MAKASSAR, Indonesia April 19 2026 /IOP/–Most of us have heard stories about a toxic boss. The one who belittles employees in front of others, dismisses ideas with open contempt, or creates a climate where showing up to work each morning takes genuine courage. What science already knows is that this kind of abusive supervision is destructive. What it has known far less about is whether something as subtle as the gender relationship between a supervisor and a subordinate can make things significantly worse.
It turns out it can.
A new study published in the Journal of Applied Social Science (SAGE Publications, 2025), titled “How Gender Dissimilarity Moderates the Effect of Abusive Supervision on Work Engagement Via Job Insecurity,” investigates this precise mechanism. Conducted by Syamsidah Syamsidah, Hillman Wirawan, Rudi Salam, Andi Anto Patak, and Novina Sabila Zahra — representing Universitas Negeri Makassar, Universitas Hasanuddin, Deakin University, and Universitas Gadjah Mada — the study surveyed 420 Indonesian employees and built a theoretically grounded model to track exactly how abuse travels from a hostile supervisor all the way to an employee who has mentally checked out.
The mechanism works in two stages. When employees are subjected to abusive supervision — verbal humiliation, ridicule, constant criticism — their sense of job security erodes. They begin to fear losing their position, wondering whether the hostility is a prelude to being pushed out. That rising job insecurity then drains the psychological resources employees need to stay energized, committed, and absorbed in their work. The result is disengagement: exactly the opposite of what high-performing organizations need.
But the study’s most striking finding is the role of gender dissimilarity. When a supervisor and subordinate share the same gender, employees appear to extend more tolerance to abusive behavior — perhaps because the abuser is perceived as an in-group member, someone whose dominance is at least culturally familiar. When supervisor and subordinate are of different genders, however, the abuse is perceived as an out-group threat, and the damage amplifies sharply. Among employees with gender-dissimilar supervisors, the path from abusive supervision to job insecurity was nearly three times stronger than among those with same-gender supervisors.
The theoretical foundation draws on Conservation of Resources theory, group identity theory, and gender role theory — a combination that helps explain why, in a collectivist culture with high power distance like Indonesia, gender identity at work is not merely background context but an active lens through which every hostile interaction is filtered and judged.
This finding speaks directly to SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth. Work engagement is not a soft, optional organizational goal — it is the psychological foundation of productivity, retention, and sustainable performance. Abusive supervision, especially across the gender divide, systematically dismantles that foundation. Organizations cannot pursue economic growth on the labor of employees who feel insecure and disengaged. The authors recommend that human resource practitioners actively monitor gender dynamics in supervisor-subordinate pairings, design clear anti-abuse policies, and train leaders to provide constructive rather than hostile feedback — regardless of who sits across the table.
Reference:
Syamsidah, S., Wirawan, H., Salam, R., Patak, A. A., & Zahra, N. S. (2025). How gender dissimilarity moderates the effect of abusive supervision on work engagement via job insecurity. Journal of Applied Social Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/19367244251324851
Contact:
Hillman Wirawan
hillman@unhas.ac.id | Telp: +62 853-9812-0801
