Quietism is a new form of gender discrimination used to silence women

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If you have ever felt that your gender has been used against you in the workplace but you could not give a name to that form of discrimination, this book is for you. Quietism is a form of discrimination that occurs in the workplace using gendered norms and values. It occurs and is directed towards ensuring the inability of the voicing of complaints and enables policing of women, and other genders, in the workplace. It is built on silencing but it is discriminatory in that it uses gendered norms and values, for instance, as described in this book, against women. This research that this book was based on was funded by the Disability Research for Independent Living and Learning (DRILL) and the Big Lottery Fund to understand barriers and enablers to employment for disabled people. We focused on a sample of 25 women from a larger dataset about employment experiences of Black disabled people with the genetic condition of sickle cell in England. We wanted to understand why it was so hard for them to make visible multiple discriminations that they experienced. By using a feminist disability studies perspective to comprehend employment experiences of identity-based discriminations, a picture emerges of how gendered workplace norms played a part in silencing Black women living with the sickle cell condition. This book explains how intersectionalities of identities become implicated in: 1) pregnancy, maternity and caring penalties; 2) visible racisms; 3) gendering access to the labour market and workplace norms; and 4) invisible anticipatory actions to be able to stay well and in employment. There are a lot of books about equity, discrimination and the law, that argue that we are seeing new forms of discrimination but don’t give a name to those new forms or describe them in detail. This book gives a name to a form of gendered discrimination.

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