Dark side of women in business - sisterhood and competition
originally posted on 2021 on Medium
Since I have been writing, I have held on to more general topics, withholding thoughts about diving into the one I am most passionate about — women in business and equality.
There is more coverage about the equality of men and women, who is stopping who, the glass ceiling and the pay difference. At some point, I might get into this too, but today I would like to open up the topic of relationships between women in business.
It is a wide known fact that women tend to be better in relationships than men. One reason behind it is socialization of the early years when girls are taught to avoid conflict. We are taught to be nice, cooperate, and get along with each other. Our games are usually unstructured and collaborative; in other words, without rules and a designated leader. When girls disagree while playing, we usually quit playing or change activities to avoid conflict.
Thus, early play experiences do not teach us to negotiate and to resolve conflict in an assertive manner.
Instead, girls are more likely to use passive aggressive behaviors such as malicious gossiping, staring and giggling, ridiculing, writing anonymous notes and excluding someone in response to conflict with peers.
Even now, being a grown-up, when I look at how my four year old daughter plays I see a difference in her tactics of the doll role play when playing with me or with my husband. When playing Anna and Elsa with me, those well known sisters need to have equality over everything, or else one will not speak to the other. Whilst playing with my husband, the tone is completely different and there are no issues over one having more power or things than the other.
I have researched about it, wondering about the reasons behind it, as apart from the doll play in my childhood, the difference in relationship between men and women and women and women are so different at the workplace. Even more, I have felt and seen how women in so many cases are ones who stop the success of other women. And if not stop, then make it as difficult as possible.
What I found out is that women’s friendships are based on a flattened hierarchy in which friends have equal status. According to Chesler (2001), “Women demand an egalitarian, dyadic reciprocity and are, therefore, more threatened by the slightest change in status” (p.109). Determinants of status might include personal attributes, prestige, power, popularity, or possessions, and include factors, such as youth, attractiveness, clothing, jewelry, house, car, intelligence, education, competency at work, job advancement, popularity, and social standing, and wealth of spouse (Heim & Murphy, 2001).
Which means that if one of the women in a group succeeds in anything mentioned above, the relationship dynamic changes too. Now, depending on the women in the group, what may happen is behaviour called indirect aggression, and in the workplace or between grownups it can be a slightly more advanced way of passive aggressiveness to make sure that the woman succeeding is brought down or pushed out from an otherwise equal group.
About the photo - this is actually tea called “For Loved Ones”, shot in macro. Messy yet beautiful, like us women