When the "Small" Things Keep Happening
Selective incivility is a new term for me. I recently came across it in research published by Oxford Academic, and I found it intriguing because it gave language to something many of us have probably witnessed or experienced without knowing what to call it. Selective incivility describes subtle workplace mistreatment that may be connected to gender or another part of someone's identity. It can look like being interrupted, ignored, excluded, dismissed, or treated with less patience than other people receive.
None of those behaviors may seem especially serious on their own, which is exactly why the idea is worth exploring. Most of us have interrupted someone, missed an email, forgotten to include a person in a conversation, or responded more sharply than we intended. We are human, and even people who care deeply about treating others well will occasionally get it wrong. One uncomfortable interaction does not automatically mean bias or discrimination is at work, but what happens when those interactions keep happening to the same people?
A woman notices that she is frequently interrupted in meetings while her male colleagues can finish their thoughts. A Black employee watches a coworker receive praise for being direct while their own communication is described as aggressive. Someone shares an idea that gets little response, only to hear the same idea celebrated when it comes from someone else later in the conversation. Each moment comes with a possible explanation, whether the meeting was moving quickly, the person interrupting was excited, or the communication styles were not exactly the same.
That ambiguity can make the experience difficult to talk about. The person on the receiving end may replay the interaction and wonder whether they misunderstood it, whether it is worth mentioning, or whether speaking up will cause others to see them as overly sensitive. They may say nothing, not because the interaction didn't matter, but because they are not sure they can explain why it did. When they do share the experience, we may genuinely try to make them feel better by reassuring them that no harm was intended or pointing out that the same thing has happened to others. Still, that response can close the conversation before we understand whether there is more to the story.
The word "small" also depends on where we are standing. Being interrupted once may be frustrating but easy to move past, while being interrupted repeatedly as other people receive attention and respect can begin to shape how comfortable someone feels contributing at all. The person observing an interaction sees one moment, while the person experiencing it may be carrying every similar moment that came before it. What appears minor from the outside can feel very different when it is part of a pattern.
That doesn't mean we have to assume the worst about someone's intentions. It does mean we can leave room for the possibility that impact and intent are not always the same, and we can care about a person's experience without immediately deciding who was right, who was wrong, or what someone meant to do. Assuming positive intent and taking impact seriously are not opposites. We can believe someone may not have intended harm while still being willing to listen, recognize the impact, and repair it.
Sometimes the most helpful response is simply to stay in the conversation a little longer. We can ask whether this has happened before, listen for the larger pattern, and resist the urge to explain the experience away. We may be missing context because we have never had a reason to look for it. Selective incivility was unfamiliar language to me, but the experience it describes is not unfamiliar at all.
The term offers another way to notice the difference between an isolated interaction and a pattern that may be affecting someone's ability to feel heard, respected, and valued at work. The next time something seems too small to matter, it may be worth pausing before we decide that it is. We may be seeing one moment in a much longer story, and a willingness to listen could make it easier for someone to tell us the rest.