Short answer: Misogyny in the workplace means treating a woman as worth less because she is a woman. It happens face to face, and it happens on screens. One incident is enough to act on, and nobody should have to collect a list before a manager will listen. The cost lands on her: she speaks up less, she trusts the place less, and in the end she leaves.
In short:
- One incident is enough. A woman should not have to prove a pattern before anybody takes her seriously.
- It happens in the meeting room and in the group chat. Treat those as one problem, not two.
- People go quiet, do less, then leave. Employers watch all three happen and rarely connect them to this.
- Almost nobody reports it, because she expects a manager to tell her she is overreacting.
- What a manager says in the first five minutes decides whether anyone in that team ever speaks up again.
What does misogyny in the workplace look like?
Be specific about this. Vagueness is what lets it carry on.
Some of it is obvious. A colleague comments on a woman’s body. A manager makes a joke about women being emotional, or bad at the job. The team asks her to take the notes, make the tea and organise the leaving card, and asks no man in the room to do any of it.
Some of it is quieter. The same colleague talks over her in every meeting. The room ignores her idea, then praises a man who repeats it ten minutes later. Someone calls her sweetheart. Someone tells her to smile.
And some of it happens where nobody at work can see it.
| Out loud, in the room | On a screen |
|---|---|
| A colleague comments on how she looks | He posts the same comment in the team chat, where it sits all day |
| The same two people talk over her in meetings | The group answers everyone else and leaves her message hanging |
| A manager makes a joke about women and waits for the laugh | Someone drops videos and memes into the work group |
| The team hands her the admin nobody else does | They leave her out of the chat where decisions actually happen |
| A colleague stands too close, too often | A colleague messages her from his personal account at midnight |
| He saves the worst remarks for when nobody else can hear | Somebody builds fake images of her with an AI app, using a work photo |
Both columns show the same behaviour. Only one difference matters: the screen version leaves a trace, and that counts for a great deal later.
How does misogyny in the workplace affect wellbeing?
Ask an employer about harassment and they picture incidents and investigations. Ask the woman and she describes something far more ordinary, and much harder to write down.
She thinks about it before work. She picks what to wear around who will be in the office. She rehearses a point three times so nobody can wave it away. She rereads a message before she sends it. Every single time, she weighs up whether this one is worth making a fuss about.
She does all of that on top of her actual job.
| What happens | What it costs |
|---|---|
| The room ignores her idea, then praises a man who repeats it | She offers fewer ideas. The organisation loses them and never notices |
| The team chat keeps a running joke going about her | She checks her phone before she gets out of bed, to see if it carried on |
| A colleague comments on her appearance | She thinks about how she looks more than she thinks about the work |
| She raises it once, and nothing happens | She never raises anything again, and the organisation records nothing |
| She hears about a chat she is not in | She stops trusting the people she works beside every day |
| It carries on for months | She resigns, and tells the exit interview she wanted a new challenge |
Read the right-hand column. Fewer ideas, broken sleep, distraction, no trust, and finally a resignation. Wellbeing and HR teams already track every one of those. Nobody writes the cause down beside them.
That last row should worry an employer most. Good people leave quietly, give a polite reason, and the organisation learns nothing.
Why do so few people report it?
Three reasons come up again and again.
She expects a manager to say she is overreacting. Somebody has told most women exactly that before, at work or somewhere else. Once is enough to teach the lesson.
Saying it out loud shrinks it. He called her sweetheart. Say that sentence to a manager and it sounds like nothing. The retelling strips out what it actually felt like, and she knows that before she opens her mouth.
She cannot see what happens next. Will somebody tell him she complained? Will she sit opposite him tomorrow? Will this follow her onto a file? Not knowing usually beats finding out, so she says nothing.
None of those justify the silence. They explain it.
Where misogyny in the workplace hides from you
Kids n Clicks works on the technology side of this, and a growing share of it now sits there.
A team leader sets up a WhatsApp group on a personal phone. Nobody administers it. Nobody keeps anything. A great deal of working life now happens inside it, and an employer cannot fix what goes on in a room it does not know exists.
Employers miss three things in particular.
Reactions instead of words. The same two people put a thumbs-down on one person’s messages, every time. Everybody in that chat reads the message they are sending. Nobody can quote it in a complaint.
Content somebody shared in from elsewhere. A colleague drops a video into the work chat, then defends it with “somebody just sent it over”. She still had to look at it.
AI-made images. An app now builds a convincing explicit picture of a real, named colleague from an ordinary photo lifted off a work profile. It takes minutes. Harassment training written a few years ago says nothing about this, and the people who encounter it usually say nothing either, because no comfortable words exist for it.
Kids n Clicks built its support for corporate organisations around gaps like these, which look obvious the moment somebody names them and stay invisible until then.
One more thing worth knowing. Some people arrive already holding these views. Younger staff spent their teenage years with feeds that push the harder version of whatever holds attention, and Ofcom’s work on protecting children online shows how much of what young people watch those systems now choose. A twenty-two-year-old repeating something he picked up at fifteen does not experience it as an opinion. That excuses nothing, and it takes nothing away from what it costs the woman in front of him. It does explain why a policy on its own shifts so little.
What should a manager do when somebody raises it?
Everything turns on this moment, and a manager gets about five minutes’ warning.
The person in front of them has rehearsed it, has talked herself out of it twice already, and fully expects to hear that it is not really a problem.
| Do this | Not this | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Tell her you believe her | Tell her he did not mean it | What he meant is not the question. What it did to her is |
| Ask what has been happening, and for how long | Ask her to repeat his exact words | One quote sounds small, including to her. The whole picture does not |
| Write it down that day, with the date | Hold it in your head until something bigger happens | Without dates nobody can check anything later |
| Ask her what she wants to happen | Decide for her, or promise an outcome | Some want it to stop. Some want it recorded. Ask, do not guess |
| Carry it forward yourself | Suggest she has a quiet word with him | That hands the whole problem straight back to her |
| Go back to her in two weeks | Read her silence as a good sign | Silence usually means she decided it was not worth it |
Most of these conversations go wrong on the first row. A manager who says “he probably did not mean it” is trying to calm things down. What she hears is no.
What should training on misogyny in the workplace cover?
Most training tells people what they must not say. That matters, and it is not enough, because it speaks to the person doing it and to nobody else in the room.
Good training covers four things.
What it is, with real examples. Both columns of that first table. Nobody reports something they have no words for.
That one incident counts. Say it plainly, or everybody quietly assumes they need a stack of evidence first.
Where it happens now. Group chats on personal phones, reactions, shared content, AI-made images. Name these out loud, and the people who have lived through them stop wondering whether they imagined it.
What a manager does about it. Teach the table above to the managers who will actually hear a disclosure.
Then watch the right things afterwards.
| What to watch | What a good result looks like |
|---|---|
| How many people report something | The number rises. That means the training worked, not that the problem grew |
| How managers handle something small | They record it instead of smoothing it over |
| What women say in the engagement survey | They say they feel heard, respected, and safe to speak |
| Whether anyone mentions the work group chats | People name them out loud, which is the first step |
| How long women stay | The slowest number to move, and the one that matters most |
Warn everyone in advance that reports will rise. An organisation that treats that rise as bad news teaches its staff to go quiet again.
What organisations tend to miss on the digital side
Three things, every time.
First, employers decide that personal phones are none of their business. Much of the working day now happens on a phone the organisation never bought. Ruling it out of scope stops nothing. It only guarantees nobody hears about it.
Second, they ask for “the screenshot”. One screenshot shows one message, which is exactly what makes a complaint look thin. The run of them, with dates, in order, is what shows the truth.
Third, they assume younger women cope better because they grew up online. Knowing how an app works is not the same as knowing what to do when somebody turns it against you.
Misogyny in the workplace does its damage long before anyone files anything. That earlier stretch, while it is still small things and nobody has complained, is where an employer can actually change how this ends.
Our training programmes cover this properly for employers: what this behaviour looks like in the room and on the screen, how work group chats on personal phones really operate, what AI image tools now build from an ordinary work photo, and what a manager should say in the first five minutes.
The session teaches the technology, not the law. Your advisers already know the law. What often goes missing is a clear read of what actually happened on the phones, the apps and the accounts, and that is the gap this session fills. It is a specialist session, delivered online or in person, to a whole workforce or to a single team.
If you lead people, wellbeing or inclusion in your organisation, connect with Parven on LinkedIn or explore our training programmes to book a session for your team.
Parven Kaur is a digital parenting and online safety expert, and the founder of Kids n Clicks. She works with employers on the technology side of online harm and its effect on staff wellbeing. She won the Scottish Cyber Security Award, and she sits on the National Board of Advisors for Barnardo’s Scotland.
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