I love controversial subjects, especially among the sexes.  Nothing gets the hackles up quicker than something that offends what you hold close to your heart.  I’ve worked with the media for decades and sensationalism is what sells.  It’s sex, death, murder, immorality, bankruptcy, divorce and other vices that can be cherry picked to place on the headline.  This is not real life, like…..

Ye old workplace.

It is a petri dish of human interaction that has been infected by #MeToo, harassment, incivility, sexism, partiality, affairs and occasionally competent work and results.  I’ve already discussed if Men and Women can work together here, and Women now swear more than men, so I found this article and it looked either like a headline maker or a trend.  I decided to find out.

Having sat through weeks of diversity training that is beyond boring and is a CYA for the legal department, I’ve been told that you can’t say certain things, act in a ways that could be demeaning or sexually suggestive or anything outside of plain vanilla.  I choose to keep to myself and observe.  That is why this study caught my eye.  The behavior is far outside of my diversity training, yet it goes on unabated.

WHO ARE THE BIGGEST OFFENDERS?

A recent study shows that women are reporting that it is other women who are the most rude and uncivil towards women.  It goes like this:

In terms of how it is acted out:

“Across the three studies, we found consistent evidence that women reported higher levels of incivility from other women than their male counterparts,” Gabriel says. “In other words, women are ruder to each other than they are to men, or than men are to women.

“This isn’t to say men were off the hook or they weren’t engaging in these behaviors,” she notes. “But when we compared the average levels of incivility reported, female-instigated incivility was reported more often than male-instigated incivility by women in our three studies.”

THE QUEEN BEE SYNDROME

The article at the link above states:

The phenomenon of women discriminating against other women in the workplace—particularly as they rise in seniority—has long been documented as the “queen bee syndrome.” As women have increased their ranks in the workplace, most will admit to experiencing rude behavior and incivility.

Who is at fault for dishing out these mildly deviant behaviors? Has the syndrome grown more pervasive?

“Studies show women report more incivility experiences overall than men, but we wanted to find out who was targeting women with rude remarks,” says Allison Gabriel, assistant professor of management and organizations in the University of Arizona’s Eller College of Management.

 

I worked with a female named Sandy.  No one was harder to understand or trust as a senior manager than she.  My friends would dread working for her and it was a success not to get fired before your term was complete.  Everyone tried to get out as fast as they could, or would not seek a promotion just to not work for or with her.

I WANTED TO KNOW SO I ASKED THEM IF IT WAS TRUE, WHAT THEY SAID, PERHAPS NSFW

I like to look at things from the point of view of how would an intellectual view this.  Normally, this would entail a scientific study without bias, with control groups and so forth.  My observation is that people’s behavior is not scientific when it comes to emotions and I’ve been told by  those of the female persuasion that they are more likely to be emotional.  I couldn’t argue the point, nor did I care to.

Therefore, I figured that asking some females if this was correct and what they’ve seen at work would be my best estimate as to whether this is true.  Please note that some of the comments while stated verbatim are not always complimentary and some are off-color.  Commenters:  Note, if you get pissed off, these are answers by women to a question I asked about working with females and is the study accurate.  If you just want to hate, please go elsewhere as if it’s directed at me, it’s a fart in the wind and that’s how I’ll treat it.

Here are some responses:

Females can be bitchy, catty. other names.

She slept her way to her position.

She got there because of her looks (or tits), not her ability.

She dresses like a whore.

There is one bitch who leans over in front of guys to get her way.

Women are the biggest backstabbers.

Sure there is an occasional guy who bugs me or tries to hit on me, but girls are far worse as a group.

Sure she was nice when she was one of us, but as soon as they gave her a little power, she turned on us like we’d done something to her.

She’s great to work for if you are female.  She only promotes women and you can get your way over any guys.

Women here can only manage 2 inches in front of their face.  They don’t get the big picture or work towards the company’s goals.

Once you make it clear you aren’t going to sleep with them, the men are much easier to work with or for.  The mission and strategy are clear and they can focus on that.

Guys will either just not say anything or will tell you how it is.  The girls say something to your face and f__k you over behind your back if you aren’t in their group.

Guys handle success and failure better than the girls I work with.  One of them always takes it personally and spends weeks trying to get back at you instead of trying to get work done.

I can never trust what a woman says to me.  Guys don’t lie as much or as well as girls do unless they want in your pants.

Women talk too much and I can’t get my work done.

When aunt Flo comes calling honey you better hide from that bitch.

Just get more than one female together in a group and watch the fireworks.

Guys are used to joking, I think they learned it in a locker room or something.  They can cuss each other out in a meeting  and it’s like a punch in the arm and then go have a beer.  A woman will hold something you say to her against you for the rest of your life.

Enough!  Most of these I got multiple times, which is why they made the list.  I stopped asking because this attitude was overwhelming me.

CONCLUSION

I can only surmise that it is tough for women to work with women.  I didn’t give it much thought until I read this study, but it does appear that women are more difficult towards other women at the workplace