Support Material

My Boss, the Bitch
	Author: Michelle Hamer Date: 26/02/2004 Source: AGE
Harassment, isolation, ridicule. They are the stock-in-trade for the workplace bully. When a woman does the bullying, it can also be quietly methodical. Michelle Hamer reports. Over four years, Angela Timms's happiness and self-esteem were systematically stripped away. The 57-year-old suffers depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety and has been under the care of a psychologist for the past two years after enduring workplace bullying. We've all heard such shocking stories before, but what makes Timms's case unusual is that the abuse was perpetrated by two female bosses who led a group of younger women to erode Timms's self-esteem, hamper her ability to perform her role, to socially isolate and ridicule her and eventually contribute, along with a bullying male boss, to her nervous breakdown. "When I started at the job the girls in the office were bullying this (male co-worker)," Timms says. "There were about six or seven girls. A lady who led the bullying against him ran the office. I wouldn't be involved in it. They would shout at him, intimidate him and belittle him. I couldn't believe the shouting, it was just awful. I saw him almost crying a few times. "I said to one girl of about 19, 'Why are you doing this to him, it's upsetting him so much?' and she said 'I enjoy it'." Eventually the bullying was directed toward Timms after she was made a supervisor above the other women. "They ignored me, wouldn't speak to me. The worst thing was how they isolated me and how they would ignore me if I asked them to do something. I couldn't do my job because of that. "I went to management, I even emailed the CEO, but nothing was done, and in the end I was the one who had to leave, I just broke down." Timms said one female boss would question her about taking toilet breaks and made sarcastic remarks to the rest of the office whenever she did take a break. "The impact (of the bullying) has been just devastating. They take away all your happiness. I just want to be doing my job, bringing home some money and enjoying life, but instead my health is wrecked, I have a WorkCover claim on my record and I've lost my job." "Many professional women confess they prefer male rather than female supervisors. They complain that women at work refuse to share power, or withhold information, or are too concerned about receiving credit for every little thing they accomplish, or are cold toward underlings (male and female alike). In such complaints they use the word 'bitch' a lot," she says. Research shows workplace bullying is also an expensive problem for Australia with the Workplace Bullying Project Team at Griffith University estimating it costs employers between $6 billion to $13 billion annually. This is based on a conservative estimate of 3.5 per cent of workers experiencing bullying. Evelyn Field says applying the more-accurate estimate of 15 per cent of workers being bullied increases the employer costs to between $17 to $36 billion. (A recent Worksafe survey found that one in seven Victorian workers were bullied in the past six months and almost a quarter knew a colleague who was being bullied.) It's all too familiar to Angela Timms who believes bullying is entrenched in our community, and through the Victims of Workplace Bullying support group which she attends, she has heard more stories of female bullying. "It seems to be everywhere, in places you wouldn't expect it, and time and again I hear of females doing the bullying." Evelyn Field said female bullies were often more subtle in their behaviour than their male counterparts. "Women are usually less physical, they would use techniques such as excluding others, over-supervising and controlling and verbal abuse." Evelyn Field describes bullying as a problem for everyone. "The micro level is the individual target who can be affected emotionally, physically, socially, career-wise, financially, family-wise over a long-term basis and many of them have severe health problems," she says. "The onlookers also get affected - 20 per cent of onlookers will leave the job, others will have sick days and suffer poor morale. And the cost to industry is enormous - bullying is everyone's problem." DEFINITION OF BULLYING "All those repeated unreasonable and inappropriate actions and practices that are directed to one or more workers, which are unwanted by the victim, which may be done deliberately or unconsciously, but do cause humiliation, offence and distress, and that may interfere with job performance, and/or cause an unpleasant working environment

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