Neuroscience
Witnessing the harassment or uncivil treatment of women at work is bad not only for female employees, but for the productivity of the whole organisation.
That’s according to Kathi Miner-Rubino and Lilia Cortina in America, who surveyed 871 female and 831 male university employees, including academic and support staff.
Male and female employees who said they had witnessed either the sexual harassment of female staff, or uncivil, rude or condescending behaviour towards them, tended to report lower psychological well-being and job satisfaction. In turn, lower psychological well-being was associated with greater burn out and increased thoughts about quitting.
Moreover, employees of both sexes who perceived the university to be unresponsive to sexual harassment complaints, tended to report more burnout and less commitment to the university.
Crucially, while these negative effects were not large, they were associated purely with observing the mistreatment of others, not with being a victim of mistreatment oneself – the researchers took account of that (for participants of both sexes) in their statistical analysis.
However, longitudinal research is needed to confirm the direction of causality in the observed associations. It's possible, for example, that misogynistic treatment is more likely to occur when staff have poor psychological well-being and less job satisfaction.
The researchers surmised the negative effects of witnessing misogyny at work could be caused by the feeling that one is working for an unjust organisation, and by feelings of empathy or fear. “This underscores the need for broad, proactive organisational interventions to manage workplace misogyny,” they concluded.
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Miner-Rubino, K. & Cortina, L.M. (2007). Beyond targets: Consequences of vicarious exposure to misogyny at work. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92, 1254-1269.
Image credit: Michael R
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
A misogynistic workplace is bad for male employees too
Witnessing the harassment or uncivil treatment of women at work is bad not only for female employees, but for the productivity of the whole organisation.That’s according to Kathi Miner-Rubino and Lilia Cortina in America, who surveyed 871 female and 831 male university employees, including academic and support staff.
Male and female employees who said they had witnessed either the sexual harassment of female staff, or uncivil, rude or condescending behaviour towards them, tended to report lower psychological well-being and job satisfaction. In turn, lower psychological well-being was associated with greater burn out and increased thoughts about quitting.
Moreover, employees of both sexes who perceived the university to be unresponsive to sexual harassment complaints, tended to report more burnout and less commitment to the university.
Crucially, while these negative effects were not large, they were associated purely with observing the mistreatment of others, not with being a victim of mistreatment oneself – the researchers took account of that (for participants of both sexes) in their statistical analysis.
However, longitudinal research is needed to confirm the direction of causality in the observed associations. It's possible, for example, that misogynistic treatment is more likely to occur when staff have poor psychological well-being and less job satisfaction.
The researchers surmised the negative effects of witnessing misogyny at work could be caused by the feeling that one is working for an unjust organisation, and by feelings of empathy or fear. “This underscores the need for broad, proactive organisational interventions to manage workplace misogyny,” they concluded.
_________________________________
Miner-Rubino, K. & Cortina, L.M. (2007). Beyond targets: Consequences of vicarious exposure to misogyny at work. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92, 1254-1269.
Image credit: Michael R
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- Men Who Stick Up For Women's Rights Are Subjected To More Sexual Harassment At Work
Upon mention of sexual harassment at work, it's natural to think immediately of women as the targets, but actually men experience harassment too. And it's on the increase, at least in the US. In 2013, men filed 17.6 per cent of the thousands of...
- Childless Women Are The Most Productive Staff Of All, Study Finds
An investigation into the impact of having children on the productivity of male and female lawyers has found that childless women get the most work done - more than childless male lawyers and lawyers of either gender who have children. Jean Wallace and...
- Maybe More Satisfied Employees Don't Perform Better After All
Contented employees perform well, unhappy ones don't. It seems simple enough. In fact, the association between "job satisfaction" and "job performance" has even been dubbed the "Holy Grail" of organisational psychology. But now Nathan Bowling at Wright...
- Understanding Why People Take 'sickies'
You’re a company boss and you want to reduce illegitimate sickness leave among your employees. What do you do? Introduce schemes to increase job satisfaction among your staff? It sounds sensible – the problem is, time and again research has only found...
- Measuring Our Mood At Work
Negative events at work, like being criticised, affect our mood far more than positive events, such as receiving praise. That’s according to Andrew Miner from the University of Minnesota and his colleagues. They gave 41 employees a palmtop computer...