A honking white van on the walk home; a trickle of ill-judged wisecracks about sandwiches and kitchens; a forthright leer from behind a computer screen — everyday sexism irritates and exasperates women.
Now it appears it may be taking a much heavier toll than previously thought. The grind of “covert” sexism in the workplace is just as bad for women as sexual coercion by their bosses or unwanted advances from colleagues, according to a study.
Complacent managers need to take a zero-tolerance approach to sexist jokes and malicious gossip about their female employees, because gradual, low-level harassment is as damaging as overt sexism, business academics at the University of Melbourne concluded.
They analysed 88 studies involving 74,000 women and concluded that the repetitive drip of gender bias, discrimination and snide comments was as harmful as isolated incidents of obvious sexism. They said that men who made remarks about their female colleagues’ sex lives or ranked them according to their attractiveness risked causing deep psychological harm.
The stress stemming from covert sexism and glass ceilings could even affect women’s physical health by weakening their immune system, the researchers said.
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“Less intense but more common harmful workplace experiences can have subtle effects with an accumulative impact over time,” they wrote in the journal Psychology of Women Quarterly. “For example, women commonly experience questions about their competencies to perform their jobs, lower pay for doing the same jobs, and fewer opportunities to progress their careers and access managerial roles. The pervasiveness of these experiences makes them very harmful over time and with repeated exposure across situations.
“While an incident of sexual coercion might be highly traumatic for the woman directly affected and others in her immediate workplace, it is possible that sexist events of low intensity at work, which are much more widespread, occur more frequently and, [as they] are rarely challenged, may have much greater negative impacts on the well-being of women.”
Although most workers recognise that it is not acceptable to harass female colleagues sexually, many do not realise that sexist jokes and language can contribute to a climate that makes them feel just as bad, the academics said. They called on bosses to teach their employees about the damage “low-intensity sexist events” could cause in the long run.
“For policymakers and practitioners, covert sexism — such as sexist jokes, ignoring women during meetings and talking behind women’s backs — is one of the most challenging issues to tackle,” they wrote.
“Our results suggest that organisations should have zero tolerance for low-intensity sexism the same way they do for overt harassment. This will require teaching workers about the harmful nature of low-intensity sexist events, not only for women but also for the overall organisational climate. The promotion of civilised interactions among colleagues is essential.”
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•More than half of all published psychology studies cannot be replicated, scientists have said (Jon Henderson writes). They said that the results of their study challenged the fundamental practice of modern science. The paper, published in the journal Science, set out to reproduce the results of 100 investigations. Some 270 psychologists worldwide volunteered their time to replicate experiments. Only 39 of the 100 studies produced the same result.