Verbal Abuse Is Hurting Women in the Workplace
At first, it seemed funny.
“Temper tantrum” was how I described his behavior to my friends. Michael (not his real name) would raise his voice at me, then flounce out of the room in a huff. At first, his outbursts seemed innocuous, if unprofessional: Can you believe he did that?
We worked together, and I’d read enough books about office culture to believe I could handle the situation, so I spoke to Michael about his outbursts. Because he seemed to feel bad about it, I wrote it off.
But the behavior escalated. One afternoon, he didn’t like the direction of a project. In front of another woman, he criticized the work I’d done, declared it a waste of his time, and stormed out of the conference room. As with all of his outbursts, I felt undermined, humiliated, and frustrated that preventing another temper tantrum—or trying to—had become part of my responsibilities. I raised the issue with higher-ups, and everyone believed (it seemed to me) that I was good at my job and that his immature lashouts needed to stop.
That isn’t what happened. And a few weeks later, I was out of a job.
The experience was awful, but others have it much worse. Verbal abuse in the workplace doesn’t take just one form. It can involve screaming, humiliation, sexist, homophobic or racist slurs, aggressive behavior like pounding tables or slamming phones, and intimidation, like blocking doors or stairs. Some of these behaviors fit the legal definition of assault and harassment. But some don’t.
Even now in our post #MeToo world, many kinds of verbal abuse—and the toxic environment that abuse fosters—doesn’t violate the law.
I no longer have to deal with Michael, but I still feel his effect. As someone who considers herself a hard worker and a resilient woman, I wince now at how his words made me feel and the extent to which I wondered whether I was “too sensitive” to cut it in our office. The experience made me question future coworkers, too. Who would be next to lash out? And would other coworkers let it happen?
Even now in our post-#MeToo world, many kinds of verbal abuse—and the toxic environment that abuse fosters—doesn’t violate the law. Worse still, the behavior tends to be dismissed as natural, if somewhat unpleasant in competitive, achievement-oriented work environments. In May, the New York Times published a roundtable with the cast of Arrested Development, kicking off an overdue public conversation about the phenomenon. In it, actress Jessica Walter cried as she described her co-star Jeffrey Tambor’s verbal abuse. “[In] almost 60 years of working, I’ve never had anybody yell at me like that on a set and it’s hard to deal with,” Walter said. But some of her male co-stars seemed to make excuses for such behavior, with Jason Bateman opining, “[I]n the entertainment industry, it’s incredibly common to have people who are, in quotes, ‘difficult.’”
I was incensed not only at Walter’s mistreatment, but by some of her male colleagues’ minimization of it. The “that’s just the way it is” excuses sound hollower than ever as movements like #MeToo readjust our cultural response to sexual harassment and assault. The power structures that compel women to be silent in the face of misconduct have been exposed. Some have crumbled. But the work is not done.
Verbal abuse is rampant. I had experienced it. Jessica Walter had experienced it. How many women like us were there?
https://twitter.com/JessicaWakeman/status/999671936648204290
In the months since I tweeted this very question out, over 2,000 women shared that they had been yelled and screamed at, “shushed” and called names like “bitch” and “cunt.” It came from male bosses, colleagues, subordinates—even interns. It has happened one-on-one, in meetings, on conference calls and in front of customers. Women have been screamed at for refusing to pay men a day early, not serving expired food, and enforcing potentially life-saving safety rules. (“Hell hath no fury like a dad whose kid is too short to ride a slide safely,” tweeted one ex-amusement park employee.) In other words, women have been verbally abused by men just for doing their jobs.
The volume of responses surprised me. So I decided to dig deeper into how and why this debasement came to be so widespread and normalized in our workplaces. Who is committing it and why? If so many of us think it is wrong, why doesn’t it stop? How does it impact the women who are harmed? And what should we do about it?
The first hurdle to get over may be acknowledging that workplace verbal abuse is actual abuse.
Verbal abuse can be “any spoken comments that are made to criticize, demoralize, insult, hurt [or] manipulate somebody,” says Lena Derhally, a licensed psychotherapist in Washington, D.C. “The intention is to hurt, control, manipulate, shame, humiliate.” And it has consequences for both our mental and physical health. While much of the existing research on verbal abuse focuses on intimate partners, or parents and children, studies have shown that the long-term effects of severe emotional abuse can have consequences akin to physical abuse.
“When women are the victims of this kind of aggression … [it can lead to] post-traumatic stress disorder,” Kathleen Shea, Ph.D., a licensed clinical psychologist on the North Shore near Chicago tells me, adding that verbal abuse has a “seriously negative” effect on our self-esteem.
Trauma can activate the “fight or flight response,” says Derhally. One way the flight response manifests itself is with “freeze mode,” or shut-down and disengagement—say, no longer contributing ideas in meetings or diminished productivity.
All-too-frequently, it is a “him” who is committing the bad behavior. A 2017 survey by the Workplace Bullying Institute looked at bullying behavior (not just verbal abuse) and found men targeted women in 65 percent of incidents related to “repeated abusive mistreatment at work.” Among all bullying behavior, 70 percent of the perpetrators were men. While men and women are supposedly “equals” in a workplace, too many women don’t experience it that way.
The experience “destroys you mentally,” says Ashley (not her real name), a 23-year-old in Las Vegas.
Ashley’s first job out of school was a position at an entertainment company that began with a 90-day probationary period, during which her manager Brad (not his real name) yelled at her when she struggled with mathematical equations.
“I used to drive to work and think, ‘I wonder if today will be the day that he was gonna fire me,’” she recalls. “That would consume my thoughts every day.” She didn’t feel she was in a position to speak up then, because trainees could be let go for any reason.
Once her 90-day probation finished, Ashley informed the company’s HR department about Brad’s behavior. She didn’t want to “ruffle any feathers,” she says, but confidantes urged her to say something. Not long after speaking to HR, Brad took Ashley aside and she was “yelled at for kind of ratting him out.” Instead of apologizing, he upbraided her further. Shocked, she recalled that she “nodded and said ‘OK.’”
Not long after speaking to HR, Brad took Ashley aside and she was “yelled at for kind of ratting him out.” Instead of apologizing, he upbraided her further.
The abuse took an obvious toll: “I went to the bathroom and cried,” she says. And the outbursts continued in the weeks and months that followed. “I became a shell of the person that I was,” Ashley says, “And the personality traits I like about myself were not really coming through anymore.”
One day in January, Brad was fired. Ashley quit about two weeks later, a move she says “proved to be much better for me [and] for my own mental health, for my own physical health.”
She had been at the company for six months.
It might seem like Michael or Brad are just bad apples. But toxic work environments are more complicated than that—an interplay between how an individual functions unhealthfully and how the organization as a whole functions unhealthfully.
First, it helps to understand that verbal abuse is usually brandished by “very insecure people as a way of having control,” says Derhally. “Secure, happy, confident people do not abuse. … [Verbal abuse is] a way to take control, to have power, to manipulate, to compensate for deeper insecurities.”
Abusive work environments typically adhere to one of three patterns, according to feminist legal scholar Joan C. Williams, professor of law at University of California, Hastings College of the Law San Francisco and founding director of the Center for WorkLife Law. In one scenario, abuse is the norm. “In some workplaces, screamers are valued and, at some level, informally encouraged,” Williams says.
Other workplaces claim not to tolerate abuse, and generally don’t, but some people—“almost always men who hold power in the organization,” says Williams—get a pass. Often these exceptions-to-the-rule make a lot of money for the company, or lend it prestige. (Think: Would an extra who yelled at Jessica Walter get the same treatment as Jeffrey Tambor?)
In the third scenario, abuse is a way of establishing loyalties. In these environments “if you want to not be bullied, you have to kind of take part in the bullying,” says Williams. Instead of one individual inflicting abuse, a group gangs up on her together.
In addition to these scenarios, abusive behaviors at work can be classified as either overt—direct acts of hostility in front of customers, in meetings, in group Slack channels—or covert, behind-the-scenes passive aggressiveness or undermining.
Women, of course, can also behave abusively at work. However, sexist double standards mean that women may pay a price for behaviors which are excused, even rewarded, in men. A recent study out of Arizona State University found male attorneys who displayed aggressive behavior, such as yelling and pounding their fist against the lectern, during identical closing arguments were “commanding, powerful, competent and hirable.” Women attorneys who exhibited the exact same behaviors were seen as “shrill, hysterical, grating and ineffective.”
In other words, when women act aggressively, they are seen as loose cannons, while men look passionate and continue to get work. Men are socially conditioned to show they are “in charge”—even when they are not actually in charge—and this entitled behavior is validated as a show of “authority” or “leadership.”
Of course, abusiveness is not necessarily a personality trait—it’s a widespread problem within our cultural instruction of masculinity. Boys are raised seek the upper hand to avoid humiliation, explains Shea. “In order for men to ‘be men,’ they have to dominate” and the code they live by is “‘humiliate before you’re humiliated,” she says.
So when abusive men feel insecure about themselves and how others perceive them, Shea adds, they overcompensate with displays of power and control—throwing a stapler, screaming at an intern. It’s a performance of what “being a man” or “being a success” looks like. Masculinity needs to be witnessed.
Kate (not her real name), 41, who lives in Southern California, learned that more than a decade ago when someone on her team at the radio station where she worked was verbally abusive. Steve (not his real name) gave her an assignment. Kate recorded a piece that was three minutes long, but Steve had needed it to be five minutes. Maybe he assumed she knew how long the piece should be, she concedes, but she doesn’t recall him giving her those instructions. And while she was out in the field reporting, Steve called her phone and began to yell.
“He freaked out,” Kate remembers. “He was bugging out because I did it wrong: ‘You don’t know what the fuck you’re doing! You’re a fucking idiot! What the fuck is the matter with you?’”
So she hung up on him—“because I don’t have time for this shit,” she says—and continued working. Steve called her phone more than a dozen times, according to Kate.
Kate reached out to management for help, eventually meeting with Steve and someone from Human Resources. At first, he denied verbally abusing her. Eventually he admitted, “‘I suppose it’s possible that I may have said something to you.’”
“HR [was] looking at him and nodding,” Kate recalls. “I’m, like, I have no chance here!’” At the end of the meeting with Steve and HR, she says, “They ordered us to shake hands.”
Kate was dismissed a few weeks later. She says she was told it was due to performance issues.
Women, of course, can also behave abusively at work. However, sexist double standards mean that women may pay a price for behaviors which are excused, even rewarded, in men.
Federal employment law lacks teeth for the nuances of verbal abuse, and not a single state has passed a complete version of the Healthy Workplace Bill—meant to address verbal abuse and other behaviors not covered under federal law—despite its introduction in more than 25 states. The best course of action, it seems, is to identify this behavior when it occurs and stop making excuses for it. As The Cut reported in June, the fashion industry—infamously portrayed in The Devil Wears Prada—is already undergoing its own reckoning. And one important change would be to stop penalizing women who stand up for their rights. Asserting oneself at work should not be a lose-lose situation.
“Unfortunately women should realize that by the fact that they are encountering this dynamic, their careers are already at risk,” Williams says. She adds, jokingly, “One of the things I always say [is] one of the worst career moves a woman can make is being the subject of gender discrimination.”
Men, of course, need to do the lion’s share of work here. “This is a deficit that men are finding in terms of being able to communicate professionally when anger, frustration, [and] passion are all in the mix,” says Emilie Aries, the founder and CEO of Bossed Up, a personal and professional training organization for women.
Verbal abuse should not be dismissed as the price of admission for women in the workforce. “It’s not about being treated equal [to men],” says Derhally. “When men have that response—‘Suck it up and deal with it!”—that’s toxic male culture, that we can treat people like they’re scum and then expect them to tolerate it. To me, that’s bullshit.”
Ultimately, the more we speak up about this type of abuse and demand the behavior stop, the easier for everyone else to speak up, too.
As Aries puts it, “Women have been taking the brunt of abuse in workplaces for so long without significant justice being served … I think there’s a very righteous sense of resentment that’s bubbling up about it all.”