Catfight: Women and Competition

by Leora Tanenbaum

As you can see, I measure myself against other women. I constantly need to prove my worth, show everyone (especially myself) that I am capable, deserving, a woman who should be paid attention to. At some level, this is an expression of inadequacy. I worry I can never measure up. I am not smart, fashionable, thin, savvy, or maternal enough. The success of another woman translates into my failure. And my success translates into her failure—which makes my success all the more sweet.

Why don’t I feel competitive with men? I discount them as true rivals because, in most arenas, they either have more power than I (such as in their ability to earn more money or to rise in their professions) or they’re not striving for the same things I am (such as being a good mother). I don’t regard men as rivals because their successes in life have more to do with their privilege than with my failure.

Men?

Envy and competitiveness are close cousins, but they are not the same thing. Both stem from societal inequality and an ensuing psychological sense of inadequacy.

envy—the feeling that I want what she has—leaves open the possibility of cooperation. I may covet what she has, but that doesn’t make her a better person and it doesn’t mean that we can’t work together. I can usually rise above my envy because I recognize that cooperation has the potential of eliminating the inequalities that bred the envy in the first place.

Envy

Competitiveness, however—the feeling that I want to surpass her—usually precludes cooperation. When women feel competitive, we want to feel superior and we want our rivals to be inferior. As a result, we do not believe we have anything to gain in cooperating because we want to perpetuate the inequality between us.

Competitiveness

Being envious isn’t fun—it is, fundamentally, the recognition of the unfairness of inequality

My ambition is kindled by others who become, unintentionally, my rivals. Without realizing it, they show me what is possible and attainable.

Not rivals, inspiration

our competitiveness is tacit, underground. The covert desire to surpass another necessarily becomes bound up with resentment, bitterness, pettiness, and, in some cases, all-consuming obsession.

For as long as competitiveness continues, the insecurities that sparked it will continue to gnaw at her and destroy any sense of self-worth. She will also become divided from other women.

pink ghetto

jobs characterized by pitifully low wages and little, if any, prestige.

to ask for help is evidence that one has failed as a mother.

whether we end up following the American feminine script or thumbing our noses at it, it exacts a toll on our attitude toward other women: We become divided from one another and competitive with each other. This is because femininity and competition go hand in hand. By definition, the female role is something a woman “wins” at. Being feminine entails being attractive (more than other women); dating, living with, or marrying a “good catch” (who earns more money or is better-looking than other women’s men); and having faultless children (who are smarter, cuter, more creative, and better behaved than her peers’ children). If she works in a career surrounded by men, she has to do a better job than the other women so that she can be the perfect token female who is almost as good as the guys. When women’s traditional role is exalted, a woman feels pressured to “win” at being the most feminine woman possible.

women by their nature are supposedly devoid of ambition and competitiveness. Women are caught in an impossible bind: We need to be competitive in order to be truly feminine, yet we can’t be competitive because that would make us unwomanly. The only way out, as we will see, is for a woman to be competitive but to pretend that she is not. Covert competition,

They found liberation through linking with other women, through their shared astonishment at how they were being manipulated to comply with what society wished them to do or be.

Ashamed of our behavior, we refuse to discuss it openly, or we place blame on another woman—“She’s competitive with me” or “Sure I’m competitive, but only with myself.”

an emphasis on self-improvement—rather than group improvement—serves to keep women isolated from one another. It makes everyone’s problem appear individual, not collective or societal. This isolation compounds our inclination to compare ourselves with others and find ourselves lacking.

we are trained—by mothers, fathers, friends, religions, the media—to value male opinion and attention, even at the expense of sisterhood.

“We are taught that women are ‘natural’ enemies, that solidarity will never exist between us because we cannot, should not, and do not bond with one another.”

can be very quick to malign other girls and women. Our secret hope is to raise our own value.

Whose interests are served by our relentless compulsion to belittle other women? By and large, a small number of privileged, individual women benefit from this state of affairs. They reap the rewards of “winning” at femininity. They remain at the top of the feminine social pecking order. Still, even the stature of these fortunate few is quite limited when compared with the stature of the group that truly benefits from our situation—men in power.

The elevation of the traditional female role, and the ensuing division of women from one another, serves a society run primarily by men.

men in power are making decisions that ensure their place at the top of the social order.

Women are not inherently more competitive than men. Rather, our restrictive gender roles, combined with our relatively new liberties, create a confusing environment that sets us up as adversaries—and we have to compete with each other if we’re ever going to succeed according to the rules of the mixed-up game we are living.

Women are much more behind the scenes, much more subtle. If you ask women in the workplace about issues that trouble them, this is among the most frequent concerns they report.”

As writer Elizabeth Wurtzel puts it, “Women, you see, like any other group obstructed from paths to power, tend to get their action on the sly.”

Being competitive, catty, and cunning are part of the stereotype of femininity. At the same time, however, women are said to cooperate in gentle sisterhood and to shun any ambition that might pit one against another.

The stereotype of the competitive woman has a long history. In the Bible,

Twentieth-century cinema served up, again and again, representations of women who are ruthless and cunning in every aspect of their lives. Classics like The Women (1939) and All About Eve (1950) portrayed cartoonlike predatory females circling each other.

The noun catfight, used in a mocking, derogatory way to describe a vicious clash between women, dates back to 1919 but only became popular in the 1970s.

in an effort to downplay the women’s liberation movement, portrayed it not as a dignified struggle for women’s rights but as a silly squabble between homely hippies and happy housewives.

the noun cat, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, has been used as a term of contempt for a spiteful or backbiting wo...

the adjective catty to describe a woman who denigrates another woman in a maliciou...

Beginning in the early 1900s, the term cat-fit was used to describe a fit of anger or hysteria that was expected from a child or woman.

When media critic and University of Buffalo professor Elaine Rapping showed a segment of Ally McBeal to her “Gender and Media” class, her male students were shocked by the negative stereotypes. They couldn’t believe that the women on the show were so competitive and catty. To Rapping’s dismay, the female students, even smart and outspoken ones, insisted that “that’s how women really are” and “that’s what you have to do to be successful.”

the stereotype of the competitive female gains cultural force as women accrue societal power, because the more power we have, the more threatening we become.

The patriarchy keeps us distracted

Feeling insecure, many of us really do resort to backstabbing and other manipulative behaviors as a pitiful way to make ourselves feel, however fleetingly, more powerful. And, with the media-generated, highly exaggerated images of competitive women everywhere around us, it can become difficult for women to maintain a sense of which behaviors are appropriate in daily life.

Why

we still do not have enough power. No matter how high a woman may rise, there is almost always a man above her who makes the final, bottomline decisions.

Many women of color can talk for hours about tensions between dark-skinned and light-skinned women, and about competing with white women in the workplace.

When a woman feels competitive with another woman, she generally does not isolate one area for evaluation.

she compares herself to the other woman as a complete package.

Thirty years ago, in the inaugural issue of Ms. magazine, Letty Cottin Pogrebin wrote a landmark essay in which she assailed the patriarchal system that positions women as competitors. When a woman’s identity is “deprived of nourishment,” she wrote, “it fights; and the most convenient target is another victim.” The rules, she explained, are straightforward. First, “if you feel depressed, don’t examine your discontent—find a woman who’s worse off than you are.” Second, “if you doubt your attractiveness, don’t question the standards of beauty—outdo and outdress every woman in sight.” Next, if you’re worried that you’re not “feminine” enough, don’t question feminine norms; instead, “point a finger at some tough cookie and call yourself a powder puff by comparison.” And finally, “if you believe that you’re intellectually lacking, don’t embark on the Harvard Classics—ridicule other women for sublimating their frustrations in affairs of the mind.”

In her final paragraph, Pogrebin advised, “It might be useful to figure out precisely when I got hooked on competing with women. But, frankly, I can’t spend any more time speculating about it. I, like you, have more important things to do.”

“It’s easier to get caught up in the struggle for petty power than in real power. We have to challenge ourselves about that. Why does it make me feel better because I sliced up some woman when she walked into the room? We need to affirm each other. Instead of looking for what we can criticize about a woman, let’s look for something we can celebrate.”11

Regarding beauty, we have learned from our parents, magazines, advertising, and other women: It’s important to be thin and pretty and wear the latest fashions and always be well groomed. We have also learned (often from the very same sources): Such concerns are frivolous. Inner beauty, not superficial appearance, is what counts.

When it comes to romance, we’ve been told: We need to find a good man and get married. We’ve also been told: We don’t need a man to be complete as a person—and with women’s rise in the workplace, we don’t need his money, either.

In the workplace: We need to compete like a man to get ahead. And yet: It’s important for women to share, to be cooperative, and to be nice—otherwise we are seen as castrating bitches.

What about our source of identity? Becoming a full-time wife and mother is a woman’s finest achievement, we have been taught. But at the same time we know: A woman needs a career to pay the bills and to feel fulfilled, regardless of marital and parental status.

With all these mixed messages,

You give me mixed messaged about what being a good woman is (focus on relations, who we are not what we do like men, competition is unfeminine, anger is unfeminine so we need to sublimate and become sly, indirect, subtle about aggresion) You also limit me in what i can even achieve as a woman in a men's world. Theres not enough pie and my identity, not my actions are at stake for conparison and judgement, so I'm in competition with every other woman for a man, a job, being a good mother, having achieved enough. You tell me i cant be aggresive/assertive but a) theres only 5% of jobs/good men for 50% of the population (the not enough pie of "tripping the prom queen") and b) i have to compete on every level

We face internal battles about the “right” way to live our lives.