2.18 Bullying and Harassment of Archaeologists

Latest Data: 2020

This page reviews the data gathered on bullying and harassment in UK archaeology.

Highlights

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These data come from the individuals’ responses to the survey and covers incidents of harassment (when related to a protected characteristic and illegal under the Equality Act 2010) and bullying (not related to a protected characteristic and so not covered by Equality Act 2010 but by the Health & Safety At Work Act 1974).

Confidence in the Results

We have prepared a sub-page with discussion on confidence in these results – view it here.

What the results are and are not

In the UK, harassment has a particular legal definition under the Equality Act 2010 – ‘unwanted conduct related to a relevant protected characteristic, (such as age, sex, disability, race, gender, gender identity, religion or sexual orientation), which has the purpose or effect of violating an individual’s dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for that individual.’ However, the determination of what constitutes that must be made through legal means, this survey can not make that determination. As such, these results can only indicate what an individual feels about an incident(s), not if a court of law would agree with them. However, the data which are reviewed in this page indicate that individuals’ thoughts on incidents can have a range of repercussions, from loss of working time to leaving the profession, and so individuals perceptions matter.

Respondents were asked about a range of potential incidents that they could have experienced or seen, as well as the frequency of such events.

63% respondents have been subjected, personally, to some form of bullying or harassment. An additional 11% have seen these events against others for a total 74% either experiencing or witnessing these events at some point in their career. A survey by Prospect, the trade union, found lower levels of prevalence – overall rates of unwanted behaviours (bullying, harassment, discrimination) was 51%, but it was not a general sector-wide survey, only gathering information from a selection of Prospect members.

Table 2.18.1: Responses from those who were employed or self-employed as an archaeologist to “have you experienced any of the following while working in or studying archaeology?”. n = 1022.

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Respondents were asked about when the most recent incident occurred. 41% of those that had experienced at least one of the these incidents, had done so in the last two years (Table 2.18.2), = 30% of all archaeologists. While it is difficult to find data on prevalence, two large sector wide (non-archaeological) surveys that also capture comparable data. These have hundreds of thousands of responses and have collected data for years with little variation in results, which gives confidence in their accuracy. The NHS Staff Survey for England (1.2 million staff of whom 47% [595,270] completed the survey) and the People Survey of civil servants (485,000 staff of whom 66% [319,935] completed the survey). The NHS survey reported, in 2020, that the following percentage of their staff (overlap between groups) experienced bullying or harassment, by perpetrators, in the previous 12 months:

• 26.7% from public
• 12.4% from managers
• 18.7% from other colleagues

The civil servants survey reported that, in 2020, 8% had experienced bullying and harassment in the previous 12 months (5% preferred not to say). Of those that had experienced it, this came from the following sources:

• 52% from colleagues
• 43% from a manager

The rest were perpetrated by ‘outside’ people such as contractors or members of the public. While not captured by this survey, Prospect’s survey found that the originators of bullying or harassment experienced by archaeologists were:

• senior colleagues or direct managers (48% of respondents)
• immediate colleagues (22% of respondents)
• from external/3rd party workers (19%)

For comparison with archaeologists, in the last 12 months 16% of all archaeologists have experienced at least one event.

Table 2.18.2: Responses from those who were employed or self-employed as an archaeologist to “how long ago did you experience this?”.

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Respondents were asked if they reported any of the incidents. A minority (44%) reported incidents when they occurred (Table 2.18.3), slightly lower levels than NHS England staff (48.6% reported) and civil servants (51% reported).

Table 2.18.3: Responses from those who were employed or self-employed as an archaeologist to “when these occurred, did you report any of them?”.

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Two-thirds of respondents felt confident about reporting such incidents now. The BAJR Respect survey asked a similar question about reporting:

•  ‘If you were to experience bullying would you report it?’
• ‘If you were to experience sexual harassment would you report it?’

The results were bullying (60%) and sexual harassment (75%).

Table 2.18.4: Responses from those who were employed or self-employed as an archaeologist to “do you feel confident in reporting any such incidents to your employer or educational institute, and that they would address the issues?”.

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Finally, respondents were asked about if any action was taken against the perpetrators. This question was not designed to pass judgment on the merits of individual cases; as discussed above, this survey can not make legal determinations, but was included to indicate whether past experiences with reporting incidents and the outcomes had any influence on current behaviors – they did, and this is discussed in the next section.

Table 2.18.5: Responses from those who were employed or self-employed as an archaeologist to “was any action taken against the perpetrators?”.

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Correlations

The analysis of the data (see methods page) found multiple correlations between these questions and other variables.

As suspected, those who had positive experiences with reporting incidents were more likely to say they would report them in the future, as well as those that had experiences more than five years ago. Those that had experienced sexual harassment (because such incidents are related to protected characteristics, they are all harassment and not bullying) in the past are also more confident in reporting now.

Table 2.18.6: All variables flagged with and r <.001 relating to the question “Do you feel confident in reporting harassment incidents to your employer or educational institute?”.

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There were multiple correlations between the responses and age:

• younger archaeologists are more likely to experience and witness bullying and harassment, older archaeologists are less likely to;
• younger archaeologists are more likely to experience and witness sexual harassment;
• Over 60s are the least likely to have witnessed hostile work environments;
• Under 40s and over 60s are most likely to have experienced or witnessed comments on appearance;
• Younger archaeologists are more likely to witness racially-motivated comments or actions;
• Younger archaeologists are more likely to have experienced or witnessed bullying and harassment recently, almost half (45%) of the under 30s that had did so in the last year – conversely 63% of over 60s had most recently experienced/witnessed incidents five years or more before the survey;
• all age groups were equally likely to have reported incidents in the past and saw action taken against the perpetrators;
• Those under 30, however, were significantly less likely to report future incidents, while those in their 40s were the most likely to.

The full data are in table 2.18.7.

Table 2.18.7: Relationships between professional UK archaeologists age and responses to questions. Note - Types of incidents % are based on total number of archaeologists that responded to either directed at themselves or others. All other % are based on total responses to each question. Columns are included with those counts.

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In all categories, women are more likely to be the recipients of bullying and harassment than men, but this is especially acute for sexual harassment and inappropriate comments.

Table 2.18.8: Relationships between professional UK archaeologists gender and the different categories of bullying and harassment, 2019-20.

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14.1% of all archaeologists recorded having taken more than a week of sick leave in the last year. That means there were 888 full-time equivalent (FTE) archaeologists working in the UK in 2019-20 that took a sick absence of more than a week (14.1% of 6,300 is 888).

However, 22.4% of archaeologists who had experienced some sort of bullying or harassment in the last year had a week or more of absences vs 12.8% of those that did not, a 75.3% increase. This indicates that bullying/harassment is responsible for 17% of the periods of more than a week of sick absences last year = 151 FTE weeks of absence.

This survey also collected data on RIDDOR reportable injuries for contractors and consultants. Data were received for 2,386 FTE positions representing 55% of the estimated 4,375 FTE working in this area. In 2019-20 there were two RIDDOR reported injuries resulting in over seven days of absences from that sample. Extrapolating from that indicates that there were three and half such RIDDOR reportable injuries for all contractors and consultants (2 / 55% = 3.6).

An estimated 617 archaeologists take more than a week of sick absences in this sub-sector (14.1% x 4,375 archaeologists = 617). So sick leave of more than a week as a consequence of a RIDDOR reported injury represents 0.6% of all sick leave absence. Bullying/harassment is responsible for 17% of sick leave - 29x the level of sick absence following RIDDOR injuries.

This was checked against other variables that correlated with both absences and harassment/bullying to determine if there was other factors playing a role in this outcome.

For example, more women take sick absences and more women are likely to be harassed/bullied so it could be that gender was the determining factor. However, further investigations found this to not be the case, while women are more likely than men to take sick leave of more than a week (16% vs 12%), men that were harassed or bullied were more likely than women who were harassed or bullied to take sick leave. Women's experiences are not driving up these numbers, the reverse, as those women that are harassed/bullied take less sick leave (of more than a week) than men (21% vs 27%).

There still could be some unknown factor accounting for correlation but at the moment the data indicate that bullying/harassment is a significantly greater driver of absences than RIDDOR reportable injuries.

Table 2.18.9: Relationships between professional UK archaeologists sick absences, gender and bullying and harassment, 2019-20.

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Archaeologists with physical disabilities have especially difficult issues with bullying and harassment. 62% of those that have experienced incidents did so in the last two years, double the rate of other archaeologists (Table 2.18.10). They were also significantly more likely to have experienced multiple issues (more than 5) with 'hostile work environments', 'offensive, intimidating malicious or insulting behaviour' and 'inappropriate comments on appearance' particularly highly reported (Table 2.18.11).

Table 2.18.10: Relationships between physically disabled archaeologists and most recent harassment/bullying events.

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Table 2.18.11: Distribution of frequency of incidents of harassment and bullying directed at themselves for physically disabled archaeologists.

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The only location correlation found throughout all of this survey was archaeologists in London were twice as likely to have seen racist acts as archaeologists working elsewhere:

Table 2.18.12: Relationships between locations of work and witnessing acts of racism.

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EU citizens were 5x more likely to have racially motivated actions against themselves and are slightly more likely to have had it happen more than 5 times. Technically, these might be xenophobic attacks but there was not an option for xenophobic attacks and thus they were recorded as racism - this will be corrected in future surveys.

Table 2.18.13: Relationships between citizenship and acts of racism (xenophobia).

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Respondents who did not identify as being of white ethnicity (though includes those with mixed heritage) were more likely to experience bullying or harassment (all categories combined), though due to the low number of respondents caution should be taken when using these data.

Table 2.18.14: Relationships between race & ethnicity and bullying/harassment.

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There is a correlation between seniority and experiencing and witnessing incidents. Table 2.18.15 shows rates for the outline hierarchy of responsibilities in contracting archaeology. Those are the bottom are more likely to experience or see events. Supervisors are especially likely to experience events.

Table 2.18.15: Relationships between positions in contracting archaeology and bullying/harassment, 2019-20.

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Archaeological contractor positions were used because they make up a majority of jobs but those working in that sub-sector are no more likely to be bullied or harassed than other sub-sectors. Academia and consulting (based on self-identified respondents' primary areas of work) were the most likely to have actions directed at them, while those working in national government or in local planning authority review (not all of which work for local government) were the least likely to have seen events directed at others. Overall, rates do not vary greatly between sub-sectors.

Table 2.18.16: Relationships between sub-sectors of UK professional archaeology and bullying/harassment, 2019-20.

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Spurious Correlations

There were several correlations found that are the results of other variables influencing them:

• correlation with bisexuality and harassment - influenced by age, younger archaeologists are more likely to be bisexual and also more likely to be bullied/harassed. As age is a stronger indications we believe that is causing this correlation;
• correlation with experience and harassment - influenced by age, there are stronger connections between age and harassment than with experience and as experience is related to age we believe it is age that is the strongest indicator;
• correlation with pay and harassment - influenced by age, there are stronger connections between age and harassment than with pay. We believe age is the influence factor here.

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