I was perversely pleased to read this story in the New York Times about women bullying other women at work. A new study by the Workplace Bullying Institute—who knew such a thing existed!—reveals that men aren't the only elbow-throwers in the workplace: A full 40 percent of workplace bullies are women. Why, exactly, would this please me? Because the impish part of me is happy anytime a finding comes along that challenges stereotypical views of women as "nurturers" or "supporters"—a view that is all too common, as Peggy Klaus, an executive coach, tells the Times. For me, the upside of feminism had everything to do with making more identities possible for women, not fewer; with allowing each of to let our inner "freak flag" fly, as what's-his-name urges the uptight Sarah Jessica Parker in The Family Stone. That's not to say I think anyone should yell at her assistant today; but I do think that anything that reminds us that women hardly conform to a single type, in the workplace, at home, or in the bedroom, is a plus. That's why I never really got into difference feminism, which would have us believe that XX and XY are apples and oranges: Where men charge ahead alone, women are good co-operators. This study seems to challenge that. The downside, though? According to this study, women bullies seem to bully...other women. I'm not sure this has to do with gender so much as it has to do with power structures.

Tags: bullies, workplace

I get what you say, Meghan, about the benefits of broadening the range of publicly-noted female roles beyond those old standbys, “nurturer” and “supporter.” But I can’t share your pleasure in the finding that 40 percent of workplace bullies are women. After all, isn’t “bitch”—or even “office bitch”—just as much a stereotype as “nurturer”? Judging from The Devil Wears Prada and Working Girl, two of many fictional studies in the vicissitudes inflicted by female bosses on their (ultimately triumphant) female underlings, this particular stereotype is well established in the cultural consciousness. We even know without thinking what these witchy characters look like, right down to the thin lips and the pointy, expensive shoes.

This is part of what Catalyst found in Damned if You Do, Doomed if You Don’t, its report on the challenges faced by women trying to ascend the corporate ladder. Viewed as either too soft or too tough depending on their willingness to practice stereotypical feminine—read “nurturing”—behaviors as opposed to more aggressive, stereotypically masculine ones, the report notes that women have great difficulty avoiding the perception that they’re either nice but not very competent or competent but not very nice, especially in the rarefied upper echelons of the corporate world. (Another striking Catalyst finding: only 2 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are women).

In light of the bullying study, though, I think Catalyst may be letting women off easy by suggesting that they’re tagged as aggressive, tough or mean simply because they act male. It seems likely that the awkwardness for women of finding comfortable and acceptable ways to operate in male-dominated fields contributes to their bullying. But at base, women who bully are just women behaving badly—something for which they should be criticized, not cheered. While I’ve been lucky enough to work with many supportive women, few things in my professional life have been more upsetting than encountering women, usually in positions of authority, who seemed determined to keep other women down. (It should be noted that, as the study suggests, they did not exhibit the same behavior toward men.) These women’s reasons were no doubt many and various, but their meanness was unmistakable, and it felt like a particularly exquisite betrayal.

Tags: bullies, work, workplace

Vanessa, I agree that we don't gain much by adding the office bitch stereotype to the working woman's repertoire. And like you and lawyer-mom, one of our first commenters, who writes astutely about her bullying female boss, I also have a story of an older and more experienced woman who put me down rather than pulled me up. I wonder, though, if we notice these failings more in a women boss or professor or superior more than we do in men. Do we call out the women we look up to because we expect more from them, and then nurse our justifiable grievances, when they turn on us, with especial vigor? I tell my female bullying story more often than I tell one of the many I have about a male former boss, now that I think about it.

Also, even if women bully women more often than they bully men, as the survey stats that Meghan started us out with showed, they're still less likely to bully than men are. If 40 percent of office bullies are women, than 60 percent are men. I suppose women could still be disproportionateloy represented in the bullying ranks since they probably don't comprise 40 percent of bosses and supervisors. But I still wonder if we're extra preoccupied by our disappointment in them.

Tags: bullies, work, workplace

Vanessa, I share your concern that women have limited workplace stereotypes from which to choose: We’re either the nurturing pushover or the demanding bitch. We’re not the only group, though, struggling with how to present ourselves in the workplace. A study out last week found that, among black men, having a “babyface” helps you climb the career ladder. While white CEOs are hurt by being all chubby and kid-like, black CEOs benefit from the “disarming” qualities of a babyface. As Robert Livingston, co-author of the study, said, “anything that conveys to whites 'I'm not the typical black man' can be helpful.”

The same, it seems, goes for women. Be too much the typical woman—too busty, too high-voiced, too sensitive—and you’re deemed by your underlings and superiors, whether consciously and verbally or not, unfit to lead. Both blacks and women in the workplace must fight against the perception of being too harsh, either because it makes us “bitchy” or because it makes us “scary.” But a good boss is demanding, critical, and stern. How can anyone pull off such a delicate balance?

Tags: black CEOs, study on babyfaced black CEOs, women in the workplace

I was happy to see that the Wall Street Journal published an article that's largely sympathetic to male victims of sexual harassment. Claims have gone up due to the recession, probably because when it's hard to find another job, you're more likely to stay on and sue, or quit and sue for compensation. Unfortunately, the WSJ buries an extremely important detail that should be at the top of the story: Most male victims of sexual harassment were harassed by other men.

That information isn't baldly stated until the 10th paragraph, and that's after the writer quotes a legal expert in a way that implies most of their cases are female-on-male, which I'm sure the legal expert did not intend to imply. You could easily read this story down halfway and walk away with the incorrect impression that male victims simply suffered from female colleagues who come on too strong, which both erases the sexism that drives sexual harassment and implies that the victims are just oversensitive.

The reality is that men get sexually harassed for the same reason women do—male colleagues find them threatening for whatever reason, and they use sexual humiliation to bully them. A quick moment with Google, and I found some relevant research done at the University of Minnesota looking into the specifics of harassment cases. A quote from the researchers:

All women are at some risk of sexual harassment, but males are also likely to be targeted if they seem vulnerable and appear to reject the male stereotype,” reports researcher and University of Minnesota Professor Christopher Uggen. “If a man refuses to go along with sexual joking, wears an earring to the workplace, or is financially vulnerable, he could be targeted. We even found a correlation between a man’s likelihood of being harassed and the amount of housework they reported doing—an activity typically attributed to women.

Sexual harassment happens when men who are hung up about strict gender roles encounter colleagues who threaten their prejudices. Women can do this merely by working—or at least working in an environment the harasser considers boys only. But men can easily face it if they break what the harasser considers the man code. (To be fair, some women are so invested in sexism they could do this, too, but it's rare.) This shouldn't be surprising to anyone; the image of nerdy or gay or even just nonmisogynist young men getting whipped in the locker room with towels is a cultural icon. It's also a major social problem that shouldn't be ignored.

Tags: male victims, sexual harassment

I suppose since the new Supreme Court nominee is a woman, it was only a matter of time before someone began to claim there was also a rage problem. Here is NPR’s "Who is Elena Kagan?" piece, suggesting that while Kagan is much beloved, she’s also highly prone to “screaming at people, slamming doors and chewing out subordinates in public -- a trait that she is said to have carried with her to her next job as solicitor general.” The diminutive Kagan is also described as a "yeller" who wants everyone to accept her ideas “immediately without question, without debate, without input."

If this sounds vaguely familiar to you, it should. Just last year we were fretting that Sonia Sotomayor also had a tendency to go crazy and scream at people. You needn’t walk too far down memory lane to find Jeff Rosen quoting a clerk who thought Sotomayor was “not that smart and kind of a bully on the bench.” Or the New York Times' classy headline from last May, claiming that "Sotomayor’s Sharp Tongue Raises Issue of Temperament." (The Times changed it rather quickly). Or Fox News sneeringly warning of Sotomayor’s “infamous temper.” All of which culminated in a truly humiliating confirmation exchange between Sotomayor and Sen. Lindsay Graham, in which he read aloud several anonymous reviews of Sotomayor as "nasty," "a terror," "a bit of a bull," and lacking "judicial temperament,” before asking her directly: "Do you think you have a temperament problem?” When she failed to scream, hiss, or launch herself at his hair, Sotomayor finally proved to the world that she was not the “fiery” loon he so feared.

I want to emphasize that I haven’t met Kagan or Sotomayor, and maybe they both really do have raging tempers and a tendency to holler. I’m told they don’t. But who cares? Chief Justice John Roberts is the most aggressive guy on the bench these days, and anyone who’s read Justice Thomas’ autobiography knows he, too, has some lingering anger issues. The fact that the whole she’s-outta-control trope unfailingly arises with women nominees should lead us to wonder why there is still such a double standard for powerful women, and why that shouldn’t make us scream.

Tags: Kagan, Sotomayor, temper