Radio Station JOY 94.9 Accused of Bullying Culture
Sydney Morning Herald has reported that Australia’s only LGBTIQ community radio station, JOY 94.9, has been accused of having a bullying culture. An anonymous individual who stole a list of the station’s members sent them letters in which they called for JOY’s board to be replaced over its environment of bullying. In response, the board maintained that such claims of bullying had previously been investigated and had been found to be baseless. However, a former employee has described the workplace culture as “toxic”. He said, “[t]here’s dozens of people who feel really victimised and bullied”, with some volunteers being physically refused entry into the building or prevented from going on-air. Twenty-eight members have so far signed the letter. A special general meeting will be convened if there are 100 signatures from the members.
Study Shows Female Engineering Students are Discriminated Against
An Investigation of Students’ Experiences of Gendered Cultures in Engineering Workplaces has explored the degree of gender discrimination in engineering internships. In interviews conducted with engineering students, most of whom were female, it was found workplaces often crudely focused on their gender. One female intern was nicknamed “Mumma Jugs”, and others expected to do menial assistant-type work as opposed to actual engineering work. Incredibly, the supervisor of one intern refused to take her to his workplace at all because he did not believe women could be engineers. Unlike other comparable professions, female participation in engineering has stagnated so that less than 17% of engineers are women. According to Sally Male, an associate engineering professor at UWA, most women in the workplace responded by condoning such behaviour because they “don’t want to stand out like a sore thumb”.