 367-378

Abstract: Pregnancy loss in the workplace is a common yet hidden experience. Why? In this conceptual essay, I use my embodied experiences of miscarrying at work and my reluctance to research this phenomenon to develop the concept of an epistemic vulnerability paradox. I contribute to the pregnancy loss in the workplace, social construction of knowledge, and personally relevant research literatures by demonstrating how the confrontation to an entanglement of stigmas involving multiple identities, including that of ideal researcher, leads to a cycle of epistemic silencing. This silencing may be more pronounced in fields like business‐academia in which there are not only very gendered ideal worker norms but also strong taboos around “appropriate” methodologies. Drawing on ethics of care as a theory and practice, researchers have a moral obligation to address epistemic needs created by such silences. Engaging in epistemic care work, however, leaves researchers vulnerable to the very stigma that they explore, especially when the research is personally relevant. Working through this paradox, I argue, involves accepting vulnerability not only as an openness to helping and being helped but also to harm and being harmed; a premise that has implications for research ethics.

Date: 2026
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