A Study of Organizational Silence from the Viewpoint of Female Students in Male-Dominated Classrooms

Abstract

Organizational silence behavior is one of the problems frequently experienced by women working in male-dominated workplaces. Women working in such workplaces prefer to remain silent about the problems that they face or the issues that concern the organization in general for various reasons. The aim of this study is to determine whether the same behavior is experienced by girls in boy-dominated classrooms. The study was conducted with 102 students in a male-dominated university. On the evaluation of the survey, it is seen that female students exhibit organizational silence behaviour due to several reasons such as believing that mentioning problems won't lead to any solutions or hiding something problematic is better for the image of the classroom. Sometimes they are silent just because they don't want to be labeled as troublemakers and alienated from the classroom. It is thought that this study will have a positive contribution to literature researching not only the relations between girls and boys in the classroom but also different aspects of organizational silence. Future research may focus on investigating if the interactions between female and male employees in workplaces also exist in classrooms and the comparison of behaviors of females and males in male-dominated classrooms.