Destigmatizing The Occupation: Role of Occupational Branding and Collective Identity Work

Abstract

By questioning the fundamental nature of the occupation and targeting the occupational members as 'dirty' and 'immoral,' occupational stigma is a big concern still plaguing our employment landscape worldwide. It threatens employees' identity, develops the feeling of being unvalued, and lowers their dignity. However, by focusing only on coping rather than stigma removal, existing studies fall short of offering a solution to the issue. In the current study, we address this gap by proposing how destigmatization of the occupation can be achieved by changing the existing societal narratives about occupation and by building occupational branding. We empirically explore our idea by conducting a qualitative study on the Indian beauty occupation to understand how they have achieved the destigmatization of their occpation. We employ the method of critical discourse analysis (CDA) as it helps understand the discourses of social wrong and unravels various means of eliminating the social wrong. Accordingly, we propose that by using collective identitiy work, occupational members brand 3Ps of the occupation i.e. people, process and purpose to achieve destigmatization. Our study contributes by exploring how the prominent discourses of stigma on the professions get modified into stigma-free legitimate discourses with the help of occupational branding.