Ok, I was going to do a post about the concept of
'Why don't women make complaints?'
And I started off looking at harassment...
https://www.forbes.com/councils/yec/2018/10/30/workplace-harassment-why-women-dont-speak-up/
Obviously, there isn’t a simple answer. According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, an estimated 75% of individuals who get harassed at work don’t file a complaint. The most often cited reasons include not wanting to be seen as a victim or attention-seeker, the humiliation, the time it will likely take including follow through, fear of negative consequences like being alienated or fired and being blamed as the victim.
Fairly straightforward.
Then I appear to have fallen down some sort of reporting black hole, when I decided to look at the NHS.
https://www.healthwatch.co.uk/news/2025-01-27/nhs-complaints-system-lets-people-down-new-research-warns
Our poll, conducted by YouGov, found that out of 2,650 adults living in England who had a poor experience of NHS healthcare, over half, 56%, took no action about their care, and fewer than one in 10, nine per cent, made a formal complaint.
Among those who didn’t formally complain when they had a poor experience, our research identified a number of key barriers to doing so:
- Around a third of respondents, 34%, didn’t believe the NHS would use their complaint to improve services;
- A third, 33%, thought NHS organisations wouldn’t respond effectively to their complaint;
- Thirty percent didn’t believe the NHS would think their complaint was serious enough;
- One in five, 20%, were scared that complaining would affect their ongoing treatment;
- Nineteen percent said they didn’t know who to contact to make a complaint.
- Overall, over half of people who made a complaint to an NHS organisation were dissatisfied with both the process of making a complaint, 56%, and the outcome of their complaint, 56%.
Curious I thought. Its gender neutral. I'd like to know whether women complain to the NHS more than men or not.
I tried to find data about complaints to the NHS by sex - it wasn't broken down. Its a pretty important stat to gender neutralise. But I couldn't find anything.
Odd I thought, given the following:
https://evidence.nihr.ac.uk/collection/womens-health-why-women-feel-unheard/
The recent Women’s Health Strategy for England reported that more than 4 in 5 (84%) women responding to their survey had at times felt that their healthcare professionals were not listening to them. The finding was echoed by recent focus groups. We need to understand why this happens. Why don’t women feel listened to? What can be done to improve their conversations with healthcare professionals?
Then I found this article.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-65671018
35,000 cases of sexual misconduct or violence in NHS in five years
An NHS spokesperson has told the BBC that all NHS organisations must have robust measures in place to ensure immediate action is taken in any sexual cases reported to them.
But the BMJ and Guardian investigation found that fewer than one in 10 NHS trusts has a dedicated policy to deal with sexual assault and harassment - and that managers are also no longer obliged to report abuse of staff to a central database.
AND
Although more than 4,000 NHS staff were accused of rape, sexual assault, harassment, stalking, or abusive remarks towards other staff or patients in 2017-22, the BMJ and Guardian investigation found that only 576 have faced disciplinary action.
Once again, to my frustration this article was gender neutralised, with no reference to sex breakdown
And this one
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2jxjepm00zo
Sexual harassment of NHS staff widespread - survey
In the study of more than 12,200 health workers, one in 10 reported unwanted incidents including being touched or kissed, demands for sex in return for favours, and derogatory comments.
And AGAIN gender neutralised. I thought, ok this BBC article mentions the source is a Unison Survey.
I didn't find the one that relates to this news article but I did find another earlier unison survey asking the same question from 2019...
Of the people responding to the survey, 8% had suffered sexual harassment in the past two years. This report is based on their experiences.
The survey revealed that this type of unwanted behaviour is a major issue – for some employees, on a daily basis. Nearly one in ten (8%) respondents (695) said they'd been sexually harassed in the last year. Of these, nearly a third (31%) said the harassment was frequent/regular, and more than one in ten (12%) said it occurred daily/weekly. The vast majority (81%) of those harassed identified as female, and the rest (19%) male. Most (61%) said the harasser was older than them, nearly two in five (37%) said they were in a more powerful position, with under a third (32%) experiencing harassment from a colleague with the same level of responsibility.
Ok so we get a bit closer here and establish it IS gendered, but we don't find out sex. It'd actually be useful to know the breakdown with regards to sex - it might actually show that transwomen NHS staff are more at risk than women (or vice versa) but we don't know this.
It goes on:
The survey findings reveal that staff responded in various ways to the harassment with nearly a half (46%) telling a colleague, nearly three in ten (28%) keeping quiet, a quarter (26%) telling a friend/family member outside work, and just over a fifth (23%) speaking directly to the perpetrator. However, when it came to formal reporting, more than seven in ten (71%) shared their reasons for not doing so which included: • They felt nothing would be done (49%) • They'd be dismissed as oversensitive (37%) • They feared the perpetrator(s) would retaliate (24%) • They were scared it could harm their career (22%).
Of those who did report the sexual harassment, only 15% believed their case was dealt with properly. Employers appear to be failing to take a tough line on harassment. More than two thirds (68%) of those who experienced sexual harassment confirmed a policy existed in their workplace, yet fewer than one in five (17%) said it was implemented.
And at the bottom of the report it states
Reinstatement of section 40 of the Equality Act which ensured staff were safeguarded against harassment by third parties (for example, patients and their friends or relatives). Under this clause, employers were liable if they failed to act after two incidents. However, the government scrapped this ‘three-strikes’ rule in October 2013 on the grounds that other laws gave staff similar protection, a claim disputed by UNISON
Which I thought MOST interesting in the context of the subject at hand.
Its completely off topic really - my point was going to be that women don't complain because they have very low trust in the institutions that are supposed to look after them and there being a history of structural failure in this area...
... it probably deserves its own thread on how this problem on the basis of sex is making what is a particular problem for women invisible.
Anyway, I'm going to finish on this BBC article (where they managed to acknowledge women exist, well at least to a point):
https://www.bbc.co.uk/worklife/article/20230615-why-its-getting-harder-for-some-women-to-report-harassment
Why it's getting harder for some women to report harassment
Global data shows that workplace harassment – which includes actions such as persistent unwanted sexual advances or, as in Diane’s experience, bullying – is rampant, and that it disproportionately affects women and minorities. Indeed, 2023 figures from Deloitte’s annual Women at Work report show that some 44% of women in a survey of 5,000 women across 10 countries said that they had experienced harassment, micro-aggressions or both in the workplace during the preceding year.
But while the statistics in and of themselves are concerning, what’s perhaps even more worrying is that the proportion of women who have experienced harassment but who have chosen not to report it is high – and may be growing. Deloitte researchers found that only 59% of women who said they were harassed reported the incidents to their employer, down from 66% in the prior year’s survey.
“This is a concerning drop, as it reveals that far too many women don’t feel comfortable reporting harassment, and the percentage is only growing,” says Emma Codd, Deloitte’s Global Inclusion Leader, based in the UK.
Experts across the legal, academic and HR fields say the reasons for the decrease in reporting is likely the result of a combination of factors: from fear of retaliation, to a sense that the behaviour or actions might just not be serious enough to warrant a report.
And some experts say that the number of those who haven’t reported harassment could be increasing due to the current precarious economic outlook and unsteady labour market – two factors that have traditionally disproportionately affected working women. Indeed, Codd points out that about one-fifth of the women who have experienced harassment at work but decided not to report it said their decision was driven by concern that reporting the behavior would adversely affect their career trajectory.
AND
Researchers have found women’s wages rise at a slower average pace than men’s, and women have historically been less likely than men to be promoted. They are also more likely to receive a harsher punishment than men for missteps and misconduct. One research paper published in the Harvard Business Review found that female financial advisers were 20 percent more likely to lose their jobs, relative to comparable male advisers, when they committed an “incident of misconduct” – a regulatory breach, for examples. Women, the paper found, are also 30% less likely to find new jobs following misconduct.