The term "mean girls" grabs. It's a function of word association -- close to an oxymoron if we think of girls as "sugar and spice and everything nice." Of course, they aren't. Who is? But neither are they meaner than their male counterparts. In fact, the last time I looked, it wasn't girls or women starting wars around the globe.
The truth is that there's enough mean to go around without being gender specific. Perhaps we should be asking ourselves if expressing meanness has become too acceptable rather than accusing one gender more than the other. Could it be, instead, that meanness has not increased, but rather that social technology has provided far-reaching vehicles for expressing it?
If we start bandying "mean girls" around as if it's a valid category anymore than mean men is one, we inadvertently imbue it with legitimacy. It becomes a stereotype. Then when girls or women disagree with each other at work, for example, it won't be seen as a case of two people not seeing eye-to-eye, but rather another example of why women can't work well together.
If you don't think this is possible, you probably haven't experienced the impact of labels imposed upon women to keep them from leadership positions.
Sociologist Erving Goffman described "involvement rules" that often treat the contributions of women as more peripheral than those of most men. And as described in the Harvard Business Review case I wrote, "The Memo Every Woman Keeps in Her Desk," there are still many bosses who just don't get it and are more than happy to find a facile category to justify not promoting highly competent women.
Categorizing women is often used as a way to limit their opportunities further -- to remove them from the field of play. And "mean girls" is one of those categories. It's not simply an innocuous, cutesy term. It's a derivation of the "B" word. Women run from this label, which makes it a useful way of managing them. They walk what I've described as a "thin pink line" in many workplaces, trying not to come on too strong or appear weak.
At a time when labor unions are under attack, it's wise to be on alert for labels that drive a wedge between women and dismiss their contributions as the function of some simplistic stereotype. We may like to think the days of keeping women back from high-level positions are long gone, but a look at wage disparity alone indicates otherwise.
Besides, let's look at the communication research and expert opinion indicating that "mean girls" is not an accurate description of any but a small percentage of women. Like the "queen bee syndrome," it's catchy but only minimally applicable. For decades now, anyone studying business has come across the female leadership advantage of greater interpersonal sensitivity. Research on empathy gives women the advantage here as well -- sometimes because they live up to the stereotype rather than because they are innately more skilled. We've been told that their "nurturing" tendency makes women good mentors and team members. And these skills are the antithesis of mean.
Maybe you remember all the years when women supposedly didn't have enough team sports experience to be effective in business. That was an excuse for not promoting them. It worked for a long time.
Women need to be observant about labels and disparaging categories if they want to avoid being maneuvered by those who apply them. And their bosses should be aware of them to prevent slipping into treating such bogus categories as if they have anything to do with reality.
In the case of the "mean girls" label, it only takes one or two weak studies on female expressions of anger or relational aggression to grab media attention. Without asking who conducted this research with what subject population -- located how, using what questions, drawing what conclusions based on which results, and derived by what research methods some morning show producer or magazine editor swallows whole the provocative "mean girls" mantra and runs with it. And so it lives on.
The self-fulfilling prophecy aspect of the "mean girls" label is troublesome too. If you hear something enough, it's possible to begin believing it about yourself. If young girls and women frequently hear about mean girls, they'll start believing that women don't make good friends or bosses. There is no body of substantial evidence to support these views. They are largely television and movie fictions.
Sure, there are mean girls and mean women. There are bullies of all shapes and sizes. But there are mean boys and mean men, too. If you want to get ahead in your job and in life, you have to know how to manage mean people of both genders. Sometimes you avoid them, other times you use humor or cut them down to size with a wish-you were-never-born" comeback.
Words matter. Labels count. It's wise to put ones like "mean girls" in their place as negative, potentially destructive stereotypes before they exact too high a cost.
Kathleen also blogs about communication here and on politics at bardscove. Her latest book, with Christopher Noblet, is Comebacks at Work.