SmallBizResource Blog -- Women in Business

Wednesday's Woman: Mean Girls At Work

Posted by Gayle Kesten Wednesday, Jan 21, 2009, 02:35 PM ET

Back in the '80s, my cousin had a fulfilling marketing career at a big-name financial management company. But the landscape changed when, back from maternity leave, she was assigned a new boss who turned out to be a witch on wheels.

"She hated me for making more money, for having a child, for being happy, and she wasn't," my cousin recently recounted, now more than 15 years later. "She yelled at me in front of other people, undermined and took credit for my work, bad-mouthed me behind my back to her boss and other people -- basically at any juncture she could."

Suffice to say, this woman did a number on my talented, dedicated, and model employee cousin's self-confidence. When she at last vowed to get the you-know-what out of there, a new position at a competing firm seemingly "fell out of the sky."

"Even then, she made up a story that I was leaving to stay home with my daughter, not that I was taking another job," my cousin told me.

Women. Being one, myself, I can attest that they can be your best friend or your worst enemy. It's a living, breathing issue, oftentimes referred to as "cattiness," which I believe downplays its seriousness and belittles our gender. It's not a problem reserved for big business, either; the most toxic environment I ever worked in was a 25-person -- nearly all female -- advertising agency.

An article in The New York Times cites a impact of women bullying fellow women at work, citing a study by the Workplace Bullying Institute that found female bullies aim at other women more than 70 percent of the time. Leadership coach Peggy Klaus, who wrote the NYT article, also makes the point that the way women treat each other at the workplace could be the last obstacle to gender parity and career success.

"Despite all the money spent annually on women's leadership conferences and professional development programs, you'd be hard-pressed to find a workshop on women mistreating one another at work," she says. "Don’t get me wrong: I'm a huge proponent of women’s leadership programs. But teaching career skills is not enough if we ignore one of the most important reasons for holding these events in the first place: learning to value one another so we can all get ahead."

That's precisely why Angela Jia Kim, who I profiled last week, started her network for female entrepreneurs. And why Nell Merlino, who I wrote about last summer, launched the Make Mine a Million $ Business program for women-owned businesses.

So with all that good will, why the cat claws? Klaus' cauldron of reasons for mistreatment include:

• The scarcity excuse: The idea that there are too few spots at the top, so women at more senior levels are unwilling to assist female colleagues who could potentially replace them.

• D.I.Y. Bootstrap Theory: "If I had to pull myself up by the bootstraps to get ahead with no one to help me, why should I help you? Do it yourself!"

• It's unintentional: Women don't mean to undermine one another; rather, they don’t want to be accused of showing favoritism toward other women.

• Hyper emotionality: This leads women to become overly invested in insignificant nuances and causes them to hold grudges.

An article on the same topic in Pink magazine, which cites separate research from NYT but whose findings are strikingly similar, ticks off a few more factors for women behaving badly. They include feelings of insecurity and jealousy, lack of energy or burnout, and the temptation to pass judgment: "Whether it's how to dress (flats or 3-inch heels) or how to balance career and family (leave the office at 5 p.m. or stay late), more choice means more occasions to disagree, and it's tempting to judge others who make different decisions."

In the end, though, who really cares about the why? We all want to work among women (and men) who hold us up, feed our confidence, and have our backs. How should you handle the opposite scenario? The Pink article offers up a handful of suggestions; so does this lighter eHow article.

Really, though, I'm most interested to know your thoughts and observations, as well as the situations you've faced and how you've handled them.

And if you're the mean girl, then do the rest of us a favor and commit the Meow Pledge to memory.

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The Wednesday's Woman series is written for today's community of hard-working, small-business women, featuring profiles, industry trends, research, work/life balance issues and other topics of interest.

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