UCLA

A rise in reports of Asian American women being brutally attacked and murdered has prompted discussions around the harmful effects of gendered and racialized stereotypes, otherwise known as gendered racial microaggressions, that view Asian American women as submissive and hypersexual objects, deserving of violence, even premature death. Despite the unique risk that gendered racial microaggressions pose for Asian American women, little is known about Asian American women’s perceptions of gendered racial microaggressions in mostly White and male dominated fields like the STEM workforce, that has also been known to be a hostile work environment for women of color (Funk & Parker, 2018). While prior research links workplace discrimination to negative work and health related outcomes, research remains limited in their ability to address the simultaneous experience of racism and sexism for Asian American women. The study employs a theory of racialized organizations to investigate gendered racial microaggressions as a mechanism that maintains gender and racial inequities in the STEM workforce, making Asian American women especially vulnerable to institutionalized inequities (Ray, 2019). This study used the Gendered Racial Microaggressions Scale for Asian American Women (GRMSAAW; Keum et al., 2018) to advance research that investigates how Asian American women experiences of gendered racial microaggressions may increase their job-related burnout and psychological distress. The study aims to: (1) determine if gendered racial microaggressions among Asian American women is associated with job-related burnout and psychological distress, (2) assess whether the relationship between gendered racial microaggressions and job-related burnout and gendered racial microaggressions and psychological distress are mediated by perceived exploitation, and (3) investigate diversity climate as a potential buffer against the negative effects of gendered racial microaggressions on job-related burnout as well gendered racial microaggressions on psychological distress. The results of the study extend our understanding of how gendered racial microaggressions may pose a unique risk to Asian American women and the work and mental health disparities they face in the STEM workforce. Findings indicated that gendered racial microaggression stress was significantly associated with job-related burnout and psychological distress. Further, perceived exploitation was found to mediate the associations between gendered racial microaggression stress and job-related burnout and gendered racial microaggression stress and psychological distress. Lastly, diversity climate perceptions were not a significant buffer against job-related burnout or psychological distress associated with gendered racial microaggression stress. However, perceived diversity climate was shown to moderate the association between perceived exploitation and job-related burnout. Specifically, at low levels of perceived exploitation, Asian American women that perceived high levels of diversity climate experienced low levels of job-related burnout. At high levels of perceived exploitation, Asian American women experienced similar levels of burnout across all levels of diversity climate. These findings have important implications for future organizational research, policies and practices aimed to address Asian American women’s experiences of gendered racial microaggressions, perceived exploitation and diversity climate perceptions in the STEM workplace.