Why Do Women Bully Each Other at Work?

[K.Dot]

Long ASS article.


Why Do Women Bully Each Other at Work?

Yet, fairly or not, many women seem to share Shannon’s fear that members of their gender tend to cut one another down. Large surveys by Pew and Gallup as well as several academic studies show that when women have a preference as to the gender of their bosses and colleagues, that preference is largely for men. A 2009 study published in the journal Gender in Management found, for example, that although women believe other women make good managers, “the female workers did not actually want to work for them.” The longer a woman had been in the workforce, the less likely she was to want a female boss.

Some people find these studies literally incredible. (When the ABA Journal published an article about the legal-secretary survey, angry readers demanded a retraction. The journal wrote a follow-up piece about the controversy and issued a mild apology for the hurt feelings.) And indeed, it is hard to believe that women would hold a fierce bias against members of their own gender. Perhaps in part because it’s such a thorny topic, this phenomenon tends to be either dismissed (nothing to see here) or written off as inevitable (women are inherently catty). But in fact, psychologists have been attempting to explain it for decades—and the sum of their findings suggests that women aren’t the villains of this story.

In the late 1980s, Robin Ely, then a graduate student in the Yale School of Management, set about trying to understand why women’s office interactions sometimes turn toxic. “My most difficult relationship at work had been with a woman,” Ely told me, “but women had also given me the most amazing support.” She didn’t buy either of the prevailing stereotypes about women—that they are nurturing earth mothers or manipulative traitors. Instead, her hypothesis was simply that “women, like all human beings, respond to the situation they’re in.”

No matter where they were, the attorneys endured a grueling work environment. But in the overwhelmingly male firms, competition between women was “acute, troubling, and personal,” Ely said. Compared with the women in firms where they were better represented, women in the male-dominated settings thought less of one another and offered weak support, if any. Female partners in those firms were “almost universally reviled,” Ely said. One young lawyer described her boss as “a manipulative bytch who has no legal talent.”

Perhaps the most enduring takeaway was this: Women in the male-dominated firms believed that only so many of them would make it into the senior ranks, and that they were vying with one another for those spots. Ely, who is now a business professor at Harvard, had hit upon a dynamic known as tokenism. When there appear to be few opportunities for women, research shows, women begin to view their gender as an impediment; they avoid joining forces, and sometimes turn on one another.

 

[InfinateOpulance]

There is truth to this.

 

[Aphrodite]

There is truth to this.

So much.

 

[Lo-Co]

There is truth to this.

 

[LeeDoubleLee]

i don't know the reasons why but i have noticed that the ones that are more prone to do it are the ones that are intimidated by anyone therefore they feel the need to compete dirty instead of just stepping their game up or finding different ways to shine. then you have the ones that are so fking miserable that the only place the feel they have control is at work where they act like jerks. it has never dawned on me to undercut another woman to get ahead. my MO is to find other ways to shine. the energy spent throwing someone under the bus is wasted energy and time i can't get back.

the one thing i wished HR would take seriously is work place harassment. a lot of places passively allow it which cuts into productivity. i refused to believe that there is nothing management or HR can do to curb these behaviors.

lastly, IME gender has no bearing on someone being a good or bad manager or coworker. i've had terrible male managers and coworkers and terrible female coworkers and managers. luckily for me at my current job they actually promote female mentorship and women supporting each other is considered a strength, not a weakness.

 

[Kinguno]

bytches hate bytches

 

[InfinateOpulance]

bytches hate bytches

I'll take it a step further and say this, i think a lot of older women hate seeing younger women come into the work force. They feel threatened that this young thing fresh out of college will take their positions, so they become cliquish, bully the younger ladies, black ball them from transferring out of departments just to spite them, etc.

Ive seen and experienced this first hand right out of college. I wish i could say otherwise, but some of the meanest people i ever worked with/for were older black women who were in church every Sunday. 250lb plus. And I'll just stop right now before i start getting flashbacks.

 

[TinFoilSnapBack]

They thrive off of constant drama.

 

[Raava]

The same mean/messy girls from school from what I have seen a lot of them never grow out of that. If that's your personality it carries to the work place. It's competition. Almost every job I've had, there was trouble with women. 90% of the time it's wasn't even about my work, it was jealousy towards me. It's sad.

 

[Tflasha]

women are bullies and there is no other explanation behind it other than it being in their nature - everything thats said before and beyond this point is mute - it's in women's blood to be petty, territorial, and vindictive when it comes to both men and other women

 

[InfinateOpulance]

women are bullies and there is no other explanation behind it other than it being in their nature - everything thats said before and beyond this point is mute - it's in women's blood to be petty, territorial, and vindictive when it comes to both men and other women

I wish i could argue this point. I can't. I won't.

 

[Lady.Libra.]

Much validity...

However, men have different way of bullying if you don't cater to their egos...sigh.

(This work life will make you feel like choking someone.)