MAKASSAR, Indonesia April 19 2026 /IOP/–Picture a routine morning meeting in a government office. A supervisor dismisses a female employee’s idea without eye contact, talks over her mid-sentence, and moves on. Most observers would expect her to go quiet. Science now suggests she may do the opposite — and that doing so actually makes her perform better.
Workplace incivility is everywhere, and it is more corrosive than it looks. Unlike outright bullying or physical aggression, incivility operates at low intensity: the rolled eyes, the cutting tone, the condescending remark that is just plausibly deniable. Yet its cumulative damage to employee morale, job satisfaction, and performance has been documented across dozens of countries. What has been far less studied is how gender shapes the way people respond to it — especially in collectivist, high power-distance cultures like Indonesia.
A new study published in the Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration (Taylor & Francis Group, January 2025), titled “When women speak up: investigating how gender influences the effect of workplace incivility on performance via voice behaviour,” addresses this gap directly. Conducted by Mustainah Mappatoba, Hillman Wirawan, Rudi Salam, Syahruddin Hattab, and Daswati Daswati — representing Universitas Tadulako, Universitas Hasanuddin, Deakin University, and Universitas Negeri Makassar — the study followed 365 employees from Indonesian public service organisations across three separate data collection waves, tracking workplace incivility, voice behaviour, and job performance over time.
The findings confirm that workplace incivility directly and significantly reduces employee performance overall. That much was expected. What was not fully anticipated was the gender dynamic that emerged in the indirect pathway. For the overall sample, incivility did not significantly suppress employees’ willingness to speak up — suggesting that Indonesian public servants may voice ideas and concerns regardless of how badly they are treated. But when the researchers split the sample by gender, something striking appeared: for female employees, experiencing incivility actually increased voice behaviour, which in turn lifted their performance. For male employees, no such indirect effect was found.
The explanation draws on self-verification theory. Indonesian women who enter the workforce already navigate a cultural context where their professional role is questioned — the traditional expectation being that women belong in the home. When incivility strikes, female employees interpret it not just as rudeness, but as an attack on their professional credibility. Their response is not retreat but verification: they speak up, voice ideas, and demonstrate competence precisely because their identity as capable public servants is under threat.
This finding speaks directly to SDG 5: Gender Equality. Women’s voice in the workplace is not merely a matter of fairness — it is a mechanism through which they sustain their own performance under adversity. Organizations that silence or discourage women’s voices are therefore doing double damage: denying the organization valuable input while also cutting off the very coping strategy that keeps female employees performing. The practical implication is clear: inclusive anti-incivility policies must actively protect and encourage voice for all employees, regardless of gender, rather than leaving resilience as a burden only women are expected to carry.
Reference:
Mappatoba, M., Wirawan, H., Salam, R., Hattab, S., & Daswati, D. (2025). When women speak up: investigating how gender influences the effect of workplace incivility on performance via voice behaviour. Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration. https://doi.org/10.1080/23276665.2025.2450635
Contact:
Hillman Wirawan
hillman@unhas.ac.id | Telp: +62 853-9812-0801
