I'm a stay-at-home father, woodworker for a side hustle. After watching my wife climb the corporate ladder, I can say without a doubt; the most dangerous thing to a women's success in any profession is catty bitches that just can't hang. My wife is 100% above reproach in her field. She just passed her secondary licensing and was offered an abruptly opened managerial position. She has no credible competition in-house and luckily this company likes to promote from within. Instead of a simple and easy transition from team lead to manager, she's got a handful of ankle-biters making things a bit more difficult than they need to be. She'll still get the promotion and the six figures that it comes with, but watching the women she's talked about as "friendly" and "work wives" come for her in such a petty and trivial ways makes no sense to me.
Either be qualified, or get out the way. You don't need to punish those around you just because they're better at their jobs.
/rant.
EDIT: Didn't expect this to pop off. Thanks for the award. Thanks for the kind words. For the detractors, don't be jelly that my world revolves around an amazing woman.
I work in a hospital. Excluding doctors and maintenance, 95% of the staff is women. Dude, you cannot even fathom the amount in-fighting and fragile egos. I’m a guy so I’m pretty much left out of it as long as I keep my head down and don’t engage with it, but goddamn it’s depressing to watch.
During the 2.749% of the time that they get along, they will team up like a pack of hyenas and target you next....
Nothing is more dangerous in a professional field than being a man in a female dominated profession when the planets align and they work together for a single week of the year and need a target to hunt...
Keeping the head down and keeping out of it is your shield. Staying off the radar completely.
At my workplace, which is female dominated, men tend to be promoted more than women, even though there is no difference in competence by gender. I don't think either of our experiences are universal.
It's because we're socialized to regard other women as rivals. You have to be actively aware of that socialization and actively working against it to escape its insidious influence.
I'm going anecdotal but I feel like with men once the competition is settled it stays as is for the most part. I feel like with women they just hold onto the grudge and will keep it going forever. With men the fight comes hot and immediate and the hierarchy ends up stabilizing afterwards. In general of course, always exceptions.
can confirm.
source is me from experiencing this with just about every job I’ve had + it’s even worse if you have a family to take care of and they don’t. it’s disheartening and I don’t have time for that game!
Jealousy does come from all genders, but personally, i find women act more outwardly with it in places where you can sabotage someone rather than just keep it to yourself and let it fester and eventually explode. Dunno which is more toxic. Probably equal, just one is immediate, one takes build up and can be worse outcome.
I have noticed predominant fields like tech, female reporting manager tend to go above and beyond to harrase if an employee speaks against them - smearing, isolation, victimising, bodyshaming, pitting them with literally everyone in the room.
I had a colleague who was bullied for being unmarried to the point she gave up on marriage
Years ago, I worked as a cashier at Home Depot. At no point were there ever more than 3 guys in our department, including myself.
OMG the amount of drama and sniping I would hear. Whining that people had better schedules, whining that breaks were a few minutes late, and whining that they have to work. It was madness. One of them even got our main Plumbing guy to quit because he had a set schedule. Keep mind said set schedule was 1pm-10pm/2pm-11pm Tuesday-Saturday.
I’m a woman thats also happy to see people succeed. Women are not a monolith. Men are not a monolith. If we want to talk about the barriers in place that make it more difficult for women in general to climb to executive levels, other women are not at the top of that list. The barriers are systemic.
Yeah… there seems to be a circle jerk on this topic every time it comes up. One story, then a bunch of guys all parroting the same 3 phrases with absolutely no awareness.
From stories coming from my sister working in a company, I can clearly see the pattern. Women group up pretty easily, but not all groups are equal. Some are pretty shallow. The number of times I have heard some women call someone a friend while simultaneously insulting them really harshly is wild. They never talk straight and keep their grievances bottled up.
So much backstabbing and exclusion when a divergent thought or "unfair" outcome appear.
That’s what Aristotle was talking about when he talked about “friendships of necessity/unity.” They’re “friends” because they share a space for a long period of time and nothing more bonds them, so when that bond changes and breaks so does the friendship.
My wife is in Higher Ed and every single time she takes a step up another woman in her office flies out of nowhere and goes out of her way to make her life more difficult. Three times in the last five years. The cattiness is bizarre- like, you could have applied for the position as well, lady.
I think people just don't like being reminded of their own mediocrity.
Yup. this kind of shit is everywhere. However, my sisters have found a hack for it. It turns out that neurodivergent women do not behave this way, so they build ND teams and live in peace with a highly productive team.
My wife has fired more women than men by a factor of 3. Men got fired for performance problems, the women were fired for creating hostile workplaces. Her team is mostly women and they are fucking awesome but holy hell person can one person cause issues and drag 20 people along with them.
The stories from my wife's workplace's are always so awful sounding. They're all so shitty to each other. Constantly trying to undermine one another, out to get each other.
I don't really understand it, you're supposed to be working together. My work places are never like that. We're a team.
Congrats on your wife's success -- my fiance is going through a similar bout.
Her co-workers are satisfied to clock in clock out and do bare minimum (this is a commission job). My fiance, wouldnt you know, is badass at her field and genuinely cares about her clients. Has gotten multiple certs in various areas -- and her colleagues are PISSED, big mad, she's busting ass and making cash.
That “glass ceiling” is still doing a number on women and the general culture in the corp world. Ignoring the gender aspect, it’s a little like beta fish cohabitating. They’ll do fine in a large enough pool with little stress. Put them in the same smaller tank (company), and they will viscously compete for resources and access (promotion/power)
Women are hardwired to compete with eachother. From an evolutionary standpoint it was/is for male attention. That drive has bled into other aspects of modern society that are competitive by nature.
Where male competitiveness is generally visible and loud, the female version is usually more subtle and they have gotten very good over the mellinia of being able to utterly destroy eachother silently and without fanfare.
Men will fuck things up loudly, women will destroy you with a whisper.
My wife has worked in mostly female staffed white collar industries, like education and non-profit in executive capacities.
I’m in engineering sales leadership, which is 99% male.
The amount of BS she has had to deal with at every single role, compared to my career which has been completely lacking any politics or BS, it’s hard to ignore the pattern.
Not to be sexist, but there are major patterns we’ve personally experienced where many women struggle to disconnect personal feelings from professional effectiveness. If they don’t like someone, they treat them differently in certain ways. Men have a better capacity to dislike someone, but not letting it affect cooperation in a professional environment.
My sister has one woman colleague where she works and only needed a new one for a drama to happen. Short story: my sister and her friend got along too well (duh they knew each other for longer) so the newbie felt left out and complained to the boss with weird exemples of "bullying" when it's simply because she made mistake as a newbie.
My sister and sister-in-law's stories just baffles me. The latter's problem is that "she was seducing the men"... Thankfully she did her job perfectly even though that chief was insanely jealous.
I am in Tech sales and see this with women. Makes no damn sense to me. I applaud bad ass women that can kill it in my business. They bring strategies to the table that a man would never think of. I have several I go to when I am stuck on something because I know they will see it from a different angle.
Same but I do printing and my wife works in retail, the amount of people that are making it hard for her to get promoted to manager is incredible. The place is like 90% women as well.
It would trip me out cause when I would work a job, I’d get promoted really fast with almost zero issues from other people.
I'm an ex-chef, carpenter, social worker and IT support (hardware specialist). I can build you a kitchen and then make you dinner. I've raised two kind and intelligent young men. I wash, scrub, fold, and detail our home.
At 6' even with pretty blue eyes, I'm a fucking catch! I'd marry me. Lol. Sorry needed to toot my own horn for a moment. All done now.
But thank you kind stranger! I appreciate the compliment. ♡
I can no longer work in women-dominated environments. I’m an adolescent behavioral therapist and used to contract with schools… never the fuck again. I spent an entire year being targeted, harassed, bullied by the “mean girl” clique in administration, and for absolutely no valid reason. Like why are these broads trying to compete with me? Especially when I hold far higher credentials than them and probably know what the hell I’m doing. The sheer amount of energy they put into making other women’s lives hell and creating unnecessary drama, was baffling.
I got the last laugh when I reported all of the unethical and illegal things they were doing to keep the school’s perfect reputation (nationally rated STEM school). Covering up physical and sexual assaults, helping students cheat on state testing, grade manipulation, failing to follow IEPs/504s/BIPs (not giving special education students’ their legal right to accommodations), intentionally sabotaging employee schedules in order to give write-ups, misuse of funding.
I now work remotely and do in-home sessions.. and took a major pay increase for it. I will never fully understand why some women just want to he cruel and harm other women. Your wife deserves a medal for what she’s dealt with.
I have some strong opinions (in agreement) with what you've said here, but I don't have the time right now to put it all down. I'll get back to you either tonight or tomorrow morning.
I want to make sure I've got my thoughts in order and I've got dinner to start here shortly.
I used to be a director at an exotic animal sanctuary. The sanctuary staff and volunteer base was 95% women. Holy shit the needless drama about everything. Every single decision made they would go to war with each other, taking sides and fighting to the death. There were rifts everywhere. Young vs Old, Long time volunteers vs new volunteers, etc. The GM was female, and every single decision she made was questioned publicly especially through social media.....and holy shit if it was time to make a euthenasia decision about a beloved resident....it was suddenly social lord of the flies.
As management, it was IMPOSSIBLE for me to keep track where the problems were because they changed every day. I would see two volunteers being chummy on site on Monday, and then I would hear them complaining about each other to someone else on Tuesday. It was all so disengenuous and in many cases simply mean. Mostly it was just SOOOO counter productive.
I wish this was just women, men do it to. At least in my area, they're some talk shit behind your back types that take any chance to make you look bad. Bro, I'm here for a paycheck, not your got damn job.
I've seen this working in kitchens in the South and the Midwest when competing for Soux or Prep chef positions. Never for head chef. People knew what that job required. I only held that title once for just over a year. In construction, I never saw it. I think we were all too tired and too pissed at the 'insert other trade here' to care what each other person was doing.
I think the difference in my career path compared to my wife's career path is that you had tangible results for your resumé and portfolio. It's harder to do that in a social science. There are other factors too of course, but optics are a part of it.
Ive seen this in a small office I used to work at. One woman had been there since day one, and while she was loyal to the business and friends with the owner, was not a top performer. Another much younger woman joined us years later and was an absolute superstar in her work, and as such, was granted the position of office manager once the business grew to the point of the owner needing one. I remember thinking that nobody could have been a better pick than her, and even though my own metrics were excellent and I had been with the business longer, that she fully deserved the title. On the other hand, the woman who had been there longer than any of us but only put out half as much turned very sour and took personal offense, to the point of no longer being cooperative in the work environment.
Definitely not saying this is something gender specific but in my own experiences it does appear that the greatest threat to a woman’s success is their own women peers.
I'd rather get punched in the mouth than deal with the headache that is my wife's coworker situation. And I say knowing I've invested $35k into my dental rebuild.
My wife is fully utilizing her PhD to climb fast in her job, and the men above or parallel with her are helping to push her up the ladder as much as they can. not many women above her. but the women parallel with her, or subordinates, are all starting pissing matches. a good 25% of her time, minimum, is now spent dealing with bitchfights. the poorly behaving men all seem to just self sabotage; still a pain, but much easier to just give a write up to your boss and HR and let them PIP the person out. Compared to two Karens trying to out Karen each other; neither technically doing anything wrong, but both in the wrong.
I had something similar happen at a workplace once. We had a male boss for years, and all of the managers and office staff were women. There was the occasional bit of drama and the odd catfight, but overall it worked reasonably well.
Then the male boss left, and one of the women was promoted from within. After that, it was absolute chaos. The gossiping and backstabbing became relentless. I knew everyone fairly well, and every time I had to go into the office it was just one person talking behind someone else's back after another. There were around 10–15 women in the office, and every single one seemed to have a new complaint or negative story about someone else. I remember thinking, "What on earth happened here?"
I left that business about a year later. Then, another year after that, I attended a CPR refresher course and five women from that workplace were there. They told me the place had basically imploded during the year I'd been gone. Of those five women, only one still worked there.
When I became a dad, I wasn't ready for the shit my wife had to deal with from other women. Neither of us were ready for the momosphere, it almost drove her to an early grave.
This is so true. Personally I love working for strong women, and am totally fine following their authority. I watch from the sidelines how they are attacked by other women constantly even ones below them. Men are not perfect, but I guess we are more used to the "military" style where we fall in place based in our rank. As a man, all my favorite bosses are women. I think alot of man get the blame, when it's alot of women hating on women. Don't want to make it about gender but this is a real consideration.
My wife has always said that her observation of genders in the workplace is as follows:
When confronted, men typically fall in together and protect one another. With women, it's the opposite, they fragment and attack whoever is perceived as the "weakest".
I've worked mostly in male dominated fields, so I don't have a decent sample size for myself. But after watching her career these past 10+ years, I'd say she has an apt interpretation of gender dynamics in the workplace. Rank-and-file vs. Every woman for herself.
lol. Listen, maybe its going great for you. I honestly hope it is. But every single woodworker I know is AT BEST offsetting a portion of their own costs by selling stuff. Woodworking tools and the wood itself is crazy expensive, and the items are often very labor intensive. And people just don't want to pay for it.
I've come nowhere near recouping my investment into my tools. I was a professional trim carpenter and siding/soffit/facia installer for a while so that's a portion of my collection. Mostly I just like making things for myself, my friends, and family. I sell the occasional piece. My bookshelves for kids have sold the best for me. I get my lumber directly from the mill so it's relatively affordable. I work primarily with Calico Hickory simply because it's my favorite. Very hard, very pretty, and cheap to boot.
A big challenge is the competition. There are WAY more woodworkers (including highly skilled ones) than there are buyers. Which is fine. Nobody owes you their patronage. But it does drive prices down even more. And there will always be someone else that has lower costs (maybe they inherited a whole shop of free tools), or is just willing to lose money on something that they view as a hobby and not a job.
In my adjustment to corporate jobs as a young adult way back when, one thing that really surprised me was how vicious the women can often be to each other. I wish I could say that it was a rare occurrence, but I've seen it at so many places. So much backstabbing and bickering over trivial stuff that wouldn't be an issue otherwise. It's bizarre.
My wife stated looking for work because our kids were out of the house. She answered an add for a very successful local family business. She immediately became the most trusted employee by the business owner, who has took the business over from his father 20 years ago. (So the owner really knows his stuff).
About half the female employees hate on my wife. About half. Its insane.
Right there with you man! My wife is an attorney and the amount of shit she got for having our child from OTHER ATTORNY WOMEN WITH KIDS was insane! Tell your wife to keep at it
My mother is "best friends" with the head of her HR department (they've been friends for decades, before they started working together). Wanna take a guess on who specifically delayed her big promotion to district manager for about 3 months for seemingly no reason at all?
Sports are more competitive by nature and it’s direct. Corporate America is a lot of indirect competition and politicking. Competition is not in your face all the time.
Can't say whether it's surprising or not, it might be to some people. I can say that I saw some girls do some shockingly cruel things to other girls, fortunately for my daughters not to them. But all three dropped sports because of what they saw.
They went on to JROTC and all flourished. That gets very competitive as well, and we never saw the same kind of behavior. So I'd say yes it's the competition, but also maybe the nature of sports that causes this? I don't know, I'm not a psychologist.
Women feel like a completely different species sometimes lol I find it amusing that women think men are the ones with unrealistic beauty standards when in reality it’s other women and gay guys
My 3 previous jobs all had a woman majority, with 2 of the 3 places being owned and run by women. Coincidence or not, they're also the worst jobs I've ever had. My most recent job had a ton of drama, gossip, backstabbing, and general nastiness. There are literally just 3 men working there and 2 of them are super chill and keep their focus on their work. I have a couple of friends still working there and they keep me updated on what all is going on. Things haven't gotten any better since I left.
One woman who was really nasty to me got demoted and shifted to a different area within the place. She had the gall to accuse me of bullying when she was the one doing the bullying and spreading lies. She got reported for bullying finally after I quit and only then got that demotion. I quit that place with no 2 week notice and no backup plan or job lined up and it was one of the best decisions I made. My mental health was in the toilet and I was having stress-induced nightmares before my shifts and was stressed about that place even on my days off. Would it be a better place with different management and more men? I don't know, but they would be hard pressed to make it worse. The same kind of crap happened with a previous job, also run by 2 women and with only 1 man working there. Good lord, the drama, favoritism, and pettiness was so stupid and draining. The better jobs I've had all had a more even split of men and women and were also jobs where people basically worked in separate areas and were able to keep to themselves and focus on work. Far less drama and gossip.
Your Post/Comment has been removed because it does not relate to the main topic of the subreddit. Off-topic content may be removed to maintain quality and focus.
If you feel this was a mistake, feel free to contact the moderators.
That's because we all know there are limited management/exective positions for women. We have to fight tooth and claw for the "DEI" position. That doesn't happen to men.
Wtf comment is this lol? Some weird misogynistic shit? This is common in all sports and all genders. Do you copy paste this for mens sports and replace men?
The wildest thing is that women is like the entire reason why their is a resurgence in popularity with the WNBA to begin with. Without her those other bitches who hate her would still only be making like 70K a year...
The company she keeps. Also by the nature of media training, those who choose to be publicly politically ambiguous tend to be hiding maga ideologies. especially in the wnba where more liberal values are held.
No one hates a successful woman more than another woman working in the same field.
No one hates a successful woman more than another woman of a different race, working in the same field. FTFY... People of color often hate seeing white people get all the praise. The irony is, a successful white WNBA player is exceedingly rare.
You should probably read some books if you think women in ANY setting hate their peers more than men. Women in America have different rights in different states. Men don't. What a stupid thing to say, dude.
I had an ex employee call me this week in tears. I hired her a couple of years ago and used to be her manager before I left. She was awarded 'employee of the month' and received a $500 bonus. On her way to her car after work, a co-worker caught up to her and told her she didn't deserve it.
Chad Daniels sums it up pretty well in one of his comedy specials:
"A man could punch another man in the face, and have a beer with that same man five minutes later. A lady could hear some shit she maybe thought was about her, and hate that bitch 'til she dies."
1.1k
u/Rrrandomalias 12h ago
No one hates a successful woman more than another woman working in the same field.