Low-Wage Women’s Experiences of Workplace Incivilities

Abstract

Workplace incivility, also called bullying, mobbing, and harassment, is pervasive and takes a high toll on employees. This study draws on 18 in-depth interviews with women in the precarious, low-wage, service sector in jobs such as customer service representative, retail sales, food service, pharmacy technician, and bank teller. Women service workers are a particularly vulnerable group, and yet most research on workplace problems of this type focus on professional women’s experience. We find that in this sample, most incivilities came from supervisors, followed by customers and then coworkers. Among supervisors, women were the most common perpetrators, while customer and coworker perpetrators were largely men. The type of incivility varied depending on role: Disparagement was common on the part of supervisors and customers, while coworkers were far more likely to engage in sexual harassment, which was virtually nonexistent among supervisors. Consequences for targets of these incivilities included anxiety, which most had experienced, and income loss. We offer suggestions for future research and policy.