By James Gamble via SWNS
White men are far more likely than women or any ethnic minorities to report bullying in the workplace, a new study suggests.
Researchers studied data that shows white men are the most likely group to speak up to say they’d been humiliated, insulted or ignored at work.
The study’s authors suggested this could be due to the group being dominant in professional workplaces where a ‘heavily masculine’ culture of competition applies.
They added that this challenged the consensus that ethno-racial minority groups – especially women – are the most likely to complain.
The study, published in the Work, Employment and Society journal, focused on data from the British Workplace Behaviour Survey, carried out between 2007 and 2008.
The group of 3,494 Britons consisted of 1,789 women and 1,705 men, four out of five of whom were white (78.2%) and one in five of whom (21.8%) were ethno-racial minorities aged between 16 and 82, who were currently employed or employed within the previous two years.
For the purposes of the study, ‘White’ was defined as white people of British, Irish or other backgrounds, ‘Asian’ included men and women from Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and other Asian backgrounds and ‘Black’ comprised men and women who were black Caribbean, black African or of other black backgrounds.
The researchers, from the University of Salford and Manchester Metropolitan University, aimed to explore the combined effect of gender and ethnicity on bullying rates and found ‘somewhat unexpected’ results.
The data showed white men reported the highest rates of workplace bullying (60%) – more than white women (54%), black men (51%) and women (44%) and Asian men (39%) and women (38%).
White staff overall reported the highest rates of bullying at work (57%) compared with black (48%) and Asian staff (39%).
Men were also found to be five percent more likely than women to report that they’d experienced workplace bullying (58% and 53% respectively).
Amongst white men, nearly one in five (18%) reported being insulted, one in ten (10%) reported being humiliated or ridiculed and more than a third (37%) were given unmanageable amounts of work or deadlines.
Another third (35%) reported having their opinion ignored and a fifth (20%) said they’d had necessary information withheld from them.
Other groups, meanwhile, had higher rates for other aspects of bullying.
The research team adjusted their data to exclude the effects of age, education and job type to study the effects of ethnicity and gender in isolation.
However, they found that white women and those from ethnic minorities were still much less likely than white men to report bullying at work.
Dr. Tina Patel, a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Salford and a lead author of the study, said the findings should be placed in the context of ‘heavily masculine’ working environments – especially in the UK and the US.
“The key finding, somewhat unexpectedly and contrary to our hypothesis, is that, in general, white men were more likely to report workplace bullying,” she explained.
“This contradicts existing evidence that ethno-racial minority groups are more likely to be, or report being, bullied.
“White men are most likely to report experiencing specific bullying behaviors that make it difficult for them to complete their work.
“This unexpected finding can be framed within the heavily masculine context of many workplaces, especially in those cultures found in the UK and USA.
“In such environments, these dominating groups were more likely to compete against each other in indirect-aggressive ways.”
Dr. Patel added that women from ethnic minorities may have under-reported bullying, saying: “It is plausible that women from an ethno-racial minority group felt the most uncomfortable coming forward to make any bullying reports, resulting in under-reporting of actual events.”
“This could be because of previous negative experiences of ethno-racial minority groups in relation to discrimination in the workplace.”
