It still matters : Inequality within Swedish information and communication workplaces for people of minority backgrounds.

Abstract: It is not unexpected that the field of information and communication has come under critique for falling short on delivering on their promises surrounding equality. It is an unfortunate irony that the people working closest as messengers between organizations and the public do not represent the society to which they communicate, especially so in a Swedish context. Partly inspired by the WFA report and other troubling findings around discrimination, the purpose of this study is to explore through quantitativ research how people with minority racial, ethnic, gender, cultural or religious backgrounds working within fields related to information and communication face workplace inequality within a Swedish context. A mixed methods approach was employed to analyze the open-ended answers, including qualitative content analysis. When asking whether the respondents had experienced discrimination or inappropriate treatment in their work during their information and communication career in Sweden, 66 percent of the respondents answered yes. The respondents who had endured discrimination or inappropriate treatment had mostly endured it because of ethnic origin or nationality, gender, age. From an intersectional lens the study illustrates the double threat of gender and racial discrimination in information and communications which women face, where it is demonstrated that their work is assessed differently than coworkers, face subjection to stereotyping and pigeonholing, are deprived of formal and informal networking opportunities, face barriers to their progression and have to regularly deal with microaggressions.