I'd appreciate the help of my lady readers. I was somewhat taken aback to read an article in the Daily Mail today. Here's an excerpt:
We run our own companies - some of us run entire countries. We work and raise families, we have fun, we have fabulous frocks. So why is it, after a century of increasing affluence, influence and freedom, women have never loved each other less? Whatever happened to the sisterhood?
Any historian would have imagined that after a hundred years of fighting side-by-side and winning victory after victory, women would be the new Spartans - fearless, fearsome and, above all, locked shield to shield, Jimmy Choo to Jimmy Choo, totally loyal to our sisters who fought the good fight with us.
But something very strange happened. As we became more successful, we also grew more suspicious, more envious, more downright nasty to other women.
A new book examines that gruesome trend of girl-on-girl nastiness. Friend Or Frenemy? by Andrea Lavinthal and Jessica Rozler is billed as a guide to 'the friends you need and the ones you don't'. The ones you don't being 'frenemies' - the friends who are enemies in disguise.
. . .
... the point of their new book is to help us to reconnect with real friendship, not cyber-fakes, and to differentiate between the true girlfriend and the frenemy who half wants you to succeed but mostly loves it when you fail - at men, fashion or career.
She's the kind of woman who, while affecting deep concern, is the mistress of undermining. She is fond of saying things along the lines of: 'You look tired,' 'You're going to eat all that?' 'Your ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend is soooooo pretty.'
Lavinthal and Rozler point out that in a world where we often live miles apart from our real families and start our own at a later age than our parents did, friends are the new 'framily'. They conclude: 'Good friends are like orgasms - you're lucky enough to have one and really lucky if you have multiple ones.'
. . .
But then there's the flip side, as revealed in another new book, Player HateHer by Tamara A. Johnson-George and Katrina R. Chambers.
The title is a pun on the term 'player hater' which was used in the Sixties to describe the out-and-out jealousy aimed at people who were successful, who were 'players', whether it was as the grade A student or someone who excelled at sport.
Johnson-George and Chambers use their term to describe women who hate instead of embracing one another. It is a phenomenon that every working woman will recognise. Women can be fantastic friends outside the office, but put them in the workplace and they become the personification of conceit, deceit and downright nastiness.
. . .
Without even realising it, women slip into Player HateHer mode. And I defy anyone reading this to say they have not been guilty of this kind of scrutiny of other women. A Player HateHer is a woman who 'unnecessarily displays a negative attitude towards another woman for trivial reasons'. Why? Because they're jealous, insecure and intimidated.
The authors point out that Player HateHers don't treat men the same way. In the workplace, intelligent, welleducated, successful females behave with all the instincts of cavewomen. Unless you connive and plot to secure the protection, if not affection, of the strongest male (usually the boss), you lose out to a more attractive, more cunning woman.
There's a lot more at the link.
I've always been aware that some women can be really nasty in the workplace, but as a male, I've not seen it in the 'in-your-face' way that these authors seem to describe. I actively tried to recruit women when I was a team manager in the computer industry, because I found them more hard-working and flexible than men in many respects. I still hold that view for such functions. I certainly never encountered such problems with my team - or, at least, I didn't detect them as the team manager. They may have been going on under the surface, and I might have been blind to them.
Ladies, are things really as bad as these authors make them out to be? I'd be grateful if you'd please read the whole article, then share your thoughts with us in Comments. I think we'd all learn something.
Thanks in advance.
Peter
9 comments:
Hate to destroy your faith in women, but no this isn't hyperbole. Some of us never leave Junior High, which is where this kind of behavior is most prevalent.
The honest truth is that women are EXTREMELY competitive and in much more vicious and petty ways than men. Some of us see all other women as the enemy and will do anything to bring another woman down. The writer is entirely correct; the root cause is jealousy and insecurity.
Many good women refuse to play these games, and many women recognize that they can gather strength from other women (church groups are a great example of this). However some women will always continue to try and find acceptance by destroying other women. That's just the way it goes.
Put it this way, i would rather work in an office full of men than with another women! ... at least with men you always know exactly where you stand.
(there are of course exceptions to this, but they are few and far between).
I've never truly experienced this (outside of school, I mean), but then, I don't work in a corporate environment and never have. I did get the feeling when I was a stay-at-home mother that a LOT of the other moms had that kind of mentality, though. Always wanting to one-up the other moms, very competitive regarding their children versus other children. It was sad. Needless to say, I declined many an invitation to join play-groups and other such "social" groups when my children were little. I didn't need the hassle. Plus, I hate feeling inadequate!
I think you not seeing much of that probably has to do with your being in the computer industry- in scientific and technical fields, there's often a lot more of a sense of "sisterhood" since they're still so male-dominated. It also probably has something to do with your simply being male- we all tend to miss a lot of the other gender's more subtle social signals. I call it being tuned in to channel XX or channel XY. I like to think I'm pretty good at reading men, but Stingray will sometimes point out an aspect of an interaction between two men that I missed UTTERLY.
That said, I find nothing surprising about the article. The answer to the question "what happened to the sisterhood" is that it never existed, any more than brotherhood truly did. If you've read this post, then you have a hint of what I mean.
Hell, best case scenario I can get another post out of this.
These authors paint a sadly accurate portrayal of female interaction. Office, dorm, sorority, mommy play-group--any time you have more than two woman in a space, this behavior will surface. Among true friends, not really a worry, but acquaintances...
Biologically, we are in competion for male attention and breeding. There's a reason pecking order is established among hens while roosters fight each other equally. One rooster and a flock of hens. One stallion and a herd of mares. One shiek and a harem of women.
In modern society, this phenomenon is transferred to the desired result of the workplace--higher placement and recognition/money, or more power.
I've been married for 13 years, have a beautiful child. I'm set--I don't need to impress a man. However, I wear makeup and nice clothes if I enter an environment where I will be judged by other females. You bet there is a corner of my brain judging them too.
The best advice is the old rule of not dating anyone from the office--don't expect to be true friends with anyone you meet in the workplace. It can happen, but give of yourself cautiously. Anything you say can be used as ammunition.
I'm with Julie -- I don't like working in an office full of women exactly because of the attitudes and behaviors mentioned in the article. Very few exceptions that I've experienced in 20 years of working in office environments, which is why I treasure my (few) women friends who are NOT like this.
Then again, I never was a "hen house" chicken, so my views may be skewed. :)
I prefer the company of men. My circle of friends is small, and female friends even smaller.
I never got into that whole world, for a lot of reasons. But I did work in workplaces with all women a few times as a temp. It was horrible! I swore I would never ever work with only women again. They are catty, they backstab, gossip, and play games. They don't know how to just shut up and get the job done. You get a group of men together and they might complain and moan but they'll sort out who does what and get the job done. A group of women will complain and moan, and spend the rest of the time bickering over trivialities and doing stupid things like making calligraphy labels for the file boxes and enacting policies to let their cats come to work, and never get the job done. If I ever have to go in the hired workforce again (I'm a SAHM) it would only be where there is a roughly equal mix of men and women, both in management and under them.
99% of the problems in the article could be avoided by living a Biblical life, going by the Golden Rule. I don't give a rat's tail what people think of me- I live in an area where a person like me is about as foreign to them as a Zulu warrior is to someone from Lake Woebegone. They'll never understand or like me overmuch so there's no point in trying- relieves a lot of pressure there!
It's not new; just consider the southern phrase "Well, Bless Her Heart..."
It's just a basic fact of life in female interaction, in most all high-estrogen areas. Which would be why I have very few female friends, and prefer the company and culture of more relaxed places like flying, the gun range, hunting...
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