TORONTO — The messages seem innocent at first. A request to connect, a nod to a shared interest or similar industry – but then, they turn inappropriate, sexual and abusive.
This is the behaviour women are reporting on LinkedIn, the professional networking site with close to 800 million users in 200 countries worldwide.
While harmful and abusive behaviour online is something women have experienced since the internet was first created –with much reported about harassment experienced on sites like Facebook and Twitter — LinkedIn, where users seek professional connections, has now been added to the list of online spaces where women say harassment occurs daily.
Women and girls are at greater risk of experiencing violence online, especially severe types of harassment and sexual abuse, according to the Canadian Women’s Foundation, and in the 2020 Statistics Canada Survey on Sexual Misconduct at Work, 25 per cent of women surveyed said they had been personally targeted with sexualized behaviours in the workplace, including online work.
Women who had been targeted “usually said that a man was always responsible” the survey stated, including 56 per cent of those surveyed who experienced inappropriate communication, 67 per cent of those who experienced being exposed to sexually explicit materials and 78 per cent of those who experienced unwanted physical contact or suggested sexual relations.
Inappropriate communication was the most commonly reported sexualized behaviour, including sexual jokes, unwanted sexual attention, inappropriate sexual comments and inappropriate discussions of sex life.
CTVNews.ca spoke to six women about what they experience as users on LinkedIn, and was contacted by dozens more with similar stories of inappropriate messages, harassment and abusive behaviour.
Marketing Director Bella Mitchell told CTVNews.ca in an email that the most common inappropriate messages she gets are from men on LinkedIn who reach out to tell her they find her attractive.
“Some have paired it with also requesting we chat on the phone, or if I’d like to meet. One older man went as far as to message me saying ‘You’re very pretty, can I offer you an interview with my company? I think you’d be a great fit,’” Mitchell said in her email. “I was shocked by the audacity, but also his company was literally a one-person consulting firm…aka himself.”
Tami Adams, founder of Speakers Management, told CTVNews.ca in a telephone interview that in her experience, men have messaged her with a professional subject line or initial message complimenting her work or that they find her career “interesting.”
It goes downhill from there.
“Then I get the message of ‘Hey beautiful, I just think you’re amazing,’” Adams said. “I delete them as soon as I can, remove them as a connection and report them on LinkedIn for inappropriate behaviour.”
When a user is reported on LinkedIn, an automated message is sent to the person who reported them saying a review of the content will be undertaken. If a user is found to have violated LinkedIn’s guidelines or user agreement, the company may take several routes including issuing warnings, suspending accounts or removing accounts from the site. If a user is not found to have violated the guidelines or user agreement, the person who reported them will get a message saying the issue does not meet the threshold for action to be taken by the company.
Adams says the issue is “super irritating and frustrating, annoying and inappropriate” to deal with.
“I’m a business owner, every connection matters to me…I am actively finding people that have similar interests that can do business together or just connect,” she said. “When I get a message like that, it’s like ‘can you go away?’”
‘YOU WILL GO TO HELL’
And while harassment and abuse may start online with LinkedIn messages, several women reached out to CTVNews.ca to share that it followed them offline too.
One of them, April B, who asked not to be fully identified due to personal safety concerns, told CTVNews.ca in a message that on two separate occasions, men had tracked her through LinkedIn.
They had found her profile, looked up the company she listed as her current place of work and began calling the company in an attempt to connect with her. One called her work line “for months,” she said.
April no longer puts her current place of work on her LinkedIn profile.
Adams said the social expectation that women should take messages that comment on their appearance or express interest in them romantically should be “taken as a compliment,” even when they are from strangers and unreciprocated, is an attempt to normalize harassment and poor behaviour.
“My response to them is, ‘no, it’s not OK, it’s not a compliment,” she said. “If we take it as a compliment then it’s going to keep happening, we will normalize it.”
Speaker and author Samra Zafar told CTVNews.ca in a telephone interview that due to her work and being a public figure, she receives unprofessional, inappropriate and sometimes hateful messages from men almost every day on LinkedIn.
“Many, many messages like ‘your legs are beautiful,’ or ‘you have a gorgeous smile, I wish I could take you out,’ and even sometimes hate messages like ‘you’re a Muslim you’re not supposed to be showing your legs, you will go to hell,’” Zafar said. “I honestly report messages to LinkedIn almost every day, multiple times a week.”
Zafar said the comments are “really invalidating” as she is putting herself out there for education and professional purposes.
“I’m an intelligent, smart, accomplished woman, and all I’m being seen for are my legs or my eyes or my dating eligibility,” she said. “The presumptuousness and entitlement of these messages…I would never – and I’m pretty sure a lot of women would agree – think to send a message like that to a guy, but as women we continue to be subjected to such things even on professional platforms like LinkedIn.”
Zafar too pushes back on the idea that women should just take uninvited messages or comments on appearances as a compliment.
“It’s gas lighting to its finest by these people – they’re abusers in different shapes and forms, they’re harassers, and this is kind of like a stalker saying, ‘Oh I stalked you because you’re so beautiful and I love you, take it as a compliment,’” she said. “It not a compliment. It makes us feel unsafe. It makes us feel invalidated and demeaned. It makes us feel objectified.”
Sarah McVanel, chief recognition officer of Greatness Magnified, told CTVNews.ca in a telephone interview that she has changed the way she interacts with people on LinkedIn due to the sheer number of inappropriate messages.
“I’ve started to have to get very careful about who I accept requests from because there seems to be some common patterns of people who inappropriately use this system and people are getting more creative,” she said. “Now what seems to be the trend is people sending messages directly to our inboxes, which put some of us, as professionals, such as entrepreneurs, as more likely targets of because it’s a function of our business to make it easy to get a hold of us.”
CONSEQUENCES AND THE ‘TWO FRIDGE TEST’
All of the women interviewed by CTVNews.ca said they wanted a tougher response from the platform, and more consequences for those who are reported for inappropriate messages or harassment.
“I think all social media platforms, but especially LinkedIn, because it is a professional platform, they need to really step up and take action, immediate action to suspend or even ban people like that,” Zafar said. “I think there also needs to be more education…because really, the problem is that a lot of these men don’t even think that they’re being disrespectful.”
In an emailed statement to CTVNews.ca, LinkedIn said “it’s absolutely not acceptable to send unwanted inappropriate messages on LinkedIn. As a professional network, our members expect their experience on LinkedIn to be professional in nature.”
The company said in its statement that it has introduced “a host of new tools” and strengthened their Professional Community Policies to be “even clearer” on their position on harassment and romantic advances on LinkedIn in September of last year.
LinkedIn said in its statement it has also added reminders to the platform to keep posts, comments and messages appropriate – and that it had added “in-line warnings” on messages that may be inappropriate.
“Members also can, and should, report any inappropriate messages they receive,” the statement said.
Etiquette expert Julie Blais Comeau told CTVNews.ca in a telephone interview that LinkedIn exists for business and professional connections and that generally speaking, it is best to leave dating to other applications specifically designed for that purpose.
Blais Comeau said her advice for people networking on LinkedIn is to test whether their messages pass what she calls “the two fridge test,” where if you would post what you are writing to the other person on your fridge at home, and your fridge at work – where everyone could see it, including spouses, bosses, clients and subordinates – then you are probably “good to go.”
Blais Comeau told CTVNews.ca that she too, has experienced men reaching out to her on LinkedIn, especially after a media appearance.
“I think it’s sad that we’re talking especially about women that are being approached by men, that they have to be suspicious and to set the parameters and to adjust the settings [on LinkedIn] so that ‘connections’ won’t be able to harass them,” she said. “Those comments are very invasive, affect our self-esteem and make us doubt ourselves.”
