“It’s a Gender Thing”: The Wrongdoing of Stereotype Articulation

In this article, we study wrongdoing features of discrimination. We develop grounded moral theory as an analytical tool to explore the wrongdoing of stereotype articulations and apply that to cases of stereotype articulation by teachers in primary school. Since cases of wrongful discrimination refer to stereotypes—such as ethnicity and gender—articulations of these stereotypes will expose the wrongdoing features of discrimination. Moreover, focusing on stereotype articulations allows us to get close to the contextual aspects from which the wrongdoing features take form. From our analysis, we conclude: (1) that wrongful discrimination is not one phenomenon but rather a set of different types of wrongdoing, (2) that wrongdoing features such as harm and disrespect, traditionally used to account for wrongful discrimination, are often coexisting and interacting in stereotype articulations in practice, and (3) that the shape of wrongdoing depends on contextual circumstances. We believe this brings novel insights to discrimination theory.