Seedlings in the Corporate Forest: Communicating Benevolent Sexism in Dow Chemical’s First Internal Affirmative-Action Campaign

Abstract

Organizational affirmative-action programs have often failed to reach their goals, especially in the context of STEM professions and companies. Our study analyzes one of the first internal affirmative-action initiatives, Dow Chemical’s “Know More in ‘74” (KMi74) campaign, to explore discursive components that may play a role in this problem. An exploratory analysis of the campaign’s pamphlets revealed that KMi74 upheld a framework of benevolent sexism. In subsequent analysis, we found that KMi74 communicated benevolent sexism through appeals espousing: (a) vagueness via generalization and absurdity, (b) circularity via redundancy and buzzwords, and (c) disingenuity via bait and switch argumentation. We suggest, given the government’s public recognition of KMi74 as legislatively compliant, these appeals functioned historically as organizational scripts for inclusion initiatives in the years that followed, scripts that upheld (and continue to uphold) the law but not the changes in practice necessary for the achievement of meaningful inter-organizational opportunity and equity.