Why are women leaders so terrible to other women

[Anonymous]

I read this a few years ago and it makes a lot of sense to me-

There are fewer jobs for women to compete over than men. Women also have to be twice as skilled than their male counterparts in the same field. So women who have had to struggle and fight their way to the top of the pile often refuse to allow for an "easier" opening and space for other women to follow them because they feel it diminishes their accomplishments/journey.

I've also had women I am not in direct competition with be psychotic with their hatred towards other women in the office. Telling people not to speak to them, refusing to order office supplies, relentless made-up gossip, tampering with their desks, reading personnel files....Here's looking at you Jamie.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I read this a few years ago and it makes a lot of sense to me-

There are fewer jobs for women to compete over than men. Women also have to be twice as skilled than their male counterparts in the same field. So women who have had to struggle and fight their way to the top of the pile often refuse to allow for an "easier" opening and space for other women to follow them because they feel it diminishes their accomplishments/journey.

I've also had women I am not in direct competition with be psychotic with their hatred towards other women in the office. Telling people not to speak to them, refusing to order office supplies, relentless made-up gossip, tampering with their desks, reading personnel files....Here's looking at you Jamie.

This makes alot of sense to me.

I am 45 and have not had many women superiors (to the point of this thread, there just aren't that many senior women in our business, athough it's improving). I've found this behavior to be worse among women a generation ahead of me than what I've observed in my peers. They just had to fight harder.

[Anonymous]

I hate admitting there is something to this but: there is something to this.

Early in my career when I was hungry for opportunities and development, I actively sought out mentorship from the women above me who I admired and wanted to work more with. And they were not kind. I wound up with two encouraging work mentors early on and they were both men even thought I 100% sought to find a female mentor. The women were not interested in my development at all and one of them was openly hostile to me and used to gossip about me to other women in the office. So the stereotype fully come to life.

As I've advanced in my career and taken a few left turns, I have found more women who are great to work with and I've seen women leaders who can be terrific. I've also seen some who are, again, the stereotypical nightmare (gossipy, cliquish, jealous of other women and way more likely to promote and listen to men, etc.). I think once you get to the age where people are having kids it can get complicated because women (weirdly!) rarely have each other's backs on that front. I left a job after I had a baby specifically because my director, who was a woman, was so unaccommodating during that process and so clearly resenting me taking my leave or asking for small scheduling flexiblity to accommodate my daycare schedule.

I now run my own business and I try to be the opposite of this. I have taken on mentees and I allow a lot of flexiblity and also select clients based in part on how friendly they are to women and how much they promote women. But I can definitely say that I have been deeply disappointed to discover that a lot of the stereotypes about women in leadership roles are true when it comes to how they treat other women.

[Anonymous]

I think it's generational. In my case, female Boomers were tough on me when I was young. I don't see that from millennials and younger. I prefer to work with other women because, for the most part, we are more efficient.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve wondered this myself. My male managers have always been a lot more easygoing than my female ones who tend to be more unsympathetic and prone to micromanagement. Of course, this could very well just be specific to my experience.

Female managers are held to a higher standard and cannot afford to be easygoing. They only got the job by being more intense than the male competition, and virtually error free.

I don’t agree with this. I am a female and my DH last two bosses were both female.

Most recent boss makes tons of mistakes, chaotic, overspends, emails and calls on weekends, vacations, screams. Called my DH back from vacations.

Also ping pongs and will say “yes” to something multiple times and the say “no” last minute and blame the person. This happens to everyone not a female or male thing. My DH gets things in writing but it still happens. This boss randomly promotes people not based always on merit and it annoys people and HR since she goes around policies.

His former boss also female, level headed, steady, etc. She moved on and is doing excellent. DH bumped into her recently at an event and she offered to be a reference and told DH what a great team member he was (they haven’t worked together in 3+ years). She wanted to keep in touch and is a great leader. She isn’t as “showy” as the above but is clearly an excellent, calm leader. She knows what is happening there too.

Both are very well known, especially former boss.

But current boss imho didn’t deserve the promotion to that role but got it solely on optics. We have worked all over the place and his most recent boss had been the worst by miles.

[Anonymous]

My women boss is a “boy mom” who likes football and sports, fast cars etc.

I noticed all her senior team she hired are men.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You are generalizing. I've had lots of great women leaders.
I've also never met an "I work better with men" woman who was excellent at her job.

+1

[Anonymous]

I've never had a female boss that I liked. I've liked them initially but then they all got super competitive with me. They like to put me "in my place" and limit the extent to which I can make an impact. They don't like when I work with peers who don't report to them. Very territorial.

[Anonymous]

White women over 40 are just angry and I don't know why. They take that anger on everyone including other women..they are always complaining about something and the expression on their faces say a lot

[Anonymous]

Because when women are charge, they think they need to 'show' how dominant they are and they they are a force to be recokned with. They have now been told from birth that they are special, that they are strong, and that they can do it! But this plays out in real life badly. They end up massively overcorrecting with the strongarm attitude, and end up becoming the most toxic and horrible bosses you'll ever work with. I've had many female bosses over the years. The worst ones are GenX or younger. The best ones have, ironically, been boomers. Boomer women were fed a lot less oppression Olympics and I'm a permanent victimhood mentality when they were growing up. Boomer women in charge actually worked their way up. I can't really say the same anymore these days because so many terrible female leaders get promoted simply for DEI quotas. Modern female leaders are just often really bad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think it's a disconnect about the definition of "supervision." For most men, that means making sure the work gets done. For most women, it means making sure the work gets done the way the woman/supervisor would do it, which requires hyper vigilance of the work itself. It's a control issue and an insecurity issue.

This 1000%. Every male boss I've had only care about whether the work gets done and the quality. They don't care how you go about doing it. Contrast that to extraordinarily toxic female leaders I've worked under. They had to have a say in every single piece of minutae in how things were run and accomplished. It was micromanagement to the extreme. It drove so many people up the wall and berserk that it caused tons of our best employees to leave because they couldn't stand it. Just horribly toxic work environment because she wanted extreme control over everything and everyone. I bet she tried to run her job like she probably tried to dominate her boyfriend. Your employees and work are not the same as your personal relationship.

[Anonymous]

Never work for a women who:
- is named Beth
- has a bob haircut or
- says, "we women need to stick together*

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:White women over 40 are just angry and I don't know why. They take that anger on everyone including other women..they are always complaining about something and the expression on their faces say a lot

Heh. I was going to say this about black women.

[Anonymous]

This is accurate. Even if they think they are very pro women in power - they have no problem asking a woman to do the grunt work and not the guys.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My women boss is a “boy mom” who likes football and sports, fast cars etc.

I noticed all her senior team she hired are men.

There is a variation of this in the work world where female bosses are nice to me and terrible to women. I had a boss who would seek attention and flirtation with male employees but would crap all over women for every single thing. It's a "pick me" or "not like the other women" personality. Women like this are a total nightmare to work for.