Microaggressions as a Framework for Understanding Women’s STEM Career Experiences in Lebanon

Abstract

In this paper, we draw on qualitative data from 21 women working in diverse Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields in Lebanon to explore how they experienced gendered microaggressions at work and how they navigated them. We use the subcategories of gendered microaggressions developed by Nadal (2010) to highlight the various micro aggressive behaviors the women faced including aspects of micro-assaults, microinsults, and microinvalidations. We then provide four navigation tactics the women adopted to address these microaggressions. This research on women in STEM careers in Lebanon extends and contributes to the gender and organization literature in multiple ways, and highlights implications for human resource management professionals and career counselors. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.