Catfight: Women and Competition

by Leora Tanenbaum

If women are presumed to be needy and husbands are supposed to be strong, then women without husbands are automatically assumed to be strong and capable—too strong and too capable, even—rendering them unfeminine. By “sheer virtue of surviving,” they are “therefore often said to be hard, unsexy, too cranky, too demanding, too—in a word—male.”

Being independent is masculine, so unfeminine of women

Competition doesn’t necessarily end once a woman enters a serious relationship with a man. She may resent her boyfriend’s former loves.

“Most women would like to see their ex-boyfriends dead and buried before they see them with someone else,”

his ex, whom he’s still friendly with, happened to be there. Janet decided to initiate a conversation with her “because I feel like if I can be friendly with this person and know her as a person, then I’m less likely to stereotype her as an ex. So I did talk to her a little bit and she was friendly enough.” But a while later, the ex went over to Janet’s boyfriend and sat on his lap. “He got her off very quickly,” she assures me. “But I just couldn’t understand it. I’d just had a conversation with her!” Janet laughs wryly, then adds, “I don’t know that she wanted him as much as she wanted to have some attention at that moment.”

Ita alqays about rhe other woman we feel in competition with never for the man yhe supposed object of attention and reaspn for competition

What we have here is competition as proprietorship.

The boyfriend has the responsibility to remain faithful, of course, but many women hold his new love interest accountable for the liaison.

“Instead of realizing that she was eighteen and I was twenty-six and that I should just cut my losses, I got real competitive with her.” The

Single black women in particular may be likely to regard each other as potential Other Women because, as they related to me repeatedly, they face a supply and demand problem: There aren’t enough marriageable black men to go around.

The pie issue (trippi g the prom queen) but also, black women have less covert competition, they have less repressed anger (odd girl out)?

We limit ourselves to professional men. So now we’re dealing with a very small pool. A lot of black men are in jail, and there are gay men, and we have age limits. We put restrictions on ourselves, so there end up being more women than men.”

The pie

“I don’t know how it is in white America, but in black America, if you get a man and he’s ten percent worth having, everybody else wants him.”

There is a code among girlfriends of all backgrounds that one friend does not date the ex of another friend unless she has obtained permission to do so.

Girl code

Romantic relationships may take precedence, but a platonic relationship between girlfriends is also a very special thing. Women’s friendships are comforting and supportive. When a friend then dates your ex, it feels like a betrayal.

for a woman to go after a man who’s spoken for is often a cheap and easy pick-me-up, like a narcotic. It proves to the world and, most importantly, to herself, that she is a desirable woman. She is so irresistible that she can sway even a committed man.

Competition for a man is to win against a woman

“went after him just to prove that I could get him.

I think it was like a contest to see how many guys you could get to be interested in you, though you realize later on that it doesn’t take much to get a guy to want to fool around with you. It’s partially a contest with yourself and partially a contest with other girls. It was a way of showing each other how attractive we were to guys.

her, it was kind of a score for my ego.

When a woman poaches another woman’s man—particularly a friend’s—she may experience a double dose of power. She has “proof” of being not only desirable, but irresistible. When a woman is satisfied with who she is, as well as with the life she is living, she will not need a man to feel complete, and will not need to push other women aside to search for one.

The marriage ceremony itself is a public declaration of a couple’s commitment to one another—a public spectacle, if you will. It therefore invites comparisons, compliments, and competition. Envy over what other couples can afford often leads to a concern with one-upmanship.

Competition over weddings!?! But tou already got the man if you're getting married!!

The wedding party is another opportunity for competition. Good taste is expensive.

competition for men is not a result of raw numbers. For women, it is the result of the cultural idealization of marriage over all other types of relationships. Women are taught they must marry (and have children) in order to be happy and fulfilled. Yet many people are not suited for lifelong monogamy, as the 50 percent divorce rate reveals.

Patriarchy makes the xonpetition for men by teaching us from the atart our acconpkishment is in relationship, being chosen

If platonic friendships were valued as much as romantic ones, many people would still form attachments and marry, since marriage can meet the needs of many. Women would not need to compete for men because men would not be regarded as a scarce commodity or as the ticket to fulfillment.

They complain that women at work refuse to share power, or withhold information, or are too concerned about receiving credit for every little thing they accomplish, or are cold toward underlings (male and female alike).

Women competition at work

men feel less threatened by women and therefore give them more opportunities to advance than other women do. Many such confessors are women who in all other areas of their lives enjoy the company of women. But not at work. They feel guilty about it, as if they are betraying a feminist cause—and yet, they feel betrayed by female bosses.

working with women versus men as “the personal versus the professional.”

Countless female bosses nurture and mentor younger and less experienced women; numerous female employees challenge their female colleagues in a positive way. Women can be very supportive of other women.

working women often behave in a “difficult” manner because of the pressures in the workplace imposed on women. There is sex discrimination. There is the erroneous belief that a woman is less capable than a man. And when a woman wants to have children and continue working, she is up against the glass ceiling.

Why do we vent our frustrations on other women? Because, as is often the case whenever anyone feels powerless, it seems more expedient to lash out at others in the same powerless position than it is to fight the people with real power. Besides, when a woman challenges the inner circle of men, she runs the risk of being left on the periphery. Joining with other women to fight for better working conditions (such as flex-time and on-site child care) is time-consuming, tiring, and risky. But if a woman belittles other women, she can prove her superiority among women—and is one step closer to the inner circle of men.

Not like thebother girls, part od the boys club

But the real power—that comes with the title of department chair, partner, publisher, and chief executive—still resides overwhelmingly with men. No matter how high a woman rises, you can be sure that (with few exceptions) she ultimately has to answer to a man.

“How many of your female classmates have become law partners?”

There are only six female chief executives at Fortune 500 companies—

women occupy only one out of every ten seats on the boards of those companies,

The women who do move ahead are almost always white.

When wives earn more, do their husbands do more chores? Not necessarily, according to University of Washington sociologist Julie Brines. She has found that when a woman disrupts the traditional female role by surpassing her husband’s income, the couple becomes more likely to cling to traditional roles within the home, with the husband helping less and less with household work as his wife earns more and more.

Masculine fragility

If women were allowed to have and earn a big chunk of the pie, they wouldn’t have to compete with each other for the crumbs. Women are more than 50 percent of the population. They are nowhere near 50 percent of the power holders.

The pie

A successful man is skilled and intelligent; a successful woman got lucky.

If someone doesn’t want to listen to you or feels threatened by you, she just shuts down.” Echoing the tire salesperson, Jennifer says, “It’s very curious, because you would think the opposite. You would expect a certain camaraderie.”

Women who work part-time temporarily, so that they can spend a few hours a day with their children in their youngest years, are penalized permanently. A 1993 study of graduates of the University of Michigan Law School found a significant earning gap between men and women who started out with similar qualifications. The single largest factor explaining the gap was a period of part-time work, which had an impact on salary even years later, after the women had returned to full-time work.

Gender pay gap

49 percent of 40-year-old women executives earning $100,000 or more a year are childless while only 10 percent of 40-year-old male executives in an equivalent earnings bracket do not have children.”

“He said that every morning, when he worked on his cartoon strip, he felt that he had to prove himself, even though he’d already proven himself. I think [that his mind-set] is typical of the way women feel.

To deal with this tension, women develop coping mechanisms. Unfortunately, these coping mechanisms often serve to distance themselves from other women (and often from men as well). Instead of directing their frustrations toward the individuals who can do something about their situation—that is, the men who run the corporations and make the ultimate decisions about promotions, work schedules, and corporate lifestyle—working women vent in the presence of those who, like themselves, clutch petty power: other women.

Rage becomes her. The suppression of anger st the system makes women turn against those who they have a chance to win against: other representative of the marginalised group: women

“two things: money and recognition. For women especially, it’s recognition.

This contradictory behavior is a result of the colliding presumptions we have about women and work. Women are regarded as deferential and lacking in authority. But working women are expected to be aggressive and masculine.

Worried about being perceived as a mediocre or incompetent worker, many women go out of their way to prove they are not too emotional or passive, and can be more aggressive and demanding than any man.

for women, there is a fine line between appearing masculine and being inappropriate.

Often, many former employees said, the attacks were personal rather than professional, and not infrequently laced with crude references to sex, race, or ethnicity—an accusation that Mrs. Wachner flatly denies.”

Women attack lersonally on who they are not what theuy do cause women are raised relationally, men on accomplishments

these character assassinations are titillating precisely because they support the belief that women should be kind and gentle and definitely not chief executives of big companies—which means, conversely, that any woman who does hold the chief executive position of a major company must possess a tough, mean, even crude personality.

The difference in power between a boss and her employee can be demoralizing for anyone holding the subordinate position. When the boss is white and the subordinate is a woman of color, the difference in power (in more ways than one) can be corruptive.

women are not inherently competitive, they can feel comfortable with power, and they can treat subordinates with respect. Unfortunately, many working women believe they have to prove their worth and show everyone they are deserving of their position. When you’re worried about being judged, it’s exhausting and difficult to be generous with praise, kindness, and warmth.

perversely, when women compete with each other in the work force, they effectively maintain the status quo—meaning their own status does not change. A woman may think that “keeping down” a female subordinate helps her own cause, but in reality she collaborates with a system that favors men anyway.

Fighting each other just helps the patriarchy

Psychologists Graham Staines, Carol Tavris, and Toby Epstein Jayaratne coined the term Queen Bee and analyzed her behavior in the January 1974 issue of Psychology Today,

Origin of queen bee