Abstract
Scholars have proposed that interpersonal workplace discrimination toward members of oppressed social groups has become covert and subtle rather than overt and explicit and that such experiences lead to negative outcomes for targets. The present study examined this proposition by examining experiences and consequences of workplace incivility—a seemingly harmless form of interpersonal maltreatment—based on gender, sexual orientation, and their intersection. A sample of 1,300 academic faculty (52% male, 86% White) participated in an online survey study assessing their experiences of workplace incivility, job stress, job satisfaction, job identity centrality, and demographics. Results showed that sexual minority women reported the highest levels of workplace incivility. Findings also revealed that women reported lower job satisfaction than men and that heterosexuals reported higher job stress and lower job identity centrality than sexual minorities with higher levels of incivility. Thus, sexual minority status buffered the negative effects of incivility for sexual minorities. These findings point to the resiliency of sexual minorities in the face of interpersonal stressors at work.
Highlights
Organizations have become more inclusive and tolerant of diversity (Thomas, 2012; Mor Barak, 2013), including enacting formal policies against workplace discrimination
Hypothesis 2 predicted that gender and sexual orientation would interact to predict experiences of incivility such that sexual minority women would report the highest levels of incivility
The ANCOVA yielded a main effect of gender, F(1,1103) = 17.83, p < 0.01, η2p = 0.02 such that women (M = 1.63, SD = 0.62) reported higher levels of workplace incivility compared to men (M = 1.47, SD = 0.55)
Summary
Organizations have become more inclusive and tolerant of diversity (Thomas, 2012; Mor Barak, 2013), including enacting formal policies against workplace discrimination. Research suggests that discrimination in organizations remains pervasive and that policies are often unenforced (Dipboye and Halverson, 2004; Goldman et al, 2006). Discrimination may endure in organizations because it is more subtle than it was thirty or more years ago (Deitch et al, 2003; Dipboye and Halverson, 2004; Cortina, 2008; Jones et al, 2013). One form of subtle discrimination, workplace incivility, had begun to receive considerable attention. A majority of workers cite incivility as being both common and a major
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