Higher Rates of Bullying Reported by ‘White’ Males: Gender and Ethno-Racial Intersections and Bullying in the Workplace

Abstract

Existing workplace bullying literature suggests that ethno-racial minorities and women are more likely to be bullied in relation to their ethnicity, race or gender. However, very few studies apply an intersectional framework of analysis to consider, for instance, how ethno-racial status and gender interacts to affect general workplace bullying experiences and their reporting decisions. This article uses an intersectional analytical framework and a cross-sectional quantitative analysis of the British Workplace Behaviour Survey (2007–2008) to examine bullying in the workplace, as experienced by the intersections of ethno-racial status and gender. In discussing how some groups report particular dimensions of bullying more than others, this article closely examines the somewhat unexpected finding that ‘white’ men were significantly more likely to report instances of workplace bullying. This article argues for the use of an intersectional analytical approach to understand and progressively address the nuances of identity, power and workplace bullying experiences.

Do (gendered) ageism and ethnic minorities explain workplace bullying?

“…As bullying assumes power inequality, women tend to be the targets of bullying and mistreatment more likely than men (Gardner et al, 2020;Harnois, 2015;Moreno-Jimen ez et al, 2008;Simpson and Cohen, 2004), or at least they perceive certain behaviors as threatening or unwelcome (Escartin et al, 2011a;Simpson and Cohen, 2004). However, according to studies in the USA and UK, men face higher levels of discrimination than women (Rippon et al, 2015;Potter et al, 2019;Patel et al, 2022) and a meta-analysis of 66 studies on interpersonal deviance by Mackey et al (2021) marginally produced the same result.…”

“…As suggested by the overview by Branch et al (2013), minority groups are more likely to be bullied. There are various theoretical explanations why this happens, including social identity theory, self-categorization theory, similarity-attraction paradigm, cultural distance hypothesis, and extension of social stratification to workplace setting (Bergbom et al, 2015;Patel et al, 2022). Again, organizational power comes into play: minorities rarely occupy powerful structural positions and thus bear greater risk of bullying (Branch et al, 2013).…”

“…Second, our results indicate that workplace bullying should be approached in a more nuanced manner: for some employee groups (women), victimization occurs only in workrelated domains, but not in person-related issues. Studying bullying in general may mask IJM 44,9 important differences: perceiving the extent of work-related bullying versus person related bullying differently was also revealed by Patel et al (2022).…”

“…Studies have investigated how gender, race, ethnicity, or disabilities interact with age at a workplace (Jyrkinen and McKie, 2012;Potter et al, 2019;Thomas et al, 2014), but in general, empirical work on intersectionality is scarce (McBride et al, 2015;Potter et al, 2019) and often limited by specific geographies such as the USA or the UK Age, in particular, has largely been neglected in intersectionality literature (Holman and Walker, 2021). Furthermore, there is relatively little research on workplace bullying using the intersectionality lens - Gardner et al (2020) and Patel et al (2022) studies are rare exceptions. This paper fills this gap and looks at gender and ethnic minorities in tandem with age.…”

“…Furthermore, there is relatively little research on workplace bullying using the intersectionality lens – Gardner et al. (2020) and Patel et al. (2022) studies are rare exceptions.…”