Index

ABSTRACT

The study explored gender and occupational status dissimilarities in the experience of workplace bullying. Data from 327 workers in four different ministries in the Lagos State Public Service in Nigeria was gathered through a questionnaire. The MDM Questionnaire developed by Merecz-Kot and Cębrzyńska (2008) was adopted. The value of Cronbachα coefficient was 0.876. The Chi-Square Test and the two-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were employed for analyses. Altogether, the results exemplify gender disparities both in the occurrence, rates and types of workplace bullying, and also that gender is vital in how targets and third parties understand and react to bullying. 70% of the female respondents as opposed to 49% of the male respondents reported having experienced bullying at work.  This disparity was statistically significant. Again, 56% of the female victims reported being bullied by another female in the workplace while 41% were bullied by a male. For 60% of the female victims, their bullies were individuals with authority over them like managers and supervisors.  While 20% were identified as co-workers of higher rankings, 16% were bullied by co-workers of the same ranking, and 4% were bullied by co-workers of lower rankings. The results substantiate the central position of gender disparities in predicting workplace bullying and sustain the outlook that gender is not simply a personal precursor of bullying, but instead serves as a social feature that manipulates the occurrence of workplace bullying. Since most victims are women, bullying becomes an instrument for sustaining gender inequality.

Keywords: Gendered, Occupational status, Nature, Workplace, Bullying.

DOI: 10.20448/801.41.118.128

Citation | Fapohunda, Tinuke. M. (2019). The Gendered and Occupational Status Nature of Workplace Bullying. American Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 4(1): 118-128.

Copyright: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

Funding : This study received no specific financial support.

Competing Interests: The author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper.

History : Received: 18 March 2019 / Revised: 26 April 2019 / Accepted: 30 May 2019 / Published: 22 July 2019.

Publisher: Online Science Publishing

1. INTRODUCTION

Workplace bullying has to do with intentional, repetitive, and spiteful acts that occur at work in the process of employment.  It could incorporate express or circuitous aggravation, professional misdemeanours, or abuse of power which is exemplified by unjust treatment, gossip mongering, or whichever recurring actions found to be unpleasant, threatening, hateful, or offending.  It involves any actions that can realistically be seen as undercutting a person’s right or self-esteem at work. Workplace bullying implies pestering, insulting, or socially eliminating somebody or negatively influencing somebody's work. It concerns all types of organizations.

While literature on the diverse varieties of workplace abuse is robust and developing, it is a revelation that very modest interest seems to have been given to the functions of gender and occupational status in workplace exploitation. Gender is frequently employed as a control variable although it is not often inherently conceded that it could somehow explain inconsistencies in the measure of interest and seldom in exploring what the possible correlation may involve. There are dual perceptions on the issue of the possibility and manner of gender relationship to workplace bullying. The first, according to studies like Yamada (2008) and Pearson et al. (2005) being that workplace bullying is gender-blind or more generally status-blind. The second as indicated by Lee (Lee (2002) and Simpson and Cohen (2004) is that workplace bullying is fundamentally gendered. These perceptions reveal diverse notions of gender. The gender-blind contention basically believes that gender is simply a demographic variable or, explicitly, an individual difference variable in the sense of ‘a gender.’ However, the gendered perception considers gender as a social status that is created and delineated in relations with others. Advocates of the gender-blind perception differentiate bullying behaviours from sexual harassment behaviours and observe that substances of bullying behaviours are not gendered. Undeniably, some designations of bullying clearly eliminate sexual and racial contents. Rospenda and Richman (2004) affirm that this perception is sustained by studies that have constantly acknowledged that “bullying” behaviours and behaviours considered as sexual harassment are experientially discernible. Ojo (2016) also suggests that arising from their history of discrimination; women possibly will respond more strongly to workplace bullying compared to men. Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI) (2012) posits that women seem to be at bigger threat of becoming targets of bullying. Samnani and Singh (2012) in wrapping up the results from preceding 20 years' literature contends that relating to the gender dynamic, contradictory results could not sustain the disparities across gender. Safe Work Australia (2014) also contends that women have greater propensity in contrast to men to be bullied and to occasion physical attack or be terrorized by customers or patients. Additionally, women have greater propensity to experience unfair handling as a consequence of their gender. This paper contributes to literature by addressing the possibility and manner of gender and occupational status relationship to workplace bullying. The study seeks to establish possible disparities in male and female experience anddemonstrations of workplace bullying.It aims to examine the possibility of a gendered and occupational status nature of workplace bullying.

1.1. Literature

1.1.1. Gender, Occupational Status and Workplace Bullying

Barrow (2015) affirms that gender occupies an important position in the workplace bullying plague and while the truth is that workplace bullying is not, a widespread fallacy is that workplace bullying is gender neutral. Barrow’s study involved 300 undergraduate business school students about 50% of which were male and half female. The study demonstrated a considerable disparity in how male and female students rated the tolerability of five behaviours arising from which Barrow states that, owing to the fact that women normally display more relationship-orientation behaviours compared to men, their bullying is more apt to centre on segregating intended persons and harming their connections with associates and superiors. Men seem to display additional aggression as they depend on methods like verbal threats, coercion and public mortification. Bullying is a reality in the workplace and could boast lifelong and ravaging outcomes on marked workers. Findings are dissimilar on the correlation between genderand experience of bullying. Several studies like Salin (2001); Cortina et al. (2001) and Simpson and Cohen (2004) designate considerable pervasiveness of women among the group of harassed persons while many others like Vartia and Hyyti (2012) and Ortega et al. (2009) found no association between gender and experience of bullying. One obviously evident disparity in these results is the volume of the research sets. Those studies like Vartia and Hyyti (2012) and Ortega et al. (2009) that comprised significantly more copious clusters of workers and subsequently observed the principle of representativeness were commonly the ones that indicated no important disparities in the experience of bullying among both genders. Again, only just a few studies like Eriksen and Einarsen (2004) designate that, men sooner than women were the ones that confront bullying more commonly.

Studies like Leymann (2006); Einarsen (2012) and Wimmer (2009) consent that more often, the architects of bullying are men and men are more frequently bullied by other men, while both men and women bully women. But, the question of the correlation between worker’s gender and the experience of bullying is not that obvious. The multiplicity of the results could be connected with the greater depiction of one gender both in the studied sample, the investigated segment or professional cluster. Therefore, the disparities in the experiences by men and women of bullying were statistically inconsequential in studies like Ortega et al. (2009); Hoel and Cooper (2000) and Leymann (2006) that had representative samples of workers and where the gender percentage was spread approximately uniformly (52% women, 55% and 48% correspondingly) . Conversely, in studies like Eriksen and Einarsen (2004) which involved a collection of nurses, with a predominance of women consisting (96%), the men (10%) became the group with the higher menace of experience of bullying and with women, the percentage totalled (4%), while, in the clusters with a predominance of men like Magerøy et al. (2013) the women experienced more bullying. Even so, the gender ratio in a particular population of participants does not clarify all the disparities described in the studies because in studies like Leymann (2006) irrespective of the reality that there was a virtual equilibrium of genders, women still encountered added experiences of professional bullying.

Despite the fact that, there could be the presupposition that the cause of the observed disparities could be methodological characteristics (e.g. the instrument employed to analyse bullying and/or the choice of the study groups). Alternatively, the link between gender and occurrence of broadly implicit violence and aggression constitutes a significantly more intricate issue. It appears that the gender variable in social studies has a wider meaning, not restricted to the uncomplicated differentiation of biological nature, and it is a circuitous expression of the position of women and men in a particular institution in addition to that of social prospects associated with the performance of a particular gender function. From studies like Ortega et al. (2009); Wimmer (2009) and Simpson and Cohen (2004) one may presume that in institutions with indistinct disparities in the standing of men and women (such as the Civil Service which is the subject of this study), there will be no considerable inter gender disparities in the experience of bullying, while in those with the predominance of one gender it will plainly manifest (both, in terms of the status as well as the number) and the disparities will persevere. Salin (2001) asserts that the social construction of gender shapes the regularity, extent, and kind of bullying that women incident. Women testify ofbeing “scapegoated” or used as“whipping boys” and being bullied both by associates and subordinates. Moreover dreadful manners do not impinge on the genders uniformly. In Salin’s study only female participants distinguished themselves as objects of subordinate bullying. Such disparities in handling might be the consequences of cultural conditioning because for instance as Barrow (2015) intimates females are trained that there are harmful implications to exhibiting capability, propensity, or aspiration. Therefore, as Cikara and Fiske (2013) observe, once anticipations of “feminine” behaviours are frustrated women may experience outcomes even from fellow women.  The views are made more complex by some dynamics. One dynamic is antagonistic chauvinism, which includes pessimistic, orthodox, offensive, and demeaning mind-sets about women. Antagonistic chauvinism is evidenced in stealthy prejudiced activities. Another dynamic is discriminatory bad manners. Barreto et al. (2009) affirms that to circumvent organizational punishments, bullies could employ devious methods of conveyingprejudicial mind-sets within organisations. Berdahl (2007) suggests that self-confident women in male-dominated organisations possess the maximum prospects of encountering workplace bullying. Babcock and Laschever (2013) contend that owing to entrenched socialization models and matching anticipations, assertive and self- confident women could become subjects of unsympathetic verdicts from other people. Besides, interrupting male versus female customs of relations may perhaps be distinguished as incongruously moving out of bounds. Wimmer (2009) observes that statistical discrimination designates that the amount of women in management spots is minute, and consequently, stereotypic ideas are time-consuming to transform. The study in total suggests that women have a more constricted group of tolerable behaviours compared to men; since they are supposed to walk a behavioural tightrope that aligns with societal prospects despite the situation. Besides, Masser and Abrams (2004) observe that those that turn to the unfriendly region of the unsure chauvinism continuum could negatively assess women that demonstrate behaviours that contravene conventional gender functions or are regarded as masculine. Both Masser and Abrams (2004) and Miner-Rubino and Cortina (2004) propose that women are unfairly held responsible even when they are bullied, hassled or battered. Similarly, Fox and Stallworth (2005) details that little consideration has been given to examining the nexus of gender, workplace bullying and occupational status.

WBI (2012) posits that women seem to be at bigger threat of becoming targets of bullying adding that in their study, 57% of those who reported being targets were women. The study found that (60%) of men demonstrated propensity to partake in aggressive bullying behaviour. Again, the study found that when the bully is a woman, the target is more apt (71%)to also be a woman. Samnani and Singh (2012)argue that pertaining to the gender dynamic, contradictory results could not sustain the disparities across gender. The NHIS-OHS confirms this earlier result, when it found higher occurrence rates for being bullied, intimidated, or hassled recognized for women (9%) in contrast to men (7%).  SWA (2014) also contends that women are more prone compared to men to be bullied and to episode physical attack or be intimidated by a customer or patient. Additionally, women have greater propensity to experience unfair handling as a consequence of their gender. Conversely, men were considerably more apt to incident swearing or yelling in the workplace. Studies like Aday and Krabill (2011) and Lee and Brotheridge (2011) propose that women protecting themselves when bullied could be seen as demonstrating reduced collegiality and added liability for the bullying event. There is nevertheless the likelihood that a courtesy and civility rule may alleviate such views. Also, persons who are affected by unfairness at work could respond more severely to bullying episodes. This study is an action in the direction of appreciating the intricacies of workplace bullying.

2. METHOD

The population for the study included employees from four different ministries in the Lagos State Public Service namely: Lagos State Ministries of Health, Education, Environment and Women Affairs which was put at 6253. Using the Krejcie and Morgan (1970) sampling size determination table, a sample of three hundred and twenty seven (327) was drawn from the population. The study made use of questionnaires. 350 questionnaires were distributed.  324 (92.57%) were returned in usable conditions and included in the analysis. Roughly half the participants were male and half female thus observing the principle of representativeness. To evaluate the height of experience of bullying the MDM Questionnaire developed by Merecz-Kot and Cębrzyńska (2008) was utilized. The MDM Questionnaire has 32 diagnostic items, depicting bullying behaviour that the person may have countenanced. The MDM Questionnaire permits comparatively simple delineation between subjects who are incidentally targets of hostile behaviour and those who are bullied. The value of Cronbachα coefficient for the MDM Questionnaire was 0.876.Statistical analyses were executed using the SPSS 19 package. The Chi-Square Test of Independence of two variables was utilized. Furthermore, to examine the intermingling results connecting the variables of gender and bullying occurrence, the two-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was employed. The contrasts were made between the groups isolated based on gender and occupational status - (non-supervisory and supervisory).

3. RESULTS

The average age of the respondents in the study was 42.52 with the majority of them (44.6%) being in the 40-49 age group. 69.72% of them were employees in non-managerial positions and 31.28% were in managerial positions. The results illustrate gender disparities both in the occurrence, rates and types of workplace bullying, and also that gender is vital in how targets and third parties understand and react to bullying. Gendered notions of power, gender role socialisation theory and social identity theory are all pertinent to describing documented gender disparities.70% of the female respondents as opposed to 53% of the male respondents reported having experienced bullying at work.  The disparity was statistically significant. Again, 56% of the female victims reported being bullied by another female in the workplace while 41% were bullied by a male. For 60% of the female victims, their bullies were individuals with authority over them like managers and supervisors while 20% were identified as co-workers of higher rankings and16% were bullied by co-workers of the same ranking, and 4% bullied by co-workers of lower rankings. On the regularity of the incidence of bullying 16.3% of the respondents said they experienced bullying twice monthly for not less than 3 months. Of that proportion, 6.54% of them were bullied by a supervisor or manager, 5.26% by colleagues and associates and 4.50% by a combination of both superiors and colleagues. The study found no significant differences (72% Female, 67% Male) in the percentage of male and female victims who were still working with their bullies. Also, no significant differences (73% Female, 79% Male) were indicated in the percentage of male and female victims who perceived that the bullying had consequences on their health. (68% Female, 64% Male), designating no significant disparities, distinguished that the bullying had corollaries on their performance. Finally, (69% Female, 63% Male) remarked that the bullying had effects on their turnover intentions. A fairly startling and worrisome result of this study is that women were found to also bully other women. 34% of the female respondents who had been victims reported that their bullies were also women while only 17% of the male respondents who had been victims said their bullies were women. The results further indicate that bullying constitutes an extremely grave predicament, with actual corollaries. 58.7% of the respondents who had been victims finally relinquished their work or at least have turnover intentions. Since most victims are women, bullying therefore becomes an instrument for sustaining gender inequality.

The Chi-Square Test of Independence was employed in confirming the significance of correlation between the analyzed gender and occupational status variables. The groups were isolated by gender and occupational status and using this, the distributions of experience of bullying was noticeably diverse. The results indicate that more often women X2 = 4. 43; p < 0.05) compared to men, constitute targets of workplace bullying. Also, persons holding managerial positions incident bullying more frequently than those occupying non-managerial positions X2 = 4.45; p < 0.05). The re-set results of the MDM Questionnaire were utilized in examining the connections between gender, occupational status and experience of workplace bullying. The scores designate that 249 (76.34%) of the respondentshad0 points, 29(8.62%) of them had 1 point consequently experiencing negative behaviour a minimum of once monthly for not less than 3 months, while 49(15.04%) met the bullying criterion by scoring 2 or more points. The encoded results were utilized for additional statistical analysis. The Mann-Whitney U test showed several significant correlations between employee’s genders, occupational status and the outcomes acquired using the MDM Questionnaire. Tables 1and 2 offer the end results of the analyses. In terms of the occupational status nature of workplace bullying, as indicated in Table 1, respondents holding non supervisory positions incidented bullying significantly less frequently compared to those in supervisory positions. As regards the gendered nature of workplace bullying, the study found that compared to men, women faced greater threats of being bullied than men as shown in Table 2. The MDM analysis was conducted on the sets of workers faced with greater threats of being bullied by supervisors (vertical bullying) and by associates (horizontal bullying). The results signify that horizontal bullying had a parallel model of connections to the analyses pertaining to the common outcomes of the MDM Questionnaire.

Researcher’s Field Survey.

This implies that both women as in Table 2 and the individuals occupying supervisory positions as in Table 1 faced horizontal bullying with greater regularity. However, none of gender and occupational status disparities were found statistically significant with respect to vertical bullying or bullying by supervisors and managers. The study isolated three varieties of antagonistic behaviours emanating each from supervisors and managers and from associates and colleagues. For supervisors and managers they are namely: deeds influencing occupational posts, deeds influencing image and actions influencing social relationships and from associates and colleagues- deeds influencing image, deeds influencing social relationships and deeds influencing isolation. The results of two of the three factors of the MDM- Horizontal scale were significantly distinguished by gender. Women were found to obtain considerably elevated outcomes compared to men in the area of deeds and activities influencing both social relationships and worker’s image. As indicated in Table 2, the study found no gender disparities in the frequency of the threat of peer isolation and the three varieties of vertical bullying from supervisors and managers. However, the variety of the bullying behaviour was more a function of gender as opposed to occupational status. For bullying aimed at tearing down social affiliations there were significant disparities between persons occupying non- supervisory positions and those holding supervisory positions.

Researcher’s Field survey.

This implies as portrayed in Table 1, that the supervisors and managers, as opposed to the rank and file employees, experienced more regular deeds of their associates that influenced social relationships. The Two-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was employed to explore the influence of the relations between gender and occupational status occupied on occurrence of workplace bullying. The results demonstrate that gender was the solitary statistically significant interactive effect with regard to the experiences of bullying by associates (F = 3.728; p = 0.022). The effect particularly had to do with acts of bullying demonstrated by associates and influencing social correlations (F = 4.026; p = 0.026). This means that women, as opposed to men, experience more bullying by associates by way of acts that pressurize social relationships.

4. DISCUSSION

The results as presented above point to the fact that compared to men, women experienced greater workplace bullying. The women also faced more bullying by associates, (comprising deeds influencing both image and social relationships) as opposed to men. This result aligns with those of earlier studies like Simpson and Cohen (2004), Lee and Brotheridge (2011) and Samnani and Singh (2012)that all found that women are more likely targets of workplace bullying. The female victims in this study detail facing more types of workplace bullying, more emotional fatigue, and more consequences of victimization.  The results also indicate that the rank and file and those occupying non supervisory and non managerial positions encountered bullying less frequently than those holding supervisory and managerial positions. Subordinates face bullying (especially emanating from associates and co-workers which harmfully influence social relationships at work) less repeatedly than their supervisors and managers. The higher degree of experience of workplace bullying by women rather than men, could probably be owing to the classes of the sex-role spill over theory originated by Gutek and Morasch (1982) who suggest that in masculine occupations the conventional label of a woman is transmitted onto the evaluation of their occupational proficiency and generates prospects not really connected to the performance of occupational responsibility but the performance of the conventional functions of a woman. The resultant effects are endeavours to put forth demands (which could be through both bullying and similar appearances of aggravation) with the intention of achieving control over women, to designate their correct position in the masculine planet. This rationalization nonetheless appears not to be totally acceptable. The sex ratio of the respondents in this study was fairly even and the number of men and women were proportionate. The results vacate the sex-ratio theory and contradict research like Notelaers et al. (2011) and Salin and Hoel (2013) that illustrate that the minority gender is more prone to the menace of workplace bullying.The result of this study that women were found to also bully other women affirms the findings of Lewis and Orford (2015) that40% of workplace bullies are women. While the male bullies mostly employ an equal method, undermining both men and women practically in equivalent degrees, the female bullies seem to choose those similar to them, therefore most of the time, aiming at other women as objects of bullying. This is probably another instance of the very widespread -women are their own worst enemies- anecdote which implies that women themselves are responsible for damaging the universal goals of women advancement.This study concludes that bullying can be principally same-gender aggravation since men bully men and women (62% of the time), men alone (51% of the time), but women largely bully women (78% of the time). Also 60% of bullies are men, and 53% of the objects are women.This is however not to say that workplace bullying is mostly an intra gender predicament rather as the results of this study reiterates on the incidence of bullying, bullies are inclined to be those in power, who aim at individuals with a reduced amount of power. Bullying therefore serves as an instrument of the powerful. Occupying positions of power makes the bullying especially successful. The power reclines in the bully having superior access to supplies, control and authority over other people’s views. Bullying behaviours amplify when those in power think the power is intimidated.Another explanation for women most frequently bullying other women may be owing to the fact that they are hardly ever in positions of power over men. Catalyst (2012) observes that after several decades of struggling for parity, women comprise over half of management, professional and allied occupations however women constitutes merely 15.7% of Fortune 500 officials and 15.2 % of directors.Besides, there is a greater tendency for women to work in occupations and workplaces that are principally occupied by other women. Conversely, men exercise power in the workplace over both women and other men.

The results of this study confirm earlier ones that found that when women demonstrate “rebellious” behaviours or contravene communal gender customs, they could experience negative corollaries. Notwithstanding that more women are now highly educated and have joined the labour force, the disparity continues to be obvious and regardless of transforming positions of men and women in both private and public areas, the gender divide indicates that effort is still required as regards sensitivity training to generate understanding, and in offering education on the vicious nature of gender typecasts and the significance of substituting them with applicable sociotypes. Gender stereotypes are widespread in workplace environments. The dominance of men at the organizational zenith could constitute the foundation for behavioural expectations across genders, hardening stereotypical models of relations. Women are still considerably under characterized in foremost leadership posts especially in developing countries like Nigeria even if they earn over half of the bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees awarded in the country.

Arising from the findings, this study advocates laws and policies to deter employees from bullying their workmates. Organization wide arrangements, strategies, processes, and customary involvements must be developed to curtail bullying. Furthermore, as Namie (2007) affirms, employers have to react by granting suitable thoughtfulness to the victims that protest; offering a secure setting for petitioners; probing accusations of abuse; and separating bullying from interpersonal disagreements.  Workplace Bullying Institute WBI (2012) affirms that the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) observes that only 3% of organizations have definite workplace bullying rules. To facilitate the tone setting and resultant anticipations, such systems aimed at averting workplace bullying must preferably be piloted by organization’s top management. Moreover, behavioural processes must be extensively publicized and regularly re-evaluated.  In addition as Namie (2012) contends, coaching, counselling, and training must be included in the process of executing and implementing courtesy policies. Besides Daniel (2016) posits that while the bully must never be pacified, the victim must not be liable, and the bullying behaviour must never be overlooked. It is imperative to raise awareness for administrators and managers regarding the deep consequences of bullying at work (both at individual and organisational levels) and its antecedents.

5. CONCLUSION

Bullying itself does not constitute a gendered occurrence. It concerns and distresses everyone since; men bully men and women as women also bully both men and women, even if the levels differ. The truth is that bullying has to do with power, and individuals bully those they boast power over. Several numerous difficult conclusions emanate from the foregoing. One is that the associations women have with one another are tricky and women must become skilled at improved sustenance for one another. Another is that women themselves constitute the challenge, and as they progress into powerful posts, they turn out to be very similar to men.Furthermore, as earlier noted, bullying swells once people consider their power pressurized.The imbalanced gender structure adds to the dilemma of bullying for the reason that it strengthens the thought that certain people must logically possess additional power compared to others; that men are characteristically more forceful, and women have to be more caring and accommodating. Moreover, workplace bullying adds to economic disparity between men and women.

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