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May 13 - May 18, 2022
A third reason for our fascination with other women’s failure is, I believe, rooted in the nature of female identity itself. For virtually every woman in this society, our definition of ourselves is bound up in our perception of other women. We see ourselves through comparisons with our mother, our sisters, our friends, and our colleagues.
we view our identities as a kind of zero-sum game: we succeed where our mothers fail; we gain what other women lose, We can’t envision succeeding or failing on our own terms; we can only measure ourselves against other females. So first we envy the powerful women we see in the media, and then we symbolically triumph over them as they crash and burn. After all, we can never compete against them. Who can be as beautiful as a movie star or as powerful as a princess, a president’s wife, or the head of a business empire? If we can’t beat them ourselves, at least we can enjoy the sight of them
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Italy's Mindset is zero sum game too
Every time we cheer the downfall of a powerful woman, we’re giving ourselves the message that power is bad and we shouldn’t desire it. Every time we revel in a beautiful woman’s aging or weight gain, we reinforce the idea that we, too, are less valuable if we are old or overweight. Every time we gloat over a woman’s loss of a husband to a younger, prettier rival, we are reminding ourselves that our own relationship is unstable, that someday our man, too, will move on to greener pastures.
Competiton bring us down
we lose out on the chance to make women our allies. Who better than other women to understand what we are going through
we cannot expect other women to join us in true solidarity if we are continually reminding ourselves that these very women are our enemies.
women’s rivalry seemed like a dirty little secret, and they were afraid of how they might look if they were honest about
she had always considered herself superior to other women.
Women seemed to compete with each other in every conceivable realm,
“aren’t men even more competitive?”
By and large, women compete primarily with each other. In the heady days of second-wave feminism, many women imagined entering the workplace and the political orbit, competing against the men who had previously refused them entry.
Unfortunately, my research suggests, women mainly compete not with men but with each other.
most firms usually operate to the tacit understanding that only a few partner slots are “reserved” for women, so that every woman must compete against her “sisters” for those few places.
then everyone is envious of the person who makes the most money and has the best title. The only time any of us really rallies for another is if someone hits hard luck.
Early feminists believed that once our generation became successful, we older women would mentor the younger ones, using our power to make it easier for the next generation. What they didn’t count on was the queen bee syndrome—the tendency for a powerful woman to get used to being the only female in the group and to decide she wants to keep it that way.
Queen bee syndrome
In virtually every sphere of competition, men are irrelevant, only women are each other’s rivals.
Female competition tends to be total, extending to every detail of a woman’s life. Guys compete, sure, but their contests tend to be specific, goal oriented, and limited.
these contests are generally limited to one specific area of competition, and when it’s over, it’s truly over.
while men are cutting each other out of deals and potential clients, they’re usually not also looking at who’s gained weight, whose kids are failing geometry, or who’s having a bad hair day. Women’s competition, by contrast, extends simultaneously into all realms,
Why is female competition so totalizing? I think it’s partly because, despite our many gains, we’re still socialized to view ourselves in relational terms. In too many cases, our currency remains who we are rather than what we do, Because men’s competition tends to be about external achievements, they can go out for a beer with their rivals after the contest is over.
Rage becomes her supports this
Women’s competition, by contrast, is about our identities—and, unlike men, we tend to expect total union and sympathy with our same-sex friends. We have a much harder time setting boundaries to our competition, which makes it all the more destructive.
Male vs female areas of competition
Because we’re less comfortable with our ambition, our repressed desire for power, money, or success finds expression in all sorts of inappropriate places, including contests over looks, men, and children.
Rage becomes her
“Win every battle, but look as though you didn’t even know there was a contest,”
mixed messages make it difficult for women to experience healthy competition or even to put boundaries on unhealthy rivalry. But ignoring these emotions only makes them more powerful. And it encourages us to channel our natural wishes for power and success into all sorts of spheres where they don’t belong,
on the one hand, women relied intensely on their female friends, expecting them to provide emotional support whenever any other relationship fell short.
Sex and the City
The Golden Girls
Women of all ages told me that everything they wanted—love, marriage, work, family—was in short supply, and that only the best-looking, sexiest, and most ambitious women could “have it all.” So whenever things got tough, guess what women felt they could sacrifice? That’s right, the beloved girlfriend.
Queen bee book
Being sacrificed by a friend is painful enough. But being locked into a rivalry with her is even worse. And in this contest for survival of the fittest, women’s natural rivals are each other. If every woman is competing against every other, then your best friend is also your most serious rival.
Sometimes women find creative ways of balancing their need to compete and their need to be close. The ritual of selective obligation, for example, involves trading confidences and gossip according to a complicated and unspoken hierarchy, figuring out which information must remain confidential and which secrets you’re entitled to betray.
When selective obligation works, it can be an effective way of managing female rivalry and establishing female bonds. Even though you never openly acknowledge your rivalry, you find ways to allow for a little bit of competition and backbiting, and you make sure to always have one or two girlfriends whom you trust completely.
The Mommy Mystique. Many of us tend to seek unconditional love and support from one another, the kind of total, boundless mothering that we wish our mothers had shown us. Instead of looking for adult relationships based on honesty and mutual challenge, we project all our unfulfilled childhood wishes onto our female friends.
2. The Twinning Syndrome, Women often expect their friends to mirror them exactly, to join them in a merged state in which both parties proceed on identical journeys with matching attributes. Then, when one woman changes her life path, overcomes a long-standing obstacle, or achieves a new goal, her friend, sister, mother, or colleague feels abandoned.
3. Foul-Weather Friends.
“Men punish the weakest member of the group; women punish the strongest.” All too often, we are there for our friends when they’re feeling fat, lonely, underpaid, and unappreciated. But when they lose weight, get a guy, or land a much-deserved promotion, we disappear.
Women often form temporary, intense bonds with women whom they either pity or view as equally miserable. If one of the friends in this group of damaged goods lands a husband, finds a terrific job, or loses weight, it causes a schism. The end of mutual misery often means the loss of the friendship.
I like you if you make me feee better about myself by comparison
We Need More Pie!
The real competiton is dismantling the patriarchal system
we’re still earning only seventy-six cents to every man’s dollar. On some level, we know we haven’t yet arrived at full equality, and because we’re competing primarily with other women, our sisters seem to be responsible for our straitened circumstances. When you compete for a limited slice of the pie, you naturally tend to focus all your anger on your rivals. But who’s really responsible for restricting the pie supply?
we’ll never overcome the tendency to compete with one another until we focus not on the contest for limited goods but on the larger goal: making more good things available to everyone. Economically, we need better-paying jobs, improved child-care options, and more opportunities for women to advance. Socially, we need more men raised by mothers who believe that women are their equals, more men who are looking for strong women and lasting relationships. Personally, we need to find ways of broadening our standards of attractiveness, so we don’t feel the need to enter ourselves in the perpetual
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We need feminism and socialism
we need social justice
“What women cannot readily have is what makes them jealous,”
In the past, women’s competition might be focused on clothes, husbands, children, and lifestyle. Now we’re also competing at work, politics, and sports, with increasing pressure to have it all and to succeed in every field.
Even when women see females in charge at a lower level, they know the top of the pyramid is populated mainly by men.
Although the fifteen women work for a female manager, they’re still competing for male-controlled rewards in the form of boyfriends and husbands.
“If the pie is very small,” explains sociologist and professor Dr. Nechama Tec, “then women are not likely to share a piece of it and so they are territorial and not giving, but jealous instead.”
No matter how good our own lives are, no matter how much we know better, no matter how we try to remember the importance of female solidarity, every single one of us has at least one moment of looking at a powerful female rival and savoring the fantasy of bringing her down.
Not unless a transgression has happened. Lucy has been kind to me. She has a life i wish i had but that doesnt even remotely make me want to see her fall
First, if we compete with other women over men, looks, and children, we are dooming ourselves to a lifetime of perpetual insecurity.
Second, competing with women at the workplace creates practical problems as well as psychological difficulties. Not only do we deprive ourselves of the companionship of female colleagues, we keep ourselves from relying upon those who should be our natural allies.
Instead of tearing other women down, we need to broaden our horizons on a wider vision of teamwork,
our mother, although she looked good, always worried about who was better, and so we became like her.
On the one hand, we adore the all-loving good mother we believe or wish we had; on the other hand, we fear the all-powerful bad mother, the basis for fairy-tale witches and wicked queens.
Even if a mother comes running as soon as she hears the infant cry, those hungry, lonely minutes can seem like a lifetime to a newborn, and the young child is filled with resentment. In response, the infant develops the idea that the mother is cruel, manipulative, and withholding.
Kim chernin - the obsession
