THE ANTI-FEMINISTS
is a victory for all women,
rather than her alone, she
sounds to me like an egomaniac.”
The predominant reason women
cited for wanting a man in the top
office was their superior “decisionmaking
abilities”. But this isn’t about
management style, the anti-sister
stance goes deeper. We’ve embraced
the rewards of feminism but, instead
of bonding us, it’s created a divide.
Nowhere does this apply more than
the workplace.
THE�ANTI-SISTER�STANCE
Female workplace misogyny is
perhaps a result of the increasingly
competitive job market – the jobless
total in the UK has risen to 2.38
million, the highest for 13 years –
but, after years of collectively
battering the glass ceiling, now
we’re battering each other. One
senior executive at a successful
advertising firm said she had “finally
broken the glass ceiling”, only to
have another woman gun for her job,
telling management: “I can’t work
for her, she’s passive-aggressive.”
The strategy worked – the executive
lost the job to her accuser.
“Women are much more likely
to sabotage other women in the
workplace,” says psychotherapist
Rosjke Hasseldine and author of
The Silent Female Scream (Women’s
Bookshelf Publishing, £8.99). “They
don’t feel the same threat from a
man, regardless of his professional
status. It’s drummed into us that
there’s a finite window for successful
women, so we view all women as
our competition.”
A survey by the Workplace
Bullying Institute found women
choose other women as targets more
than 70% of the time. And, fuelled
by barbed comments about highprofile
women and celebrities in
the media – focusing on their outfits,
hair and weight – our appetite for
bitching is growing.
“It’s schadenfreude,” says Judi
James, author of The Body Language
Bible (Vermillion, £8.99). “We like to
think that, however rubbish our own
lives are, someone else is in a worse
position. We don’t like another
woman enjoying a perfect life full
of money, beauty, love and success,
particularly if obtaining that life
involves a lot of effort.”
Female bosses rarely get a good
rep. Anyone who’s seen the film The
September Issue can testify that sharing
a boardroom with Vogue editor Anna
Wintour would be a challenge. But
of how many men is that also true?
More telling is that many women often
aren’t comfortable with other women
who get a kick out of pure power – they
shock, surprise and, to some, disgust.
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“To our animal brains, the only
dominant female is the mother,”
explains James. “If she’s not nurturing
we struggle with her authority and
compete against her. Yet most female
bosses have male characteristics.
The business world is a set of rules
created by men and, if you want
higher status, you’ve got to behave
like a man – therefore female bosses
are not nurturing.”
Take Margaret Thatcher. As our
first female prime minister, she
should have been a feminist pin-up,
FEELING EMOTIONAL AT
WORK? SAVE YOUR TEARS FOR
WHEN YOU GET HOME
AFTER YEARS OF COLLECTIVELY
BATTERING THE GLASS
CEILING, NOW WE’RE BATTERING
EACH OTHER
but she exhibited what social
researchers have since coined Queen
Bee Syndrome, where female bosses
preserve their own personal power
instead of showing some sisterly
support. “Why should a woman
have to represent her whole sex?”
asks James. “Disassociating yourself
from other women can be a way to
prove your worth.”
Now Queen Bee Syndrome is
burgeoning in the UK workplace.
One female partner in a prestigious
law firm admitted she wouldn’t
employ a woman more attractive
than herself. “One problem of
high-ranking females is that they
behave so much like alpha males
to get where they are, they believe
a perk of their job is to get a pick of
the opposite sex,” says James. “Part
of her status is being the biggest
‘prize’ in the office.”
WORKPLACE�RIVALRY
Even when women don’t behave like
alpha personalities in the workplace
they face a different kind of criticism
– being too female. When Walsh
confessed on The Apprentice that she
hated working with women, she was
vilified. But according to Samantha
Brick, a producer who launched a
women-only TV company, she had
a point. “The constant bitchiness,
unchecked emotion, attention-seeking
and fashion rivalry was so fierce it
tore my staff apart. There was a time
I believed in the Sisterhood, but that
was before women at war led to my
emotional and financial ruin.”
So what is it about women
that causes inter-gender fighting?
“Women’s misogynistic behaviour
towards each other exposes
something deep and dark within
women’s relationships,” says
psychotherapist Rosjke Hasseldine.
“Behind the popular image of women
being good at relationships lies
a reality that blocks our ability
to support, protect and fight for
each other.”
She adds: “Without understanding
how patriarchy has got under our
skin, women are in danger of being
like crabs in a bucket. When one tries
to escape, the others pull the escapee
back down. Fear of not being liked,
of being alone, of the consequences
of escaping and standing up for your
rights and life, are strong motivators
that make women pull each other
back down to where it is sad, but
safe and familiar.”
The truth is we have such high
expectations of other women. We
buy magazines with women on the
cover and leave ones with men
on the shelf. Other women are
compelling – they matter, a lot. The
problem is, we set such impossible
standards for other women, and
ourselves, that no mere mortal could
live up to that ideal. We want ‘her’
to be talented but not full of herself,
successful yet not too rich, kind but
not a walkover, slim yet not thin,
curvy but not fat, and the list goes on.
“We women are held back by our
inability to accept role models,” says
James. “Jealousy runs through our
veins, when really we should look
at successful women and say:
‘How fabulous, I can make it,
too’.” Try it.
WORDS��KATE�FAITHFULL�AND�MARNIE�SUMMERFIELD�SMITH���PHOTOGRAPHY��CORBIS
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