Do women bully women at work?

Hells yeah I have seen women bullying other women in the workplace. Pardon the generalization, but I have seen (or maybe I just selectively notice) Boomer women bullying the crap out of late Gen X women and sometimes vice versa.

I have also seen men bully women, women bully men and men bully other men.

The scenario is usually the following: person in a mid to senior level position has no idea how they got there and is scared out of their mind they might someday be found out as the fraud *they* really believe they are. Their lower status co-worker or direct report wears their heart on their sleeve and often appears "weaker". Pounce! Now the mid to senior level person feels better about themselves for a few hours.

This is the part of human resources I absolutely love: telling the mid to senior level person that leadership is service and they are driving away the employee's whose backs the business is built on. Change or die.

Sounds like high school all over again...

Women are the worst bullies. They absolutely become more reckless when they see the person they are targeting with the bully antics are at their limit ... then they start the "pity-me" sob stories when retaliated.

But where should they stop? I find some management even scared of dealing with these aggressively-immature women! Why hire them in the first place?

Women are the worst bullies. They absolutely become more reckless when they see the person they are targeting with the bully antics are at their limit ... then they start the "pity-me" sob stories when retaliated.

But where should they stop? I find some management even scared of dealing with these aggressively-immature women! Why hire them in the first place?

I teach in a middle school where almost all of the staff members are women. I often wonder why it is so hard for everyone to remember that we work with young teens but we are not young teens. Several years ago I co-taught with a younger, much prettier but more insecure and not-as-shy friend. After some time working together, I very slowly realized that she was going to our school administrators (men) on an almost daily basis with her "stories" about me. After some of her visits, I would be called down for a conference where it was apparent to me that minds were already made up. Attempted interventions by a few colleagues never caused my "friend" to miss a step in her eagerness to hurt me. My friend's bullying set off 2 years of harassment by my school adminstrator which almost cost me my job. I ended up missing the last 4 months of that school year due to stress and anxiety and started 5 years of medication and therapy to put myself back together again. My poor family suffered with me.

To this day, I still don't totally understand why it happened or even how it got so bad. It wasn't until a few months ago when I read an article about bullying in the workplace that I realized that I finally had a name for what happened to me. In my line of work, the students bully and are bullied - not the teachers.

My colleague is thankfully long gone. I still teach in the same building but with different administrators and have been in a teaching position which allows me to limit my interactions, both personal and professional, with other staff members and believe me, I do. My now 27 year old daughter, who watched me fall apart and then struggle to find myself again, realized early on that women would always be her worst enemy.

YES, I don't like to talk ill of other women, but this hits the mark. I'm a woman who graduated with honors from a top 20 university. Physically, I consider myself plain, but I do have one problem: I am a 36DD. I dress conservatively at work, but this coupled with my youth makes me the biggest target for bullying with females in the workspace.

In the past few years of entry-level positions, my experiences have been varied, but always consist of constant bullying. In one situation, I had one grandmother aged woman training me. I caught on faster than she expected because I'm a tech guru. She and another male employee degraded me. Luckily, my supervisor overheard the male coworker berating me after I had complained about them. Unfortunately, a week later, I had my cellphone stolen by the woman, and quit because I didn't feel safe around these people.

In another situation, I was working at my dream job. One of female employees-- in a leadership position-- who I was not working for or with at all insisted on getting to know me. She took me out to lunch, and took a lot of interest in me. At first I was flattered and oblivious to why she was so nice. She wasn't. She became really belligerent after a while because I started to notice that she was giving me hints that she was "in love" with the guy I was working under. I stopped accepting her gestures, but she would always stop by the office space next to mine-- scoffing, staring, and making me feel uncomfortable despite the fact that I told her I had a boyfriend.

These are just two examples. Currently, I'm looking for a job, but believe me, I don't trust women. I consider myself a feminist and support Hillary Clinton, but women can be the BIGGEST BULLIES.

Hi

You are absolutely correct, women bully other women the most.
I am from India and worked in some of the top firms there. I was 23 when i started working post an MBA degree, 5'8" and considered good looking. tho i was engaged and made no secret of it, guys in the office regularly hit on me. that was it. senior colleagues and certain peers took it upon themselves to brand and typecast me, to the extent it hurt my chances of a professional victory. It wasnt rumours, just carefully chosen 'playing-to-type' stories that did their job.
Mysecond job, i had two female bosses in quick succession and despite being in a sr position, had to endure their constant harassment. they were professonally tardy and i was always covering up. plus, they stole merit for my work, forced me to work unnaturally long hours and kept up a foul-mouthed, alpha-female-aggro, tantrum-throwing persona which defied anyone to cross them.
Boy! About time someone talked abt this, instead of one more infuriating study on how pretty women get ahead in the office by fair means or foul.

wow. thanks for sharing.

I definitely experienced a rude, unstable bullying boss who happened to be a woman. But as much as I detested this woman, I am loath to complain about women and their management styles. Men have done an awful lot of terrible things to people and to the earth in their pursuit of domination.

Along the same lines of Sharon's story, my mother is a high school teacher, and has recounted many stories to me of the women colleagues bullying each other and being flat-out nasty. I wonder if this happens more in the school setting because they spend most of their time around younger people, who bully often? Or because most teachers and administrators are women? Not sure. I have had a few intimidating experiences working with women myself, but nothing too bad. Mostly just occasional situations where they've shown me disrespect because they think I'm young, therefore I don't know anything. Happened more often at internships. I've always gotten along better with men...less drama.

I worked at a very large southern newspaper for almost 20 years and had a number of nice female bosses along the way. I went out on maternity leave and returned to a new female boss who seemed to hate me from the moment I returned. (Previous boss gave me an excellent review just before I left.) The new boss made my life absolute hell. By the time she fired me--telling me I was incompetent (the same year I won two prestigious awards for my work and found a new job with a national publisher), I knew where every bathroom was on the way to the office. I literally was sick every morning on the way to work. I cried every night when I got home. (I also found another job during this time, but opted to let her fire me, collect severance pay, and thumb my nose at her as I left.) Unfortunately, her bullying did more than cause me to lose my job. I moved from a long-time and beloved home to another state and my marriage broke up. I'm doing fine now and happy where I am, but I hope that karma gets her in the end.

I just read an entertaining and insightful book on the topic. Its called "All Eyes On Her." Its all about how, while not all women in the workplace are female-saboteurs, a few bad seeds tend to make the lives of others miserable.

The book makes the point that workplace bullying/sabotage between women comes from envy, which is a natural emotion. The problem is that women are trained not to show overt signs of it; they are trained to be nonconfrontational. Naturally, as a result, the venting that men normally get out of the way publicly goes underneath the surface (and erupts in the form of bullying) for women.

It's nothing new, unfortunately!

I definitely don't possess any corroborating data, particularly of a scientific nature... but could it be that men and women are equally capable of bullying behavior, and it just strikes a chord more soundly when it's a woman? Perhaps it just gets our attention a little more quickly.

So much of the bullying and sabotage is brought to us by the people who view tearing others down as a winning strategy for building themselves up. That kind of weasel could be wearing a skirt or pants.

I have been checking back to the comments out of curiosity. I sent in an earlier comment (I'm Sharon) and I admit that initally I was quite hesitant to send in a comment about having been bullied. Bullying is something that young children and teens do to each other - not grown women. On top of that, I am an experienced teacher who's supposed to be able to identify bullies!

I am definitely going to pick up a copy of "All Eyes Have It" as recommended by nycworkinggirl. Much of what she says applied to my situation. Was there competition/envy? At the time that never occurred to me because she was a younger, much prettier woman who was engaged to a handsome young man and I was married and busy raising teenagers but looking back, I'd have to say that competition/envy was a part of it. Part of the reason I never saw it coming was because I wasn't the one competing or being envious.

I see that my 27 year old daughter has more positive professional relationships with the women with whom she works. I don't hear any stories about the petty backstabbing at her job that I still witness in my school (and this is among much older women). I would like to believe that the competition/envy in the workplace, while part of human nature, is something that the younger generation of women are better equipped to handle. I have to believe that women won't always be so petty and vicious.

While men might have traditionally held women back but I'm not so sure that applies to the degree that it once did. I've worked with men in the retail world before entering teaching and it was much easier. More in your face and then it's done. Women are more insidious; the bullying and harrassment lasts forever.

Is it possible that female bosses target women instead of men because they think those of the same sex will be easier targets? Bullies get gratification from perceived power over others, and I'm guessing the success rate is higher with women. The path of least resistance, as it were?

Absolutely! I just left a job where I spent 8 years being bullied by a female co-worker. From day 1, she actively tried to get me fired, harassed me openly during the normal work day and sent me demeaning e-mails, sometimes even cc'ing the boss. She had input and probably even wrote my first evaluation (which was horrible)--I know this because in a group setting she quoted it word-for-word. I pointed it out to the boss who did nothing. When I returned from my first maternity leave, she appointed herself my supervisor (with no authority to do so), and gave me false information. When I disputed her (with factual information from our employee relations dept) she took it to the boss telling them I was causing problems and was being difficult and not a team player. Ideas I'd present in group settings were dismissed immediately and months later would be reintroduced by her and she would not take no for an answer--and would get credit. Three supervisors later and nothing changed...even when documentation was provided, I finally left. I had NO idea the level of stress she caused me on a daily basis. For three years, I shared a small office space with her...for the remaining five, cubicles next to each other. Three months out of there and I sleep better, communicate better with my family, and have a much more balanced feel to my life. And all that because of one person who felt threatened by me and would not be addressed by management.

Hm. I was motivated to sign up for an account just so that I can post to this forum. I'm a young woman just now entering the full-time workforce after getting my BA, so my experience isn't quite as extensive as some of the other ladies' postings.

But I'm going to have to add to Viviana's point. I think men and women are equally capable of this sort of behavior. Are we really focusing so much on just women's potential to bully?

Perhaps this sort of aggressive behavior seems so sensational because it's out of line with traditionally "feminine" qualities. Bullying, of course, is inexcusable. But how about some focus on conflict resolution, or ideas on how to assert oneself in a healthy manner appropriate to the workplace?

I think the likelihood of an employee to assert their power to the detriment of their coworkers depends not on their gender, but on their relative insecurities. Pointing out that women are "prone" to this sort of behavior does little to remedy the situation, and instead creates additional insecurities.

I have experienced workplace bullying first hand. I worked in a group of five women, managed by one more. One of the five got into a tiff with the boss and ended up leaving the company. Same day, the remaining four pretty much stopped talking to me, giving the full cold shoulder treatment. Previously, we all got along fine. I left after nine months of this AND a performance review stating that I needed to reach out to the group more - at which point I had to tell the boss what was going on. Hind sight, everything they had said about the girl in the position before me (who also quit), it seems that they did this twice!

Karma - only one of the five still works there. One of those who left applied for a position at my current company, for my current manager. She asked about her and I came clean on why I left. The response? "We don't want someone like that here." What goes around comes around, as mom always said!

Something on running meetings and people; Conducting Effective Meetings;
http://www.bizcovering.com/Management/Conducting-Effective-Meetings.100291

Bullying at work? How about turf wars, and how they start . . .
http://www.bizcovering.com/Management/When-Delegation-Doesnt-Work.107451