The Fractured Sisterhood @Work

But while women have come a long way in removing workplace barriers, one of the last remaining obstacles is how they treat one another. Instead of helping to build one another’s careers, they sometimes derail them...

Read the article here - it's a good one.

I did some research and found the survey (September 2007) noted in the article. The results indicated that when the bully is a woman, 71.3% of the targets are women and 28.7% are men. When the bully is a man, 53.5% of the targets are men, 46.5% are women.

The authors wrote that women prefer to bully other women, 2.5 times more frequently than they target men. Men divide their cruelty showing a slight preference toward same-gender harassment.

Again from the article,

Despite all the money spent annually on women’s leadership conferences and professional development programs, you’d be hard-pressed to find a workshop on women mistreating one another at work. Don’t get me wrong: I’m a huge proponent of women’s leadership programs. But teaching career skills is not enough if we ignore one of the most important reasons for holding these events in the first place: learning to value one another so we can all get ahead.

You won't see Oprah or Ellen talk about this; only on RBC...

Comment by Maureen Sharib on January 16, 2009 at 2:33am: Steve, we've seen this very phenomenon (sisters dissing sisters) here on RBC as well as on other social networks. It's a big problem - women are NOT equal opportunity bullies!