Women`s Hostility to Women at Work: Myth or Reality

Are women really each other’s worse enemy or is it just a myth and a stereotype?  What does the research show about women’s hostility to other women, sometimes called bullying, in the workplace?  Bullying is a learned behavior that gets fine-tuned during our school years.  Girls and women tend to bully using more subtle nuanced types of tactics that are relationship-based.  Men’s ways of bullying tend to be more aggressive. Is female-to-female bullying an issue that deserves attention apart from general workplace bullying? Is discussing women’s hostility to women feeding into the stereotype of women’s “nasty” behavior at work?  Perhaps if women are bullying other women they need to be told to “put on your big girl panties” and deal with it, as the saying goes. Do we have different expectations of women’s behavior at work than we do of men’s behavior? If so, could that be playing a role in the perception that women bully women? Do we have a responsibility, as women, to support our “sisters” at work?

• To describe women’s ways of bullying
• To discuss the theoretical causes and contributing factors of women’s bullying
• To determine if bullying could be illegal harassment
• To explore the impact of women bullying their colleagues
• To identify management’s role in the prevention and intervention of women’s bullying
• To list the steps to take if targeted by a bully

• Theories as to whether women are more hostile to each other than to men
• Sexism and stereotypes in our perceptions of women and men’s bullying
• The nexus of bullying and harassment
• Impact of bullying on witnesses
• Tort Laws
• Tokenism

Some do not believe there is a difference in the ways men and women bully, and if there is, what is the big deal?  They may be right.  The research suggests, however, that the two genders do tend to bully using different tactics.  Because women’s ways of bullying are generally subtler, managers may not recognize it as bullying and ignore the behavior thereby giving tacit approval for it to continue.  This leads to poor morale, lack of trust in management, poor performance, absenteeism, and turnover.  This webinar discusses the phenomenon – or lack thereof- of women’s hostility to other women, outlines what one should do if bullied, and discusses management’s role in the prevention and intervention of the behavior.

All industries – it is not specific to any one industry though we hear much more about misconduct in nursing.