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In the Company of Women: Indirect Aggression Among Women: Why We Hurt Each Other and How to Stop
In the Company of Women explains how indirect, or "relational," aggression can hurt women and hinder them from achieving success and harmony in their adult lives. Gender studies have shown that when a goal is in sight, men generally use direct action to attain it. Women, on the other hand, have been socialized to express aggressive actions through indirect means-using behavior such as shunning, stigmatizing, and With startling insights into the meaning of our everyday behavior, this book offers straightforward techniques to change conflict among women into cooperation by resolving discords peaceably, building relationships, and making the most of women's unique leadership and communication skills.
352 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
41 people are currently reading
231 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
July 7, 2018
I've spent my life denying it, but now that I'm older, I have to raise the white flag. Women can be backstabbers. Before you respond in horror, let me explain.
I just finished In the Company of Women - Indirect Aggression Among Women: Why We Hurt Each Other and How To Stop. If the authors weren't so experienced or lacked data, or if I didn't already sort of feel this in my bones, I might slam the book closed with a snort. But there's too much here to simply dismiss it. Here are some of the points made by the authors, Drs. Susan Murphy and Pat Heim.
The good news is that women are able to accomplish SO much together, and when they support each other, are unstoppable!
The bad news is, women are different from men, which means, they're different from what you think you know, because usually the researchers study men, especially in the workplace. Lots of us women try to act like men as we climb the corporate ladder, and that makes life even more difficult. We struggle and sometimes fail without knowing why. We're discouraged and confused, but if you find the work of Drs. Heim and Murphy believable, there's a logical reason for the difference, and while the authors have documented their assertions exhaustively, I think you can boil it down to this:
Men relate to each other hierarchically, whereas women relate to each other as peers.
Men form a team, fight for their positions in the hierarchy, and then settle in, happy to know where they fit. The leader may not be liked or even respected, but everybody accepts that he's in the driver's seat. If a guy decides to make a run for the top, there's bloodletting, but once he gets there, everybody settles down again. Think of male herd animals fighting for the right to mate and I think you'll get the idea.
But women! Women aspire to a horizontal structure. Think of, again, a herd of females. They guard each other. They eat together. In most species, their babies are born at the same time and defended collectively. I know we're not horses or antelope, but consider this: with very few exceptions, we like to think we're all equal. If a woman does something to rise above other women, or appears to think more highly of herself than is considered seemly, look out! The authors assert that, in the corporate setting, higher-level women have to make sure the lower-level women receive some kind of emotional or status-related compensation in order to maintain balance in the power relationship. Otherwise, they'll see her as too big for her britches and make sure she fails.
I would go into more detail, but there isn't enough space in this review. Below, I'll list the points I found amazing or profound, and you can let me know if you'd like me to elaborate on any of them.
*Women are somewhat more comfortable with a powerful woman who plays down her importance than one who does not.
*For a positive relationship to be possible between two women, the self-esteem and power of both must be approximately even. (There are exceptions, as in a mentoring relationship.) This is called the "Power Dead-Even Rule," and although it has profound impacts on all female relationships, is invisible to most women.
*The female stress response ("tend and befriend") results in the release of oxytocin, a calming chemical. In times of stress, women seek out other women with whom to commiserate, which is great for their mental health, but tends to get the team all riled up against the woman who caused the problem in the first place. Hence cliques and sabotage develop.
*The authors propound what they call "chip theory," in that individual women hold a certain number of chips (positive attributes or actions). Beauty is a chip. Wealth is a chip. A high-level career is a chip. Poise is a chip. A great husband is a chip, as are teenagers who don't steal cars or get drunk in public. Chips are constantly exchanged with others to maintain even stature between women, and we do this naturally. If you get a compliment, chances are you'll put yourself down in response, so as to keep the complimenter feeling good, too. That's chip management, and it's the strategy we use, consciously or not, to adhere to the Power Dead-Even Rule.
*The authors, who have trained over 20,000 people in Fortune 500 companies, say they often hear frustration from upwardly-mobile women who "don't have time for such foolishness." The authors respond: you can pay now or you can pay later, and later is when you might lose control over the situation. Women have been fired for failure to succeed, and often, nobody can figure out why! But the "why" is that they were pulled under and drowned because they didn't understand what their sisters needed.
Most women care deeply about other women. We are all in this together. Without women in our lives, we feel lonely and incomplete, but nearly every one of us bears the scars of being attacked by other women, sometimes en masse, and we were disillusioned and discouraged over it.
Bottom line, there are biological, psychological, social and cultural reasons why women relate to each other the way we do, and you can ignore it, or you can decide to add the knowledge to your skill set and save yourself a lot of grief. There's more to this book than what I've written, including some great self-tests and suggested strategies. I absolutely recommend it.
I just finished In the Company of Women - Indirect Aggression Among Women: Why We Hurt Each Other and How To Stop. If the authors weren't so experienced or lacked data, or if I didn't already sort of feel this in my bones, I might slam the book closed with a snort. But there's too much here to simply dismiss it. Here are some of the points made by the authors, Drs. Susan Murphy and Pat Heim.
The good news is that women are able to accomplish SO much together, and when they support each other, are unstoppable!
The bad news is, women are different from men, which means, they're different from what you think you know, because usually the researchers study men, especially in the workplace. Lots of us women try to act like men as we climb the corporate ladder, and that makes life even more difficult. We struggle and sometimes fail without knowing why. We're discouraged and confused, but if you find the work of Drs. Heim and Murphy believable, there's a logical reason for the difference, and while the authors have documented their assertions exhaustively, I think you can boil it down to this:
Men relate to each other hierarchically, whereas women relate to each other as peers.
Men form a team, fight for their positions in the hierarchy, and then settle in, happy to know where they fit. The leader may not be liked or even respected, but everybody accepts that he's in the driver's seat. If a guy decides to make a run for the top, there's bloodletting, but once he gets there, everybody settles down again. Think of male herd animals fighting for the right to mate and I think you'll get the idea.
But women! Women aspire to a horizontal structure. Think of, again, a herd of females. They guard each other. They eat together. In most species, their babies are born at the same time and defended collectively. I know we're not horses or antelope, but consider this: with very few exceptions, we like to think we're all equal. If a woman does something to rise above other women, or appears to think more highly of herself than is considered seemly, look out! The authors assert that, in the corporate setting, higher-level women have to make sure the lower-level women receive some kind of emotional or status-related compensation in order to maintain balance in the power relationship. Otherwise, they'll see her as too big for her britches and make sure she fails.
I would go into more detail, but there isn't enough space in this review. Below, I'll list the points I found amazing or profound, and you can let me know if you'd like me to elaborate on any of them.
*Women are somewhat more comfortable with a powerful woman who plays down her importance than one who does not.
*For a positive relationship to be possible between two women, the self-esteem and power of both must be approximately even. (There are exceptions, as in a mentoring relationship.) This is called the "Power Dead-Even Rule," and although it has profound impacts on all female relationships, is invisible to most women.
*The female stress response ("tend and befriend") results in the release of oxytocin, a calming chemical. In times of stress, women seek out other women with whom to commiserate, which is great for their mental health, but tends to get the team all riled up against the woman who caused the problem in the first place. Hence cliques and sabotage develop.
*The authors propound what they call "chip theory," in that individual women hold a certain number of chips (positive attributes or actions). Beauty is a chip. Wealth is a chip. A high-level career is a chip. Poise is a chip. A great husband is a chip, as are teenagers who don't steal cars or get drunk in public. Chips are constantly exchanged with others to maintain even stature between women, and we do this naturally. If you get a compliment, chances are you'll put yourself down in response, so as to keep the complimenter feeling good, too. That's chip management, and it's the strategy we use, consciously or not, to adhere to the Power Dead-Even Rule.
*The authors, who have trained over 20,000 people in Fortune 500 companies, say they often hear frustration from upwardly-mobile women who "don't have time for such foolishness." The authors respond: you can pay now or you can pay later, and later is when you might lose control over the situation. Women have been fired for failure to succeed, and often, nobody can figure out why! But the "why" is that they were pulled under and drowned because they didn't understand what their sisters needed.
Most women care deeply about other women. We are all in this together. Without women in our lives, we feel lonely and incomplete, but nearly every one of us bears the scars of being attacked by other women, sometimes en masse, and we were disillusioned and discouraged over it.
Bottom line, there are biological, psychological, social and cultural reasons why women relate to each other the way we do, and you can ignore it, or you can decide to add the knowledge to your skill set and save yourself a lot of grief. There's more to this book than what I've written, including some great self-tests and suggested strategies. I absolutely recommend it.
July 3, 2024
- Dead-even rule: women are only comfortable with other women (even in work settings) when their friends are even with them. They're immensely uncomfortable being in equal friendship with a more powerful women (I.e, a woman within a friends' group of a company got promoted and became the boss of the other woman)
- Chip theory: everyone's got a surplus (or shortage) of chips against other people. Your goal is constantly run a surplus of chip. You can accumulate chips by doing favors to other people, by being someone who is always there for the other people
- Women define her career success more towards how well she has maintained her relationships with other women
- When women uses the same method to assert power as men, she'll automatically be labeled as a "bitch" and get alienated by others
- In order for women to feel they're in the same equal footing as other women, they often like to downplay their strength (or better, never mention it, or label it simply as "luck"). Instead, they emphasize the downside of strength or weaknesses (e.g. Yes, I got promoted, but now my hour sucks etc)
- Winner and loser is not a good mindset for women. Since they innately crave for equality (while still competing with each other under deception)
- Women bond with each other with deficiencies in their lives
- Women share intense personal lives as an insurance policy with other women (if two women knows each others' secrets so well, they rationalize that either people would betray one another, since retaliation through gossip is rather easy)
- In order to avoid fight with an insecure woman, it's important to build up her self-esteem so she doesn't feel threatened. Such compliment must come genuinely
- Silence is very difficult for women to handle
- When women feel increasingly stressed, they tend to be more caring
- Women have innate expectation for other women, namely that they expect other women to be nice and obey the "sister-code". When the other women not obey such code, the initial woman would often gets confused
-
- Chip theory: everyone's got a surplus (or shortage) of chips against other people. Your goal is constantly run a surplus of chip. You can accumulate chips by doing favors to other people, by being someone who is always there for the other people
- Women define her career success more towards how well she has maintained her relationships with other women
- When women uses the same method to assert power as men, she'll automatically be labeled as a "bitch" and get alienated by others
- In order for women to feel they're in the same equal footing as other women, they often like to downplay their strength (or better, never mention it, or label it simply as "luck"). Instead, they emphasize the downside of strength or weaknesses (e.g. Yes, I got promoted, but now my hour sucks etc)
- Winner and loser is not a good mindset for women. Since they innately crave for equality (while still competing with each other under deception)
- Women bond with each other with deficiencies in their lives
- Women share intense personal lives as an insurance policy with other women (if two women knows each others' secrets so well, they rationalize that either people would betray one another, since retaliation through gossip is rather easy)
- In order to avoid fight with an insecure woman, it's important to build up her self-esteem so she doesn't feel threatened. Such compliment must come genuinely
- Silence is very difficult for women to handle
- When women feel increasingly stressed, they tend to be more caring
- Women have innate expectation for other women, namely that they expect other women to be nice and obey the "sister-code". When the other women not obey such code, the initial woman would often gets confused
-
January 6, 2013
The weakest part of this book is the authors' argument for the origin of indirect aggression among women. They try to base it in evolution rather than just staying within the world of social psychology. The rest of the book is dead-on on how many women treat one another. The authors' solution, which they call the "dead even rule," is passive aggressive in itself, but for that reason may be effective when dealing with passive aggressive women.
June 17, 2019
I wish things weren’t like this but it struck home.
October 11, 2024
I really enjoyed this book-the bulk of my experience in working with women is the PTA-and boy, if my experience didn’t mirror every chapter and heading-especially in part 1. I found myself wondering-even if women read this, would they try to change?!?
The only thing I really don’t love is it felt like the authors “solution” was to play the game, which just felt more of a surrender than a solution-but, I understand that changing evolutionary habits is almost slooowwww process.
The only thing I really don’t love is it felt like the authors “solution” was to play the game, which just felt more of a surrender than a solution-but, I understand that changing evolutionary habits is almost slooowwww process.
December 9, 2021
Worth the read! Definitely opened my eyes to past work experiences and how they could’ve been handled differently. Great reminders to take into the future as well.
April 18, 2013
This book was on my TBR list,, as I was exploring self help titles and pop psychology books. Knowing that the Harvard Business School had recommended it, made me want to read it too. However, seeing only 24 reviews on Amazon made me hold back, thinking perhaps it was not that great after all.
Boy, was I wrong! This is an eye opening book, one where you have so many Aha moments, as you read it. This book not only equips you to deal with women in the professional setting, but also women you may know personally. I did not find anything lacking in this book, as is usually the case with self help books. Many books identify the situation correctly and in sufficient depth, but skimp over solutions. This book does not leave you wanting! It delivers a powerful punch with it's strategies. You'll need to ponder over issues and situations a bit, after reading the advice here, to apply it for your benefit.
I highly recommend this book.
Boy, was I wrong! This is an eye opening book, one where you have so many Aha moments, as you read it. This book not only equips you to deal with women in the professional setting, but also women you may know personally. I did not find anything lacking in this book, as is usually the case with self help books. Many books identify the situation correctly and in sufficient depth, but skimp over solutions. This book does not leave you wanting! It delivers a powerful punch with it's strategies. You'll need to ponder over issues and situations a bit, after reading the advice here, to apply it for your benefit.
I highly recommend this book.
Want to read
April 30, 2013I've had so many great female mentors every step along the way, I've always been resistant to this line of reasoning. But hearing more from friends whose daughters are struggling, especially in the middle school stage, makes me think we all could stand to learn more about this "horizontal" line of power...especially since I know women can be great supporters instead of saboteurs.
August 22, 2011
The beginning of the book makes some insufficiently supported claims about the biological basis for gendered conflict styles, but I found the anecdotes from the authors' experiences to be enlightening.
January 3, 2012
If you work with women, or are a woman, or communicate with women, this is an interesting read. It's geared a little more towards corporate execs than towards the rest of us, but many of the principles of female communication are generally applicable.
Read
November 7, 2011My bookgroup read this in October. I read segments and found it insightful. Explains communication and power style differences between women focused in a business workplace setting. The "Power Dead Even" resinated with my own experience.
February 26, 2012
Every woman who works with other women, especially but not only in an office setting, should read this book. It provides insights into how women display and direct the aggression that, early on, is discouraged in little girls as being "not nice," "unladylike," etc.
November 8, 2007
Good, interesting material, but a bit long for me. I sort of live this topic in my "real life" so reading this much about it was sort of over the top for me at times.
August 18, 2008
Cooperataion and collaboration vs competition, good read and reminders, nothing outstanding.
July 28, 2017
I disagree with the authors' evolutionary psychology based analysis for why women are in conflict, but their strategies for overcoming it are solid. All in all a useful book.
January 5, 2014
Discusses problems of relationships and power between women.
April 5, 2017
I wanted to like this book. I really tried to like it. The problem I have is that the more I read the more unreasonably complicated working with women seemed. Perhaps I just have a background that emphasized leadership so I dont see issues the way the authors do. The more I read the more I thought 'gosh if I were a male executive I wouldn't want to put up with women in the work place if I have to do all this extra work to make them feel good and play nice'. The sections on goal setting, giving feedback, and forming working groups were a nice resource. Too bad the book makes it seem like women just can't function in the workplace without special considerations.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews