As the modern occupational landscape continues to increasingly include female entrepreneurs, leaders, and professionals, we are also increasingly seeing a shift in our expectations of workplace standards and dynamics. It’s no secret that negative biases exist for women in the workplace, but what’s interesting is that other women tend to perpetuate these negative biases as much as men, if not more.
According to a study by the Workplace Bullying Institute, “Women are bullied by other women about 80% of the time.” This statistic illustrates why women in positions of power or authority are having to work extra hard to prove their value and worth as leaders in addition to performing their duties and roles. It seems to be a combination of a sort of ‘trickle-down’ effect of the angst and frustration that women generally feel in the workforce coupled with a sense of adversarial competition typically engendered in women to feel toward one another, usually beginning at an early age. These factors, of course, preclude other facets women face in the workplace, including the misogyny and lack of respect women experience in so many industries.
What does this do to the work environment where these dynamics exist? One result is that the women in positions of leadership or power develop defense mechanisms or behaviors which overcompensate for role confusion which can often lead to mirroring masculine toxicity or ‘queen bee’ syndrome, as some have termed it. Others who can’t seem to manage the adversity they face as a woman in charge retreat back to the status of the herd, deciding the pressure to please everyone and combat the extra layer of adversity is not worth it.
How do we overcome this issue, collectively, as women? We must start with gaining self-awareness in our perceptions of women in power. For example, do we feel slighted or turned off if we perceive she has ‘resting bitch face’, is being too assertive, at times unapproachable, is curt with her responses? What if she neglects to ask us how our weekend was, if Sally’s softball game was victorious, or whether or not you’ve seen the latest episode of the Bachelor? Does that mean she thinks she’s above us, and our lives are trivial to her? We must start recognizing that these women are facing the same sorts of adversity as we are with the added layer that they must tow a line of emotional distance and what may read as apathy or ascendancy in order to keep a professional line drawn between themselves and their cohorts (oftentimes while balancing the goal to earn respect by their male counterparts).
Despite the molasses-like pace that women are making toward breaking the glass ceiling due to multifactorial issues inhibiting progress, one thing we as women can be cognizant of and task ourselves with in order to ebb along this slow progress is the initiative to see one another as a collective force in this fight toward equality. If we recognize this and actively support one another, even if it’s in the form of passive understanding or compassion, then we’ll eventually build a network of inner strength and bonding which will embolden us to be the best version of ourselves and increase our presence in the professional world which we currently underrepresent.