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Women's Workplace Abuse Complaints are Discounted More Than Men's, Researchers Find

By Claire Meyer

4 June 2025

Organizations encourage employees to report abusive behavior, whether through tiplines or informal measures like disclosing bad behavior to managers. Some of those methods are less effective than others and can produce gaps in appropriate investigations and responses. But new research demonstrates that it’s not just the how of reporting that makes a difference, it’s the who.

Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania found that in situations without clear corroborating evidence, third parties are less likely to take corrective action when women make reports of workplace abuse compared to men.

Making matters worse, it’s relatively common for workplace abuse complaints to lack significant evidence of abuse, says Timothy Kundro, assistant professor at UNC Chapel Hill’s Kenan Flagler Business School. He was the lead author on the research, Reject or Protect? Corrective Action in Response to Women’s vs. Men’s Reports of Workplace Abuse, which was recently published in Organizational Science.

A preliminary study for the research found that 70 percent of workplace abuse reports relied solely on verbal accounts and that most corroborating evidence was rated low on average. This means that manager discretion often plays an outsized role in determining if reports are escalated, Kundro tells Security Management.

But where does gender bias come in? Kundro says that he and his fellow researchers wanted to study this element of workplace abuse because there are “competing ideas about how a reporter’s gender affects managers’ decisions. Some believe managers will ignore reports made by women because they see them as less credible. Others believe that managers will take these reports particularly seriously because of liability or reputational risk. Both seemed plausible, so we wanted to dig deeper to understand more.”

The researchers used a large government study of more than 2,000 employees from 2016 and noted that women’s reports of abuse were ignored more often than men’s. They then ran several experiments to test their hypothesis, asking participants to evaluate different reports of abuse made using artificial intelligence (AI) audio.

“In one study, people listened to a short, very realistic recording made by AI—either a woman’s voice or a man’s voice—saying the exact same thing about a coworker’s abusive behavior,” Kundro says. “In some cases, participants were given evidence supporting the report; in others, they weren’t given any evidence. When there was no supporting evidence, people who heard the man’s voice took the complaint more seriously than those who heard the woman’s. Specifically, they were more likely to escalate the complaint to the research team. But when evidence was provided, people treated women’s and men’s reports the same.”

Anonymous reports aren’t the solution, either.

“…Our research suggests that these anonymous reports may be met with skepticism, in part because of low levels of corroboration,” the research report said. “As a result, anonymous reports may be more likely to be ignored. Thus, organizations should consider ways to increase corroboration when reports are made anonymously.”

The researchers also tested different kinds of evidence—written proof from chat logs and eyewitness confirmation.

“Interestingly, both types of evidence had the same effect and eliminated the gender bias that we saw when no evidence was provided,” Kundro says.

In an article for Harvard Business Review, the researchers outlined five ways organizations can improve their reporting and investigation processes to reduce potential gender bias.

1. Separate report evaluators from report receivers. Managers shouldn’t have to decide which reports to act on, the researchers asserted. Allegations of abuse should be forwarded to a centralized team to evaluate misconduct to reduce bias and assumptions in the process.

2. Standardize how reports are evaluated. “Create a consistent, formal process for assessing all reports of abuse or misconduct,” the researchers wrote. “One effective strategy is to redact identifying information (e.g., name, gender, role) to reduce the influence of identity-based assumptions and eliminate penalties tied to anonymous reporting.”

3. Commit to following up on every report. Organizations should establish a clear policy that all reports will receive a formalized, documented follow-up. This helps build trust with employees and makes the process more transparent.

4. Create alternative and protected reporting channels. Employees shouldn’t have to rely solely on their manager to raise concerns, the researchers said. Consider creating both reporting channels like tiplines and proactive outreach like pulse surveys to solicit employee concerns.

5. Support reporters with follow-up tools. Given the importance of corroborating evidence, organizations can give reporters options to provide additional information later, including about similar events they witnessed.

Even if organizations implement these changes, the human element still reigns supreme. Recent research demonstrates the outsized importance of managers in employee engagement and satisfaction, and their value in misconduct reporting is similarly huge.

“Survey data suggests that people feel more comfortable reporting abuse to their manager rather than using formal organizational reporting systems,” Kundro says. “So, this means that managers need to realize that they’re probably the first line of defense—and their decisions can often determine if reports of abuse are ignored or taken seriously. I think it’s easy for managers to downplay their role here, but our paper suggests that they’re particularly important and impactful.”

Want more guidance on investigations, tiplines, and workplace abuse? Check out these resources from ASIS International and Security Management.