Why women bully women in the workplace
The sources of woman on woman aggression
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Woman on woman aggression contributes up to 80% of the bullying in the workplace. Bullying can also be tough to spot when the bully who is a woman employs covert narcissistic tactics to bully another woman at work. It’s much easier to spot the bully when her narcissistic behaviours are obvious.
I recently asked you all to weigh in on these two questions here and on LinkedIn:
From your own experience, what do you believe are the underlying causes of women on women bullying?
How might men be unintended or intended participants in a war between women at work?
I received loads of responses and disheartening private messages disclosing workplace abuses and vile behaviour at the hands of other women. It’s worth reading the diverse comments here.
Woman on woman aggression can involve and transcend race and ethnicity. Being a woman doesn’t protect against narcissism and our human condition to crave power and control when success is at stake.
The path to professional success can take many forms. Many women believe that success is when you achieve the highest positions within an organisation, gain recognition, status, prestige and wealth. They tend to emulate male leadership styles to break the glass ceiling and ascend to positions and ranks that are often difficult for women to attain in male-dominated arenas. It’s getting a seat at a table to wield her influence to her advantage and that of other women.
What is often overlooked is that ascending the ranks at any organisation, institution or professional network requires gathering power, and power is addictive. Gathering power can occur in a number of ways that range from being ethical to questionable to destructive.
As a woman rises in status, privilege and power in her institution and professional network, she might start to view another accomplished woman as a competitor and threat, rather than a potential support and ally who can be mutually beneficial. Without hesitation, she will systematically sabotage her competition and take her down to preserve her hold on power and status, while remaining unconcerned about the damage she will do to the other woman’s reputation, professional opportunities, career aspirations or economic situation.
A number of themes stood out among the comments describing reasons for woman on woman aggression at work.
Themes
Aggression begins in our family systems with the Golden Child and Scapegoat siblings competing for parent’s affection and approval that will eventually replay itself out in workplaces for approval and promotion by the authority figure.
Gendered socialisation prepares girls to be compliant nurturers or rebellious adults. Girls are conditioned to align with power, no matter who holds it for their own protection.
Aggression begins during adolescence with mean girl antics at school that gets re-enacted in the workplace.
Pathological envy. Women who are easily threatened by accomplished women and react by targeting them are often high on the narcissism behaviour spectrum. These women feel entitled to being the centre of attention at all times, and believe they deserve status, wealth, fame and power. They tend to be hypercritical of others efforts and other’s greatness triggers inadequacy that drives all attempts to win and regain their false sense of superiority.
Internalised misogyny. Women who justify men’s bad behavior toward women are trying to protect men from women they view as threatening or weak. ie. a woman who is assertive is perceived as bossy or aggressive.
White women are the problem. White women hold the most power in social hierarchy under a white man. They hoard power and see other women’s abuse (especially women of colour) as opportunities for their ascension by stroking egos of men in power. When a female leader is removed by the authorizing man, the power hoarding white woman is primed to replace her. They are also often perpetrators of bullying women and men of colour.
Black women bullying other Black women. “Black women who know the challenge of navigating the system should be reaching back and bringing others with them rather than Gen X women bullying younger generations”. The Gen X women have paved the way for greater access for the next generations but somehow the process has been dehumanising that they forgot what it was like and the support they might have liked, and see the younger generations as threats instead. This is not exclusive to Black women but is a feature of different generations of women working in the same competitive environment.
Incompetent women recruit support by stroking egos. A man in a junior or similar position to the woman target are easily manipulated, especially when the perpetrator woman and the man share the same negative opinion about the woman target.
Men are the puppet masters. The typical narcissistic boss who pit two women of equal status against each other for attention and so he can control them both.
Men are always protected. Women have been conditioned to align with power, no matter who holds it for their own protection. It's primal and mostly unconscious and causes women to take down other women who are perceived as threats to their proximity to power in a rigged system aimed at protecting men at all cost.
Leaders (especially men) are oblivious and don’t want to get involved in drama. Some men feel threatened by displays of emotion or conflict between women. These men see who the perpetrators are and remain silent bystanders.
Women with dark tetrad personalities (psychopaths, narcissists, sadists or Machiavellian) bully others for entertainment, pleasure and know how to get away with it.
It’s the Patriarchy. As institutions were built and shaped by men, women still need to prove their worth and look good at the same time.
The true roots of patriarchy as a system of oppression is addressed with historical and critical precision in the new book The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule by science journalist and author Angela Saini. I highly recommend reading this intellectual and critical analysis of patriarchy, its manifestations in different parts of the world through time and its vulnerability to change.
So who is the real enemy?
I don’t know if I can pin it on one enemy. There are many arguments that point fingers at the interaction of systems of supremacy such as capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy and structural racism, and the negative impact these systems collectively have on women who don’t or can’t assimilate into these system’s ideals.
We as a society are influenced by ideals and narratives of success attained through tried and true, predictable pathways. Those pathways are paved behaviours, values, and ambitions that encourage divide and conquer, empire building, power/resource hoarding and ownership, competition, greed, perfectionism and survival of who is perceived the fittest. The one who conquers the hierarchy, controls all and is the perfect being who we should all aspire to emulate. And when that perfect being gets toppled, as he inevitably will, the next Godlike conquerer will reinvent perfection through the right combination of behaviours, attitude and attributes.
Even when a woman embodies those behaviours and attributes to attain the highest rung on the professional ladder, she will get removed by force and scheming by her enemies, or through burnout and illness, or opt out when she realises how morally compromising it is to remain in that position, needing time to recover and heal in between jobs. The rest who can handle this elite position longterm are either tactical masters who cultivated and maintained positive relationships alongside consistent productivity, intelligence and business savvy or are corporate psychopaths. I think you can guess which of two would most likely use aggressive tactics to harm a woman colleague.
My final thoughts
Women are tactical geniuses who can get distracted and waste their energy fighting other women instead of banding together to disarm and overthrow the real enemies. Women are and always will be a force to be reckoned with.
Thank you for reading, sharing, commenting, subscribing and supporting my work,
Nathalie Martinek, PhD
The Narcissism Hacker
Hack narcissism and support my work
I believe that a common threat to our individual and collective thriving is an addiction to power and control. This addiction fuels and is fuelled by greed - the desire to accumulate and control resources in social, information (and attention), economic, ecological, geographical and political systems.
While activists focus on fighting macro issues, I believe that activism also needs to focus on the micro issues - the narcissistic traits that pollute relationships between you and I, and between each other, without contributing to existing injustice. It’s not as exciting as fighting the Big Baddies yet hacking, resisting and overriding our tendencies to control others that also manifest as our macro issues is my full-time job.
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This a great summary, I liek the break down and themes.
My only comment as a GenXer is that I have also experience bullying from Boomer women. I think it is not so much specific to the generation as much as who is higher up in the power structure.
As a man who was worked in women-dominated professions, I think it’s interesting to think about the 4 possible combinations:
1. Male -> male. Mostly open displays of belittling, physical dominance, accusations of unmanliness / effeminacy (in working class environments)
2. Male -> female. Belittling, attacks on competence, sometimes explicitly sexual (bimbo, ugly)
3. Female -> male. Ice queen. Mothering. Emotional vampire.
4. Female -> female. Mean girls. Gaslighting. Passive-aggressive.
A group of mums at my son’s school explicitly called themselves “the mean girls”.