Making her-story: phenomenology of out-standing Filipino lesbian employees and their landscape-shifting success

Abstract

Majority of the Filipino population acknowledge that there are lesbians, but a lot do not know their story, especially their odyssey in the workplace. They are one of the largest, but least studied, minority groups in the workforce. Because of this, there is a need to understand the phenomenon of Filipino lesbian employees and their means of overcoming challenges, limitations, and barriers in their career development. Using the lens of Standpoint Theory, this study described how the participants' social reality landscape-shifting success through their own standpoint can help other lesbians in organizations to evaluate and understand themselves in order to advance in the workplace. This qualitative research based on phenomenological approach explored the lived experiences of seven out Filipino lesbians from different organizations in the Philippines. Through the use of semi-structured face-to-face interviewing as the mode of data collection, the researcher was able to able to analyze and categorize the gathered data to address the main research question, "How do Filipino lesbian employees overcome career path challenges and create success stories that contribute to the changing course of lesbian community in organizations?" The findings of the study showed that despite the stereotyping and prejudice, discrimination, and ethnocentrism face by lesbians in the workplace, having high levels of self-acceptance and self-determination can help lesbians be empowered and overcome career path challenges, thus creating success stories that can contribute to the changing landscape of lesbian community in organizations. Moreover, this empowerment can be intensified with employer lesbian-supportiveness and positive reactions from co-workers.