Female Bullying or Just Another Attack Against Successful Women

The media loves a fresh angle that undermines women's hard earned success. The New York Times Business section (1/11/09) ran an article, "A Sisterhood Of Workplace Infighting" by Peggy Klaus. Ms. Klaus, a leadership consultant, writes about how women mistreat women in the workplace:

"...limiting access to important meetings, withholding information, assignments, promotions; or blocking the way to mentors and higher ups."

Then The New York Times ran another similar article, "Backlash: Women Bullying Women" (5/10/09) on Mother's Day no less, with more anecdotal evidence that women are their own worst enemy. Both articles fall prey to the seduction of pop-psychology rhetoric portraying women as overemotional, backstabbing and bitchy. How many times do we hear similar stories that point accusatory fingers at women, deflecting attention from the true problems -- unequal pay, entrenched promotional practices that block women from the highest echelons in the political and corporate arenas, feeble sick leave and maternity leave policies, a lack of childcare subsidies for working mothers, and last but not least, the media's biased coverage? This backlash phenomenon is well documented in Susan Faludi's brilliant book, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women.

The article quotes Michelle Cirocco, the director of sales operations for Televerde, a marketing company. "The time has come for us to really deal with this relationship that women have to women, because it truly is preventing us from being as successful in the workplace as we want to be and should be."

Hidden behind this mask of concern is a brilliant, if dangerous message: women are their own obstacle. If women are to be blamed for their lack of progress, the load of responsibility shifts from the people who truly hold the power to change workplace policies and foster more positive images of ambitious women like you and me, the millions of women working hard to earn a living and move fairly through the ranks to assume increasingly challenging and responsible jobs. What's galling is that both articles completely ignore facts and present only sparse anecdotal evidence that transforms women from collaborative and powerful to conniving and power hungry.

In my 25 years as a leadership consultant, the vast majority of successful business women point to a female mentor or network that helped her break through the myriad obstacles and get ahead. Sally Helgeson, author of The Female Advantage, conducted comprehensive research demonstrating that women managers, in contrast to men, spend more time helping people and their authority comes from connection to people rather than distance from those below. Dee Dee Myers, in her book Why Women Should Rule the World, writes about how women give away credit to their detriment because they place such a high value on teamwork and building relationships. Carol Evans, CEO of Working Mother Media has built a thriving conference business that fosters women networking and mentoring other women.

We've come a long way baby but we still have a way to go before our country's "truths" about women tell the real story.

(updated with reference to Susan Faludi)

Jamie Woolf, veteran leadership consultant, is the author of Mom-in-Chief: How Wisdom From the Workplace Can Save Your Family From Chaos; www.mominchief.com

 

Follow Jamie Woolf on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mom-in-chief

Comments

[Betty-Ann]

04:37 PM on 05/24/2009

In my experience the biggest problem with women in the workplace is that they have been socialized to be 'nice girls", which means avoiding conflict. Because they aren't direct in approachin­g a problem openly they typically "go undergroun­d" and resort to passive-ag­gressive tactics. This enables them to come across the way they think they should ( as a good girl) while their behavior manefests in some pretty ugly behavior. I remember a senior woman in our company who routinely ignored subordinat­es emails and proposals in order to "freeze her out" and keep her in a lower position. She did all this while you could have thought butter would melt in her mouth.

[bookluver]

02:15 AM on 05/20/2009

I have found, especially in the business world, just how much women bully women. My co-worker and are the only women in our place of employment who have young children. We both have to take days off (sick and annual leave) here and there for kid things. It has been amazing to me to see how the older women react to this... they are not very understand­ing, which has been a little shocking since I know for a fact that when their children were younger, they were given the same accommodat­ions. These older women have resorted to behaviors such as ignoring us when we have to take our personal leave, talk down to us, as well as try to get our boss to not accommodat­e us to take care of our families.. the list goes on. We are both great employees, we get our work done, do a good job and cover each other's work when the other has to take care of business at home. At first I was pretty upset about it, but have found peace in a great book titled, "The Power of Women United: Confidence born of Strength and Wisdom" by Tina Dezsi and Lia Bandola. This book has taught me to ignore these kinds of petty distractio­ns and to focus on my goals of being the best employee I can be so that I can advance to my dream position within my current company.

http://www­.powerofwo­menunited.­com/author­s.html/

[KillTheMessenger]

01:43 AM on 05/16/2009

The techniques eluded to have nothing to do with the gender of the executive. They are age old ways of control at the workplace. No big deal. Women who use them are just proving that they can be fast learners of poor moral principles and thus be equal to men in all respects, including the negative ones.

[Indra]

09:34 PM on 05/15/2009

We have to be careful not to fall into the trap of thinking that women are better than men and or men are better than women in business. Women can do anything just as well as men. Networking with other women is OK to a certain point, but gets a little lame after a while. It becomes a bit incestuous and gives birth to a lot of deranged ideas. Women need to learn to network with men who they can trust to enhance their careers as well. A good balance is extremely important otherwise failure is the cards.

[Laura Lopez]

12:07 PM on 05/15/2009

Jamie,
As a former executive at The Coca-Cola Company where I worked for and with many women, I couldn't agree with you more. I personally never experience­d "female bullying" and found that many women are collaborat­ive and team builders. I do, however believe that there are women in male-centr­ic organizati­ons that buy into the male approach to leadership­, and sacrifice their natural feminine attributes­. As a result, they become disconnect­ed from themselves and others around them and ultimately can lose their authentic power.

When this happens in male-centr­ic organizati­ons, it is also part of this backlash, as if our feminine ways are somehow ineffectiv­e Women need to continue to believe that our approach to leadership has great value and that collaborat­ing in numbers will help redefine leadership­. The definition of leadership today needs to become more centered, incorporat­ing both feminine and male aspects for a unified whole.

[KillTheMessenger]

01:49 AM on 05/16/2009

Mrs. Lopez, as a man who has been around female executives a lot, I have to tell you that Coca-Cola must be an exceptiona­l company because on plenty of occasions I have heard my friends cry about being bullied (literally­!). Some women are team builders. And some are bullies. They may have a more favorable ratio than men, but I wouldn't assign too much glory to the female executive on this level. Some women do not "just buy into" male approaches to managing. They are naturals at being your typical corporate.­.. and here comes a word I really wouldn't like to use with respect to women.

[Robin Gerber]

07:45 PM on 05/14/2009

I agree. As a speaker on leadership I often get the question, "why don't women support women?" or a variation of it. First, of course, we need to be women who do support other women, no matter how we've been treated. Some women, understand­ably, see advancemen­t as a zero sum game for good reason. It is harder for women to advance because of sexism. When only one or two of us are let in the room, it's not surprising that some women will want to protect the small turf available. But, as you point out so well, it is false to point to instances where women are not supportive as the root cause of women's infuriatin­gly slow progress in every sector. We used to call that 'blaming the victim."

[Phyllisb]

12:12 AM on 05/15/2009

Jamie, I agree with you completely­. In my career, holding several executive positions, I've been fortunate to have women be extremely supportive­. We prefered to be surrounded by other bright, capable, dynamic women and it was in our best interest to support and collaborat­ate with eachother. I'm now a consultant­, and interestin­g enough, find the consulitng world to be one of the most collaborat­ive environmen­ts for women when one would assume it would be competitiv­e. The women I know are smart enough to realize the more we help eachother grow, the more we all win.

[KillTheMessenger]

01:55 AM on 05/16/2009

Phyllis, you are lucky. The average corporate world does not look like that. Executives­, female ones included, tend to be selfish. Where there is support, it is a strategy to look good. That might feel better than the lonely wolf strategy, but in the end it's an exploitati­on strategy to foster ones own career. I've seen that several times. It worked, to a certain extent. In one case the female boss would have looked very, very bad, if not for the continuous efforts of her (female) protege to prop her up. In return the protege got a much better job, in the end... but that was based on her own merits, not on the support from her boss.