Study: Women’s Reports of Workplace Abuse Dismissed More Than Men’s

Maybe you’ve been called “stupid” in a one-on-one, laughed at during a presentation or blatantly ignored in a group meeting. While these painful office incidents can happen to anyone, new research by an incoming University of Maryland faculty member into how they are handled exposes a gulf in the treatment of different genders: Women’s reports of workplace abuse are discounted more than men’s, even when the complaints are the same.

“Inequality is associated with all kinds of negative outcomes, such as reduced well-being and physical and mental health,” said management and organization Assistant Professor Alyssa Tedder-King, who starts in August. “It also has implications for organizations. People aren’t going to want to stay where they feel like they are not being treated fairly.”

In a recent paper in Organization Science, Tedder-King, along with colleagues at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Pennsylvania, examined cases of verbal and nonverbal mistreatment, including spreading rumors, making derogatory comments, eye-rolling and withholding cooperation, and found consistently lower rates of action taken in response to claims made by women.

She and colleagues first studied the 2016 Merit Principles Survey that included reports of abusive behavior from nearly 2,500 federal employees, where they found this effect. Then they conducted four online experiments that presented participants with scenarios differing only in the gender of the complainant; participants judged the credibility of the claims and decided what actions should be taken, if any. The researchers varied the types of abuse and types of evidence in each experiment, which each had about 500 respondents, and observed the same pattern each time.

One big difference came when there was evidence to back up a claim, such as chat logs, emails or an eyewitness account. In those cases, reports by men and women were treated the same.

But without this information, people fall back on tropes like “women report anything” or “women are more sensitive, so women are crying wolf,” said Tedder-King, even though the Merit data showed that women reported at just slightly higher rates than men: 57% of women compared to 50% of men who experience abuse report it. “There’s this idea that if a man reported an incident, it must have been really severe, or he would have just handled it.”

To overcome these stereotypes, organizations should put standardized systems in place to ensure every complaint is taken seriously, said Tedder-King. These include separating people who receive the reports from those who evaluate them, as well as offering anonymous reporting, so every incident is judged solely on the information provided, rather than being influenced by bias toward the reporter. (Some companies actually use a team of evaluators, “almost like a little jury,” she said, a practice that could be examined in a future study.) Additionally, there should be separate channels for people to lodge complaints, rather than requiring complaints to go through managers, along with clear timelines and follow-up processes for every incident, rather than ad hoc responses.

With progress for women stalling in the workplace over the last decade, it’s important for all organizations to make changes, said Tedder-King. That’s especially true at small or mid-size companies, where managers might assume people will speak up if something’s wrong. “There are fewer policies and procedures, so that’s where these recommendations could be really helpful,” she said.