Are Other Women Your Worst Career Enemies?

female jealousy in workplace, why women don't promote women


We often hear that women are their own worst enemies.  And nowhere does that seem more true than in the workplace.

Author Shere Hite in ‘The Hite Report On Women Loving Women’ reveals that women definitely do scupper one anothers’ chances.
 
She found that many of the women bosses she spoke to felt female assistants and secretaries believed there was higher status to be had in working for a man. Female bosses also found that if they made their female assistants’ working conditions pleasant, the assistant then interpreted their relationship as one between "girlfriends". 

One female boss complained "I work for a large public relations department and have two secretaries. I have to keep on top of them all the time. I even have to scream at them sometimes, because they just don't hop to it like they would if I were a man.  I just have to be the bitch and let them hate me - it's the only way to get things done."

No Help Up the Career Ladder

Hite addresses the question of why so few women help each other up the career ladder.  She found that women favour men at work by befriending them or trying harder to please them, because they thought it the fastest way to get ahead.

Many felt that alienating men by openly aligning themselves with female colleagues (at men's expense) invited negative career consequences.

Says Hite ‘While feminism advanced the cause of millions of women, many still think that deep down, it's necessary - and advantageous - to be 'unsisterly' and trample all over their female colleagues in the scramble to get ahead at work’.

Read the Book

The Hite Report on Women Loving Women by Shere Hite.  Click here to purchase.

Have YOUR Say

Have you experienced workplace jealousy from other females?  If you're a boss, do you find managing females more difficult?  Leave a comment below.