Experiences of Cypriot women in the workplace: exploring experiences of gender microaggressions

Abstract

Despite the overall progress of the feminist movement, and the increase of the population of women in the workforce, gender discrimination remains a prevalent experience in the everyday lives of women. As the systemic gender discrimination is being dealt with on an organizational level through inclusive and anti-discriminatory policies, women still become victims of more subtle forms of discrimination, such as gender microaggressions. This study aims to start fillingin a large gap in the literature by focusing on the context of Cyprus, a traditionally patriarchal country. It explores the experiences of women in their workplaces, in order to find out the ways women experience gender microaggressions, by whom, and how do they deal with such experiences. The results suggest that women face various types of gender microaggressions in the workplace by both men and women, who express gender microaggressions differently. The results also indicate that the hierarchical position of the aggressor plays a role in how the victims chooses to deal with their experience. Overall, the experiences of gender microaggressions are heavily tied with the deeply enrooted beliefs of the Cypriot culture and the perception of gender roles in Cyprus.