IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/gender/v32y2025i6p2353-2368.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Breaking the Silence: Women's Reproductive Health in the Workplace Through Collective Voice

Author

Listed:
  • Melike Artar Bıyıklar
  • Yavuz Selim Balcıoğlu

Abstract

Women's reproductive health has historically been marginalized within professional environments, regarded as a personal matter rather than a collective institutional issue, and predominantly excluded from organizational policies. Notwithstanding the direct influence of biological phenomena such as menstruation, maternity, and menopause on women's occupational experiences, these subjects have frequently been rendered obscured or deemed inappropriate for discourse in professional settings. This investigation scrutinizes public dialogs on professional social media platforms, particularly LinkedIn, to assess women's encounters with reproductive health and the intersectionality of these experiences with workplace policies. Employing a mixed‐methods framework, the research evaluates 52,592 comments on LinkedIn through both thematic and sentiment analyses. The outcomes reveal that women are increasingly participating in public discussions regarding menstruation, maternity, and menopause, and that such dialogs are significantly contributing to heightened awareness among employers. Drawing on social amplification theory, the study demonstrates how personal experiences shared online are reframed into collective narratives that challenge organizational norms. Simultaneously, feminist organizational theory provides insight into how these voices expose the structural exclusion of embodied female experiences from workplace design. Sentiment analysis indicates that a considerable proportion of these conversations arises from adverse experiences, thereby underscoring the inadequacy of institutional support for women's reproductive health. Concurrently, thematic analysis elucidates an escalating demand for policies including menstrual leave, flexible work arrangements following maternity, and support programs for menopause. The study positions these findings as indicators of a shifting organizational paradigm. Amplifying women's narratives emerges as a critical driver of policy reform, yet systemic change necessitates both cultural and institutional transformation.

Suggested Citation

  • Melike Artar Bıyıklar & Yavuz Selim Balcıoğlu, 2025. "Breaking the Silence: Women's Reproductive Health in the Workplace Through Collective Voice," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(6), pages 2353-2368, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:gender:v:32:y:2025:i:6:p:2353-2368
    DOI: 10.1111/gwao.70016
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.70016
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/gwao.70016?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:gender:v:32:y:2025:i:6:p:2353-2368. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0968-6673 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.