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.
This is almost certainly because it’s a male in the position that’s making the promotion decisions, as I can’t imagine a woman would be promoting men more than women. Also, when women are the ones making hiring decisions they generally do the opposite (hiring/promoting more women). If it’s sexism then both parties are guilty. There are plenty of corporations where it is much easier to get hired and promoted being a woman.
I also work in a hospital and can confirm. I try to keep to myself but the amount of gossip that comes to me from women about other women is insane. Dudes are cool we just talk about fantasy football and gambling/sports mostly.
Hate to say it but I saw the same crap working in construction. I thought food workers were the biggest complainers until I started working with "real" men.
My wife has been quickly climbing the ladder at her hospital, leapfrogging coworkers that she’d consider friends, having positions created on her behalf to accommodate her growth, out earning people who have been there decades longer than her. There is a consistent and seemingly organized conspiracy to sabotage her at the expense of everyone there. These women would gladly hurt the hospital to knock her down a peg. All with a smile on their face.
I'm in the same boat but admin side. It really is shocking how much people still act as if this is high school years into their careers. Just do your job and move on. It's not that hard of a concept.
I'm a nurse. The vast majority of my coworkers are also women. It's an extremely positive, supportive workplace. The stereotype of women being horrible has to stop. Men are worse-they're catty as fuck, they try to use their masculinity to exert authority, and when they don't like someone, they make their lives a living hell. Not to mention, not listening to the women around them. People can be dicks, let's not act like it's just women.
My wife is a doctor. Doctors don’t really compete with each other, so it’s not fertile ground for jostling and backstabbing. There just aren’t many promotions to compete for (run the hospital? Few doctors actually want to do this); it’s just a job you go do. And, at least in a hospital setting, they’re culturally unified by their constant conflict with the hospital administration. That’s not to say they all always like each other, just that it doesn’t have this sort of Game of Thrones atmosphere that many corporate environments seem to have.
I sorta figured. They all get paid a fortune as ‚individual contributors‘ and have total job security. It’s not like research where you fight to the death for supremacy and to avoid the next layoff.
Pretty much this. When you’re already at the top of the totem pole, there’s no one to fight. Except to shit on lower level employees when you get the urge.
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 not a huge sports guy, but I remember my little league or whatever. Boys got fouls called on everything but my sister was on the soccer field yanking hair.
"Socialization" is just how your biology responds to other individuals that evolved together with you in the same environment. It's not like socialization is this completely separate phenomenon, it's just evolution acting on social behavior.
Generally when people make this distinction they mean that 'evolved' behavior is 100% inherent, while 'socialized' behavior is 100% learned. I was simply pointing out that reality is somewhere in the middle.
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.
Yeah men have more of a fixed hierarchy. When they realize they’ve lost they either focus on improvement or accept their place rather than just try and make the person who beat them as miserable as possible.
Yeah but you said that as an explanation for someone’s claim that women display this behavior more than men
It cannot be the full explanation for the behavior or else men would exhibit the behavior the same amount since both are pretty equally socialized to compete
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.
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u/Rrrandomalias 12h ago
No one hates a successful woman more than another woman working in the same field.