Women have accomplished a lot for recognition, success and power in systems and institutions that were originally built by and for men.
Despite these successes, we're seriously failing in other areas - the relationships between women at work. We still have a long way to go to combat the barriers to success - specifically the barriers that exist between women that manifest in what's known as lateral aggression.
The Workplace Bullying Institute statistics show that up to 80% of bullying occur between women.
Bullying can also be tough to spot when the bully who is a woman employs covert narcissistic tactics to bully another woman at work..
My questions to you are:
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’m looking forward to seeing your perspectives and responses to these questions and more importantly, giving others the opportunity to see different perspectives about the causes of women on women bullying at work.
Thank you for reading, supporting, sharing, subscribing and commenting below,
Women bully other women because of pathological envy and internalized misogyny. This is rampant in HR, as I have unfortunately had no choice but to work alongside HR my entire career. Many of the mediocre and low performers in HR tend to be the worst bullies yet they rise through the ranks. When someone has targeted you at work and they are bullying you: what they are really doing is disowning the bad parts of themselves and assigning them to you. Bullies burn themselves in effigy. Best to leave asap not all companies tolerate abuse.
Many years ago I watched two (extremely intelligent and capable) women compete with one another for the attention of a Director. It was horrid to watch, and, I felt, embarrassing for both of them. In hindsight, I realise that the Director deliberately pitted them against one another as a means of controlling them both. Just as men will often side with power, so too will women. If forced to compete with another woman for recognition, opportunities, rewards … they will compete, and bully, laterally. It is less about gender, and more about power. It just so happens that men hold the majority of powerful positions (in both male and female-dominated industries).
When I look back, it is women who have bullied me the most in the work place. From clerks, to nurses, to my fellow physicians. I have also had the many wonderful relationships with women in the workplace.
Each time, i think it was that I have threatened them in some way. I don't know if race played a role, I have never played the race card, but when I look back at who else was bullied, I am left standing with racialized women and men. Is it that we communicate differently/?Was I not a model enough minority? Is it that we are seen as there to provide a service? Is this just a coincidence? I don't know. But I am really tired, so much so that I am choosing where I spend my energy and with whom so much more wisely then before.
Women constantly have to prove their worth. Women have to be attractive.
As a young attractive woman I was bullied mercilessly by other, mostly older women. My cultural background was different to the predominantly Anglo-Saxon women around me, I had migrant parents from a conservative culture. I’m probably neurodivergent, I was very naive, which meant I had no clue to the game being played around me. I was an easy target for these women who thought I understood what was going on. The more helpful and submissive I was ( as taught to me by my parents patriarchal culture ) to try and fit in, the worse the abuse became. The more notice I received from men, the more I was punished by other women.
Competition was fierce and toxic. Senior positions were held by men. If you were a young, attractive woman with higher education, you became a target from older women , tho to put it in context these women had been brought up in a time where the only value women had was to be wives and mothers. They couldn’t afford to be superseded at work, their lives depended on it, no super, no support.
Girls my age bullied me to capture the limited resources and thought I was playing the same game as they did, that I knew the ‘rules’, that it was all fair game.
I found patriarchy toxic to all people, and the challenges even more severe due to intersectionality - race, culture, sexual orientation, disability, chronic illness…
In my case I developed severe depression and anxiety because of the intense bullying an an inability due to me being neurodivergent, to understand why I was being targeted.
Mar 12, 2023·edited Mar 12, 2023Liked by Nathalie Martinek PhD
I am a millenial black woman (Kenyan). I experience alot of bullying from Black Americans...it's very xenophobic if I may say. Currently navigating a challenging situation where someone who has been in the company longer than me is making it very hard to work collaboratively and goes to my boss to say things that defame my character yet I am so new..literally only 2 and a half months. I am disappointed to experience this from a black woman. I don't know how to navigate this it's frustrating me and sucking the joy out of me...I am glad I stumbled upon this post on LinkedIn because I have been crying the past few weeks just feeling like I am not sure about what to do.
In my experience the main perpetrator fell into existing work norms. There was a group that used these tactics rather successfully. They were vocal about their frequent discontent. As they were a group (of women) who had transfered a lot of workload of their superiors (who were mostly male) to themselves, they had a lot of political capital. My coworker was tasked with attempting to mediate their frequent disconnect. Unfortunately, she didn't change them, they influenced her. She was already inclined to avoid difficult interactions. This made it easy for her to fall into these destructive behaviors. Our supervisor at the same time was urging her to be more athorative and in control of her domain. She was too intimidated to do so with people outside our office, but I was right there and easy to trample upon. This gave the added opportunity to take credit for my ideas, and scapegoat me for what didn't work.
Such Big topic and i believe it stems culturally and is intergenerational Internalised misogyny yes but also the women who raised us. In a family system if a child, say female child, is fluid between scapegoat and golden child by the mother especially i believe they become empathic and super finely tuned to the changing domains and look for safety to walk around it. The hard wired golden child on the other hand has no accountability for their actions and now likely to become the bully because they don’t have consequences. Now fast forward to when these young girls become adults. What has been modelled to them?
How have they survived?
I believe victim and bully are the same coin different sides and are all a result of trauma and lack of safety.
This didn’t make any of it right but it’s a collective issue, an intergenerational one and one where ultimately there are only victims in the end.
I've been most rattled by younger women earlier in their careers leaning on me for support and mentorship while still in training. Because they are saturated by the culture of academia--of take, pillage, and plunder as it relates to intellectual content--they have acted out these practices towards me as someone "safe" who had fled those settings and was committed to actively detoxifying and decolonizing herself to avoid these practices. When guiding antiracism and other kinds of disruptive, transgressive, anti-oppression work, next-generation people (who are not quite as elder as I am) will act out all of the emotions they have about having to exist in oppressive training spaces. They start to weaponize their emotional reactions and distress regarding this material--and what it brings up about their experiences of being abused and exploited in academic training programs by OTHER people (not me)--against a safe person (like me) who is very clearly committed to not behaving this way. I've almost felt like a receptacle for all of the emotional reactions and anger that they cannot direct towards abusive supervisors. And they're hurling all the stuff at me that they want to direct at the perpetrator but cannot. And they're doing it to sabotage efforts to resist and walk away from these settings (because they're still actively assimilating into it so they can "succeed"). I've also seen younger women lean on me for validation of material and intellectual content (created relying primarily on my leadership and expertise as a professional further along in her career with more papers tied to her name)...and then poaching that material or reaoppropriating it under the name of another "elder" who has other papers they are more interested in. It's very transactional but deceptively packaged in praise, flattery, warmth, and girl-fanning. And then all the nonsense is denied and gaslit away by tears, accusations of my being oppressive, and the like.
From my experience, I'd say it's their own insecurities and biases. I was 'in the way' of another girl's supposed promotion. She wanted to be promoted to a senior role, but I was hired by upper management (the boss and the creative director - both males) to take that role. She took out her resentment on me and played the victim, which eventually made me the scapegoat. The men from upper management believed her story and went around telling my colleagues false stories (because of this, I think she was the golden child of the company).
Another instance is that a female manager didn't think I had what it takes to take up the role because I was "new" to the company, so she too was unpleasant, whereby she would make racist remarks and passive-aggressive responses at me. When I brought it up to management, they said "oh, that's Ana. Just ignore her."
My former boss was a typical "vulnerable" narcissist. She pretended to be left of center politically and to care about the oppressed. This was all part of her fake persona - the "bleeding heart liberal." In reality, I came to see how racist, status insecure, and low-talent she really was. I have a graduate degree, so do many other people at the workplace. She did not - she was EXTEREMELY embarrassed and insecure about this, and she tended to torture anyone with more education than she had. She was also insecure about her divorce and her multiple failed relationships. She took her anger out on everyone - ESPECIALLY her kids. She refused to buy them beds even though she made a six-figure salary. (they slept on blow up mattresses on the floor) Her messed-up behavior at work was only overshadowed by her atrocious behavior in her personal life. Her father was a schizophrenic and she lived in deep fear that she, too, was mentally ill. I think she is mentally ill - but why not deal with your problems and get medicated...instead of making your life challenges everyone else's problem? She has always believed herself to be somehow unique and deserving of special treatment, and believes that no matter how awful her behavior, she never owed anyone an apology. She constantly took credit for her employee's work and then insulted those same employees behind their back. I see her now clearly - as a person with a host of severe mental, social, emotional and spiritual problems - who will never get better. She is a severe alcoholic and will never get sober. I feel pity for her but I am so glad to be out of her orbit. She will harm anyone who gets within 10 feet of her.
Dec 17, 2023·edited Dec 17, 2023Liked by Nathalie Martinek PhD
I think women bully due to their own insecurities same as children, teens or even domestic abusers. The only reason a person who dislikes someone needs others to dislike them, as well, is due to their lack of confidence; a bully lacks the confidence to have an opinion that differs from others as others support validates their existence.
As for the people that jump on the bandwagon and engage in the bullying alongside the bully, they often lack confidence, as well. It takes a strong person to not engage in the behavior that they see taking place around them as despite unhealthy, there is a sense of belonging and connection people feel when part of a group, even if the group is only connected as a result of a shared dislike of another or more so, to avoid being a target.
It's never about the target; it's always about the bully.
Envy or internalised misogyny cannot be the reason behind bullying of women who have disabilities, impairments or aesthetic concerns.
“She’s just jealous babe” is a disingenuous high school trope which makes no sense and does nothing to address the issue or shed light on why it happens.
I don’t know what causes it, perhaps it’s part of evolutionary psychology but sweeping it under the rug with illogical clichés certainly isn’t an explanation.
My worst oppressors, professionally, were women who were a decade or so older than me. To get to where they were, they had put up with a lot of abuse and humiliating sexism from men. They often had to choose between profession, marriage, and family. It was like they had grown up in an abusive family only it was their work. That's where my empathy ends, however. At some point, a person from an abusive family (or work environment) must make the decision to either perpetuate the abuse they had endured (which means becoming the oppressor) or decide that they would never make some suffer the way they had. I think the women bullies I've encountered either consciously or unconsciously chose the former.
Man in his mid forties here. I was on an executive board for 10 years. The board was 50% women.
I often wonder if human aggression will ever go away. The least aggressive woman I ever worked with who had achieved the most power was a marathon runner. I think she got her aggression out in sports. I loved working with her.
One other woman regularly engaged in negative campaigns against other people that she thought were incompetent.
Another woman was just ruthlessly cruel with anyone she felt attacked by. I think her aggression was a compensation for not being very intelligent, I’m sorry to say.
One woman was pretty meek until she sensed vulnerability. Then she would pounce. She never expressed vulnerability, btw.
Other women had really great skills, like asking questions counter to the mood in the room without seeming confrontational. Which was a very good thing, because it invited us all to question ourselves much more effectively than if she was cocky or flippant. In fact, almost any time a woman expressed skepticism, it worked to spread the skepticism better than when a man did (exceptions, of course). I think skepticism can seem like an attack to defend against and a few of the women (not all) had extracted it right down to its core so no one felt afraid. That was powerful.
But the worst thing I ever saw was in my personal life, having coffee with a Latina ex girlfriend who had been dressed to kill that day, talking to her on the sidewalk as we left the coffee shop. A woman in a group of women walking down the street had the most fowl look on her face as she came towards us. When she got closer, I realized she was scowling at my ex. I think she hated her because she was beautiful. At the time, she was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. I think that’s immense power to be jealous of.
It is disappointing that this is an issue as it is a struggle to get gender pay parity and equality. I feel that women may bully other women because they see them as competition. There may be personal scars and deep routed insecurities or some other reason that is not obvious, which does not make it acceptable in any way. I am a big advocate and ambassador for DE&i and would move aside happily to support other women in my work and mentor/ support women to achieve their aspirations. However I see it a lot more recently as women are trying to achieve success that they will stamp on others that previously may have been friends and bring them down just to feel powerful. Being from a diverse ethnic background if I was faced with this issue and prey to this vs a colleague not from a diverse background, would an organisation take sides with me over a colleague in this scenario? Would all the achievement past and present be disregarded? I can
Imagine Imposter syndrome, mental health, defeat would all spiral in post this and it can become a very toxic place for the victim to be faced with and lose all interest in working.
Women bully other women because of pathological envy and internalized misogyny. This is rampant in HR, as I have unfortunately had no choice but to work alongside HR my entire career. Many of the mediocre and low performers in HR tend to be the worst bullies yet they rise through the ranks. When someone has targeted you at work and they are bullying you: what they are really doing is disowning the bad parts of themselves and assigning them to you. Bullies burn themselves in effigy. Best to leave asap not all companies tolerate abuse.
Many years ago I watched two (extremely intelligent and capable) women compete with one another for the attention of a Director. It was horrid to watch, and, I felt, embarrassing for both of them. In hindsight, I realise that the Director deliberately pitted them against one another as a means of controlling them both. Just as men will often side with power, so too will women. If forced to compete with another woman for recognition, opportunities, rewards … they will compete, and bully, laterally. It is less about gender, and more about power. It just so happens that men hold the majority of powerful positions (in both male and female-dominated industries).
When I look back, it is women who have bullied me the most in the work place. From clerks, to nurses, to my fellow physicians. I have also had the many wonderful relationships with women in the workplace.
Each time, i think it was that I have threatened them in some way. I don't know if race played a role, I have never played the race card, but when I look back at who else was bullied, I am left standing with racialized women and men. Is it that we communicate differently/?Was I not a model enough minority? Is it that we are seen as there to provide a service? Is this just a coincidence? I don't know. But I am really tired, so much so that I am choosing where I spend my energy and with whom so much more wisely then before.
Patriarchy.
Women constantly have to prove their worth. Women have to be attractive.
As a young attractive woman I was bullied mercilessly by other, mostly older women. My cultural background was different to the predominantly Anglo-Saxon women around me, I had migrant parents from a conservative culture. I’m probably neurodivergent, I was very naive, which meant I had no clue to the game being played around me. I was an easy target for these women who thought I understood what was going on. The more helpful and submissive I was ( as taught to me by my parents patriarchal culture ) to try and fit in, the worse the abuse became. The more notice I received from men, the more I was punished by other women.
Competition was fierce and toxic. Senior positions were held by men. If you were a young, attractive woman with higher education, you became a target from older women , tho to put it in context these women had been brought up in a time where the only value women had was to be wives and mothers. They couldn’t afford to be superseded at work, their lives depended on it, no super, no support.
Girls my age bullied me to capture the limited resources and thought I was playing the same game as they did, that I knew the ‘rules’, that it was all fair game.
I found patriarchy toxic to all people, and the challenges even more severe due to intersectionality - race, culture, sexual orientation, disability, chronic illness…
In my case I developed severe depression and anxiety because of the intense bullying an an inability due to me being neurodivergent, to understand why I was being targeted.
I am a millenial black woman (Kenyan). I experience alot of bullying from Black Americans...it's very xenophobic if I may say. Currently navigating a challenging situation where someone who has been in the company longer than me is making it very hard to work collaboratively and goes to my boss to say things that defame my character yet I am so new..literally only 2 and a half months. I am disappointed to experience this from a black woman. I don't know how to navigate this it's frustrating me and sucking the joy out of me...I am glad I stumbled upon this post on LinkedIn because I have been crying the past few weeks just feeling like I am not sure about what to do.
In my experience the main perpetrator fell into existing work norms. There was a group that used these tactics rather successfully. They were vocal about their frequent discontent. As they were a group (of women) who had transfered a lot of workload of their superiors (who were mostly male) to themselves, they had a lot of political capital. My coworker was tasked with attempting to mediate their frequent disconnect. Unfortunately, she didn't change them, they influenced her. She was already inclined to avoid difficult interactions. This made it easy for her to fall into these destructive behaviors. Our supervisor at the same time was urging her to be more athorative and in control of her domain. She was too intimidated to do so with people outside our office, but I was right there and easy to trample upon. This gave the added opportunity to take credit for my ideas, and scapegoat me for what didn't work.
Such Big topic and i believe it stems culturally and is intergenerational Internalised misogyny yes but also the women who raised us. In a family system if a child, say female child, is fluid between scapegoat and golden child by the mother especially i believe they become empathic and super finely tuned to the changing domains and look for safety to walk around it. The hard wired golden child on the other hand has no accountability for their actions and now likely to become the bully because they don’t have consequences. Now fast forward to when these young girls become adults. What has been modelled to them?
How have they survived?
I believe victim and bully are the same coin different sides and are all a result of trauma and lack of safety.
This didn’t make any of it right but it’s a collective issue, an intergenerational one and one where ultimately there are only victims in the end.
I've been most rattled by younger women earlier in their careers leaning on me for support and mentorship while still in training. Because they are saturated by the culture of academia--of take, pillage, and plunder as it relates to intellectual content--they have acted out these practices towards me as someone "safe" who had fled those settings and was committed to actively detoxifying and decolonizing herself to avoid these practices. When guiding antiracism and other kinds of disruptive, transgressive, anti-oppression work, next-generation people (who are not quite as elder as I am) will act out all of the emotions they have about having to exist in oppressive training spaces. They start to weaponize their emotional reactions and distress regarding this material--and what it brings up about their experiences of being abused and exploited in academic training programs by OTHER people (not me)--against a safe person (like me) who is very clearly committed to not behaving this way. I've almost felt like a receptacle for all of the emotional reactions and anger that they cannot direct towards abusive supervisors. And they're hurling all the stuff at me that they want to direct at the perpetrator but cannot. And they're doing it to sabotage efforts to resist and walk away from these settings (because they're still actively assimilating into it so they can "succeed"). I've also seen younger women lean on me for validation of material and intellectual content (created relying primarily on my leadership and expertise as a professional further along in her career with more papers tied to her name)...and then poaching that material or reaoppropriating it under the name of another "elder" who has other papers they are more interested in. It's very transactional but deceptively packaged in praise, flattery, warmth, and girl-fanning. And then all the nonsense is denied and gaslit away by tears, accusations of my being oppressive, and the like.
From my experience, I'd say it's their own insecurities and biases. I was 'in the way' of another girl's supposed promotion. She wanted to be promoted to a senior role, but I was hired by upper management (the boss and the creative director - both males) to take that role. She took out her resentment on me and played the victim, which eventually made me the scapegoat. The men from upper management believed her story and went around telling my colleagues false stories (because of this, I think she was the golden child of the company).
Another instance is that a female manager didn't think I had what it takes to take up the role because I was "new" to the company, so she too was unpleasant, whereby she would make racist remarks and passive-aggressive responses at me. When I brought it up to management, they said "oh, that's Ana. Just ignore her."
My former boss was a typical "vulnerable" narcissist. She pretended to be left of center politically and to care about the oppressed. This was all part of her fake persona - the "bleeding heart liberal." In reality, I came to see how racist, status insecure, and low-talent she really was. I have a graduate degree, so do many other people at the workplace. She did not - she was EXTEREMELY embarrassed and insecure about this, and she tended to torture anyone with more education than she had. She was also insecure about her divorce and her multiple failed relationships. She took her anger out on everyone - ESPECIALLY her kids. She refused to buy them beds even though she made a six-figure salary. (they slept on blow up mattresses on the floor) Her messed-up behavior at work was only overshadowed by her atrocious behavior in her personal life. Her father was a schizophrenic and she lived in deep fear that she, too, was mentally ill. I think she is mentally ill - but why not deal with your problems and get medicated...instead of making your life challenges everyone else's problem? She has always believed herself to be somehow unique and deserving of special treatment, and believes that no matter how awful her behavior, she never owed anyone an apology. She constantly took credit for her employee's work and then insulted those same employees behind their back. I see her now clearly - as a person with a host of severe mental, social, emotional and spiritual problems - who will never get better. She is a severe alcoholic and will never get sober. I feel pity for her but I am so glad to be out of her orbit. She will harm anyone who gets within 10 feet of her.
I just want to be left alone.
I think women bully due to their own insecurities same as children, teens or even domestic abusers. The only reason a person who dislikes someone needs others to dislike them, as well, is due to their lack of confidence; a bully lacks the confidence to have an opinion that differs from others as others support validates their existence.
As for the people that jump on the bandwagon and engage in the bullying alongside the bully, they often lack confidence, as well. It takes a strong person to not engage in the behavior that they see taking place around them as despite unhealthy, there is a sense of belonging and connection people feel when part of a group, even if the group is only connected as a result of a shared dislike of another or more so, to avoid being a target.
It's never about the target; it's always about the bully.
Envy or internalised misogyny cannot be the reason behind bullying of women who have disabilities, impairments or aesthetic concerns.
“She’s just jealous babe” is a disingenuous high school trope which makes no sense and does nothing to address the issue or shed light on why it happens.
I don’t know what causes it, perhaps it’s part of evolutionary psychology but sweeping it under the rug with illogical clichés certainly isn’t an explanation.
My worst oppressors, professionally, were women who were a decade or so older than me. To get to where they were, they had put up with a lot of abuse and humiliating sexism from men. They often had to choose between profession, marriage, and family. It was like they had grown up in an abusive family only it was their work. That's where my empathy ends, however. At some point, a person from an abusive family (or work environment) must make the decision to either perpetuate the abuse they had endured (which means becoming the oppressor) or decide that they would never make some suffer the way they had. I think the women bullies I've encountered either consciously or unconsciously chose the former.
Very insightful
Man in his mid forties here. I was on an executive board for 10 years. The board was 50% women.
I often wonder if human aggression will ever go away. The least aggressive woman I ever worked with who had achieved the most power was a marathon runner. I think she got her aggression out in sports. I loved working with her.
One other woman regularly engaged in negative campaigns against other people that she thought were incompetent.
Another woman was just ruthlessly cruel with anyone she felt attacked by. I think her aggression was a compensation for not being very intelligent, I’m sorry to say.
One woman was pretty meek until she sensed vulnerability. Then she would pounce. She never expressed vulnerability, btw.
Other women had really great skills, like asking questions counter to the mood in the room without seeming confrontational. Which was a very good thing, because it invited us all to question ourselves much more effectively than if she was cocky or flippant. In fact, almost any time a woman expressed skepticism, it worked to spread the skepticism better than when a man did (exceptions, of course). I think skepticism can seem like an attack to defend against and a few of the women (not all) had extracted it right down to its core so no one felt afraid. That was powerful.
But the worst thing I ever saw was in my personal life, having coffee with a Latina ex girlfriend who had been dressed to kill that day, talking to her on the sidewalk as we left the coffee shop. A woman in a group of women walking down the street had the most fowl look on her face as she came towards us. When she got closer, I realized she was scowling at my ex. I think she hated her because she was beautiful. At the time, she was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. I think that’s immense power to be jealous of.
It is disappointing that this is an issue as it is a struggle to get gender pay parity and equality. I feel that women may bully other women because they see them as competition. There may be personal scars and deep routed insecurities or some other reason that is not obvious, which does not make it acceptable in any way. I am a big advocate and ambassador for DE&i and would move aside happily to support other women in my work and mentor/ support women to achieve their aspirations. However I see it a lot more recently as women are trying to achieve success that they will stamp on others that previously may have been friends and bring them down just to feel powerful. Being from a diverse ethnic background if I was faced with this issue and prey to this vs a colleague not from a diverse background, would an organisation take sides with me over a colleague in this scenario? Would all the achievement past and present be disregarded? I can
Imagine Imposter syndrome, mental health, defeat would all spiral in post this and it can become a very toxic place for the victim to be faced with and lose all interest in working.