Sexually harassed, assaulted, silenced, and now heard: Institutional betrayal and its affects

• Published in: Gender, work, and organization Vol. 30; no. 4; pp. 1387 - 1406
• Main Authors: Duffy, Sarah, O’Shea, Michelle, Tang, Liyaning Maggie
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.07.2023
• Subjects: Arrests; Bystanders; gender; Gender equity; Gender inequality; inequity regimes; institutional betrayal; Migrants; Organizational power; Organizational structure; Power; Sex crimes; Sexual harassment; Sexual violence; silencing; Survivor; Victims; Workplaces
• ISSN: 0968-6673; 1468-0432
• DOI: 10.1111/gwao.12997

This work explores the processes of sexual violence and its consequences, within an organizational context through a detailed examination of a professional woman's experience. By centralizing Sofia's lived experiences, we demonstrate how acts of institutional betrayal occur when an organization protects a perpetrator and silences and further traumatizes a victim/survivor. Outwardly this organization purports to champion gender equality, but inwardly they reflect the values and misogynistic norms present in parts of the Australian culture. We lay bare the multiple ways inequity regimes intersect with the disadvantage experienced by Sofia as a junior employee, a migrant, and a woman. We detail and account for Sofia's story through a process of listening deeply and writing differently to illustrate how sexual harassment in the workplace is not confined to a victim/survivor‐perpetrator dichotomy but is embedded within organizational structures, policies, processes, and employees themselves. We explore how power relations silenced both victim/survivors and bystanders who spoke out and failed to disrupt the status quo or hold the organization to its purported gender equality values. We describe Sofia's battle for justice within this organization and provide a conceptual framework that highlights how reluctant acquiescence is shaped and how systematic silence and silencing of victim/survivors was maintained.