This one’s personal.
The UK government has just voted to ban the use of NDAs to silence employees who’ve suffered harassment and discrimination at work.
It’s long overdue. And as someone who was forced to sign an NDA after being bullied to the point of breakdown, I cannot tell you how much this matters.
They let me go.
Then they made me stay quiet.
NDAs were never meant to be used like this. But for years, they’ve been weaponised to gag victims, protect reputations, and hide abuse, especially when the victim is a woman, and especially in roles where power sits on one side of the desk.
🔹 63% of Administrative Professionals say they’ve been bullied at work – 38% to a point where they left their job, and 8% to a point where they felt suicidal.
🔹 85% said the bullying came from someone more senior – often their executive.
🔹 Assistants are 98% women.
🔹 And only 1 in 4 feel they can report it safely.
That silence ends now.
That pressure to stay silent was immense. Just ask the women at Channel 4 News.
In 2022, Pregnant Then Screwed and Can’t Buy My Silence launched a campaign calling on ITN to release Channel 4 News employees from their NDAs used to cover up allegations of bullying, harassment, and gender pay discrimination. A survey of 542 women who had signed NDAs after experiencing pregnancy, maternity or sex discrimination revealed that:
🔸 89.5% felt they had no choice but to sign, often under threat of losing pay, reference, or their job.
🔸 71.8% said it harmed their mental health.
🔸 78.4% believed the NDA was part of a pattern – that the employer had used them multiple times to cover up wrongdoing.
🔸 90.1% said they wanted their story to be known and didn’t feel the NDA protected them – it protected the company.
🔸 And a staggering 99.6% said the government should take action to prevent employers from using NDAs to hide abuse.
This new legislation is that action. And it wouldn’t have happened without the relentless work of campaigners like Joeli Brearley and Zelda Perkins – the woman who broke her NDA against Harvey Weinstein and never stopped fighting for the rest of us.
It’s a message to every assistant who’s been bullied, mistreated, or pushed out.
Your story is yours. You should never be punished for telling the truth.
