Purpose Scholars have used the concept of microaggression to document gendered experiences in the workplace. However, in the context of pronatalist Indian society, experiences of childlessness at the workplace have not been documented adequately through a microaggression lens. Design/methodology/approach Based on a qualitative study of middle-class professionally engaged childless women in Indian academia, the present paper examines their experiences of childlessness through the lens of microaggression. Findings The findings indicate that at the organizational level, childless women are perceived as a perfect fit to be ideal workers yet their ideal worker image is loaded with various expressions of microaggression. The findings are analysed through Bourdieu's concept of field, habitus, and doxa. The analysis indicates that they could create the ideal worker image due to their gender habitus of middle-class class professionally educated career-oriented women, who could negotiate with the masculine and feminine doxa at work but their experiences of microaggression indicate the outcome of prevailing feminine doxa at the workplace that overrule the masculine doxa for these women. Practical implications The paper concludes with recommendations for organizations to be inclusive towards childlessness as a form of diversity in the workplace. The study indicates significant challenges that this segment of employees faces, due to the pronatalist society around them. Originality/value The paper examines the overlooked area of workplace gendered norms, interacting with reproductive identities of childless women through microaggression lens.
Girisha et al. (Fri,) studied this question.