Women and bullying and harassment

In 2014, results from “the biggest ever survey of women and work in the UK” by the Business in the Community gender equality campaign Opportunity Now, Project 28-40, showed that more than half of female respondents had experienced some form of bullying or harassment in their workplace in the previous three years.

Project 28-40 surveyed 25,000 people (23,000 women and 2,000 men) and reported that among the 52% of women who had experienced workplace bullying and harassment during the previous three years, the rates were highest for women with disabilities (71%), Black British, African and Caribbean women (69%), bisexual women (61%) and LGBT women (55%).

These figures exclude sexual harassment, which was asked about separately. Among female respondents, 12% said they had experienced sexual harassment in the workplace during the previous three years. Again, LGBT women, ethnic minority women, and women with disabilities were more frequently targets of sexual harassment. Non-parents were more likely than parents to have experienced bullying and harassment.

The survey also found that women in sectors that typically employed more men experienced sexual harassment more frequently and above the 12% average — sometimes substantially so. By contrast, female respondents experiencing bullying and harassment excluding sexual harassment were more evenly spread across different sectors. Women often experienced bullying by female colleagues and line managers.

When participants were asked an open-ended, unprompted question about what their organisation could do or could have done to improve the culture in their workplace, addressing bullying and harassment was the most frequent suggestion, with one in six women recommending this.

One of the report’s key findings is that there is a gap between organisational policies and the actual experiences of 28-40 women at work.