Gendered Bullying in the Workplace

Work

By Erica Oldfield

Bullying v. – unwanted, aggressive behavior that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time. 1

When most people think of the word bullying, their minds usually draw up pictures of school-aged children on the playground. Scenes of kids being forced to hand over their lunch money or thrown in a dumpster seem to be the first thing to come up.

What if I told you bullying is not a problem that stops after high school? Bullying is a practice found in workplaces all across the world, today. Workplace bullying is not only prevalent but also very gendered.

In 2013, The Journal of Managerial Psychology published Denise Salin Helge Hoel’s research, Workplace bullying as a gendered phenomenon. Below is the thesis of the review.

Our review of the empirical evidence has shown that gender is not only relevant for the way bullying is expressed, but also for how people make sense of and appraise the negative behaviour. Moreover, gender is not only relevant for victims’ experiences of bullying, but seems also to affect third parties and organisational interpretations and responses. 2

This review highlights and analyzes the very gendered environment bullying plays in, in the workplace.

Now before I go any further, I want to make the clear that gender and not biological sex is what is being dealt with. This is not just an issue of if men are always the bullies or vice versa, but how gender as a social category coincides with social interactions and contributes to bullying.

Bullying is often a downward hierarchal process.3 Due occupational sex segregation4 and the fact that men are more likely to hold upper management positions, it is unsurprising that men are more likely to be reported as bullies. Traditional masculinity teaches men to assert power to move up the hierarchy. In an attempt to hold power, men may use bullying to belittle subordinates.

The way gender roles are socialized also plays large part in gendered bullying. Males and females are taught to treat themselves and others certain ways to uphold the persistence of gender ideologies. 4 An example of this would be a situation where a worker asks for help. Unprofessional forms of address like dear or honey may be used to belittle a woman, while a man might experience negative acts that question his manliness. 5

Hoel ties this example back to gendered workplace bullying:

While female targets may have their concerns trivialized by male managers, there is a possibility that managers are even more judgmental towards men who ask for help as they may be seen as breaking traditional gender norms by not being self-reliant and not being able to defend themselves. As for perpetrators, we may further hypothesise, based on social identity theory and gendered power distribution, that men accused of bullying are likely to get more support from (predominantly male) managers within their organisations, than women accused of similar transgressions. 2

In conclusion, Bullying is not cultivated on a perpetrator’s singular views. The way gender affects how we act and perceive others directly contributes to how any why workers are bullied in their occupations. Knowing the gendered reasons behind workplace bullying allows for easier recognition of the situation.

Tips to Stop Workplace Bullying6

  1. Identify how you are enabling it

  2. End the enabling system

  3. Set up a new system with healthy boundaries and behaviors

References:

1.” Bullying Definition.” Bullying Definition. Web. 13 May 2015. .

2. Denise Salin Helge Hoel, (2013),”Workplace bullying as a gendered phenomenon”, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 28 Iss 3 pp. 235 – 251

3. Einarsen, S., Hoel, H., Zapf, D. and Cooper, C.L. (2011), “The concept of bullying and harassment at work: the European         tradition”, in Einarsen, S., Hoel, H., Zapf, D. and Cooper, C.L. (Eds), Bullying and Harassment in the Workplace:             Developments in Theory, Research, and Practice, Taylor & Francis, London, pp. 3-39.

4. Kimmel, Michael S. The Gendered Society. New York: Oxford UP, 2000. Print.

5. Berdahl, J. (2007), “Harassment based on sex: protecting social status in the context of gender hierarchy”, Academy of       Management Review, Vol. 32 No. 2, pp. 641-58.

6. “How to Stop Workplace Bullies In Their Tracks.” Forbes. Forbes Magazine. Web. 13 May 2015.

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