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Heidi Reed: Breaking the Silence on Epistemic Vulnerability and Knowledge Taboos in Pregnancy Loss Research
Heidi Reed/LinkedIn
Oct 9, 2025, 13:58

Heidi Reed: Breaking the Silence on Epistemic Vulnerability and Knowledge Taboos in Pregnancy Loss Research

Heidi Reed, Professor at Audencia Business School, shared a post on LinkedIn:

“One in four pregnancies will end in miscarriage, and roughly 2.6 million babies are stillborn each year, yet pregnancy loss is publicly perceived as a ‘rare‘ complication. Why?

After decades of calls for more research, the pregnancy loss in the workplace literature is still characterized as ‘silent‘ and ‘undertheorized.’ Why?

In this conceptual article, I explore the social construction of not-knowledge and the persistence of knowledge taboos by drawing on my own embodied experience to reveal what I call an epistemic vulnerability paradox. Using ethics of care, researchers (and institutions) have a moral obligation to help de-silence knowledge taboos, yet engaging in this epistemic care work exposes them to the very harm and stigma they’re trying to reduce.  Drawing on Gilson’s work on invulnerability, I argue that working through this paradox involves a care-full openness in research ethics not only to helping and being helped but also to harming and being harmed.

Though the literature is limited, I would not call it silent. We are loud in our own way. I am infinitely grateful to the pregnancy loss researchers before me as well as editors Laura Radcliffe, Danna Greenberg, Sophie Hennekam for their kind and warm support. A very special thanks to the insightful, encouraging, anonymous reviewers, truly. Finally, thank you to the colleagues who have made this something that we can talk about at work and to Gender, Work and Organization for being a space for these conversations to happen.”

Title: I Can(‘t) Talk About It At Work: Stigma Entanglement and the Epistemic Vulnerability Paradox

Author: Heidi Reed

Read the full article.

Heidi Reed

Danna Greenberg embodied experience Fertility Fertility News Heidi Reed Laura Radcliffe miscarriage moral obligation pregnancy pregnancy loss researchers Sophie Hennekam stigma taboos
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