The manner in which Spanish authorities have responded to the flagrant sexual harassment of star footballer Jenni Hermoso holds an important lesson for businesses — and organisations more generally — everywhere: take action against the offender even when the victim doesn’t complain.

Prominent politicians, including acting Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and sports minister Miquel Iceta, and sports officials have criticised Luis Rubiales, the president of the country’s football federation, for planting an unwanted kiss on Hermoso’s lips after Spain beat England in the final of the Women’s World Cup.

Having first dismissed critics as “idiots and stupid people”, Rubiales belatedly issued a mealy mouthed apology in a video statement: “Because people have felt hurt by it, so I have to apologise, there’s no alternative.”

Hermoso’s own response to the controversy was initially tentative. According to reporting from The Athletic, in a live broadcast from the dressing room after the game, she told team-mates who asked about the kiss: “Yeah [it happened], but I didn’t like it.” The federation then released a statement, quoting Hermoso as saying she had no problem with “a mutual gesture that was totally spontaneous due to the immense joy of winning a World Cup”. Some reports in Spain say that she was pressured to appear in Rubiales’s videotaped apology, but that she refused.

This will be familiar to victims of harassment everywhere because it is hard to speak up in a toxic workplace. (A 2023 Deloitte survey found only 59 per cent of women who said they had been harassed reported it to their employers, down from 66 per cent last year.) And when incidents are reported by third parties, victims are often pressured to deny the offence took place — and to help the offender get off the hook. This allows employers to wash their hands of any responsibility and do nothing about the toxicity of the environment.

If Rubiales and the federation were counting on Hermoso’s reluctance to call out the harassment to defuse the controversy, they miscalculated badly. Rather than put the burden of making a formal complaint on Hermoso, the head of the government’s sports council said he would take disciplinary measures against Rubiales if the football federation failed to do so. The Spanish women's professional football league petitioned the council to disqualify him as president of the federation. “Having a boss grabbing the head of an employee and kissing her on the mouth is, simply, unacceptable,” the league said in a statement.

The support from so many powerful quarters seems finally to have given Hermoso the confidence to take the next step. On Wednesday, the player issued a statement saying Futpro, the players union, would be acting on her behalf. The union, in turn, said Rubiales’s actions “should never go unpunished”.

Calls for Rubiales’s resignation are mounting ahead of an emergency meeting of the federation board today. With public sympathy overwhelmingly on the side of the women, and not only because of their against-the-odds victory, the federation now has an opportunity for a thorough housecleaning. There can be little doubt that Spanish women play in a toxic environment. US star Megan Rapinoe has called out the “deep level of misogyny and sexism” in the federation. And Rubiales is not the only official under the spotlight: head coach Jorge Vilda is facing scrutiny for a video in which he appears to touch a female assistant in the chest while celebrating the only goal in the final.

In the run-up to the World Cup, 15 of the country’s top players wrote to the federation asking not to be named in the team because of unprofessional management by the coaches. Among other things, the players said the coaches required them to keep their hotel room doors open until midnight and inspected their bags after they went on outings during camps. (Hermoso was not among the letter writers but voiced support for those who did.)

The federation’s response was to criticise the protesting players and back the coaches, led by Vilda. “The federation comes first,” said Ana Alvarez, head of women’s football at the federation, demanding that the protesting players apologise if they wanted to get back on the team. It is a testament to just how bad things are that, faced with the choice of participating in the World Cup — the ultimate ambition of every footballer — or backing down, 12 of the 15 protesters chose the latter. That Hermoso and her team-mates won the tournament under these circumstances is not short of miraculous.

As much as they deserve praise for acting against Rubiales, the Spanish authorities must take responsibility for their own part in the mistreatment of the players. Had Sanchez, Iceta and the government’s sports council spoken out forcefully on behalf of the protesting players at the time, the federation might have been forced to clean its house.

Having done the right thing by Hermoso, the authorities should now extend that consideration to all of women’s football in Spain — and set another salutary example for organisations everywhere.

• Bobby Ghosh is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering foreign affairs. Previously, he was editor-in-chief at Hindustan Times, managing editor at Quartz and international editor at Time