Huge barrier to women's equality.

It's about a group of women being vicious, underhanded and prejudiced without any foundation. Not the first time encountered it either.

Basically you are framing your experience as universal when it is not.

Many women who claim to be feminists seem to have no problem with the 'mean girl' culture. It is unreasonable to say, that until this issue is dealt with head on and ameliorated, we can't progress that much further than we already are? It could be said that it presents a huge barrier to achieving equal rights for females.

Absolutely!
Until the individuals that make up the social culture, the media, the advertisers, the corporate leadership, politicians, aka thought leaders, accepts that women are people and are going to act like people despite constant criticism, progress will be stalled.

'That's just a get out clause. It's not ahigher standard. I expect men to treat one another the same. I also expect men to call out misogyny and sexism. I also expect men to treat women as equals'

And if you're in a male dominated workplace, how exactly do you go about that?

Genuinely interested

Not RTFT

1. I have never encountered this in my working life. And for 2 years I worked in a female only company. I have met some women who weren't very nice.. but plenty of people aren't very nice. I've met lots of men who weren't very nice

1. I read an article yonks ago about how in a very male dominated environment women know there are only limited places for female progression and so compete. In a work context and the same as men do

What is a 'mean girl' thing? We're not at school are we? I don't even know what that looks like.

What sort of industries are you taking about?

Didn't the Midnight Misogynist always use to post the "women are their own worst enemy" line? Or was it another plopper?

I expect men to treat one another the same.... I expect men to be decent human beings.
And when men do not behave with decency and treat each other well should they forgo their rights too?

I've had astonishing levels of support from women over the years - here, and in the world. I think that's the norm, too

Same. I've had a shit time of it over the last five years, and it's only other women that have kept my head above water.

Some men aren't nice. Some women aren't nice. What's your point OP? And how do you know those women didn't like you because you were a woman? An action that happens to be done by a woman doesn't automatically make it a feminist/misogyny issue the same way a man bullying another man isn't a misandrist/male hating one. In fact it's probably sexist to imply as such.

OP you will spend a lot of life being disappointed, your standards are high

Accept what you can't change and change what you can

Recognise a lot of what you say, @hypernormal. Internalised oppression is hard to reach. Early civil rights campaigners felt undermined by what they called 'uncle toms', being people who had not personally had a bad time, had good jobs, pleasant working conditions, and lifelong protection bestowed by paternalistic benevolent employers/owners. Early domestic abuse campaigners felt undermined by women who had happy marriages (i.e., job description exactly the same as an uncle tom, ) and who therefore colluded in the belief that those 'other' (i.e, lesser, stupid,) women must positively enjoy being beaten, or else they would leave.

I think I know where you're coming from, OP. I have been bullied out of a job by a female supervisor who was married to the boss. It was the kind of bullying that a man simply would not be subjected to from a woman. Constant petty remarks and undermining, picking at things that were absolutely nothing to do with my work, but commenting on what I wore, what I ate, my social life etc. because I didn't 'fit in' with her and her cronies. I'm not bigging myself up when I say I think it was based on jealousy. I don't have a very interesting life at all, in fact, but evidently a bit more interesting than theirs. I also am not very well socialised as female (possibly autistic) and so don't pick up on the minute social cues I'm supposed to in order to fit in. I found I would say something and would have it picked apart for a 'hidden meaning' and also find women like this are incredibly easily offended, holding a grudge. For example, I once said I don't drink in the afternoons because it sends me to sleep. This was interpreted as a judgement on them for doing so, and led to lots of snide comments about 'Oh, I thought you didn't drink' as though I was trying to sound better than them and they were trying to show me up for being a 'hypocrite', a scenario they'd completely concocted out of their own insecurity. Just tedious. The bullying wasn't strictly down to them being women, it was more to do with narcissistic traits, but the internalised misogyny meant I was bullied and I don't believe I would have been at all had I been a man. Other things like asking me for help on a computer issue, me giving them the correct answer, then them asking a man for his opinion to make sure/disregard me. I've had far fewer problems in the workplace with men than women, and it gives me no pleasure to say that. Some women in the workplace demand you conform to their social codes/interests etc and if you don't they can't accept you, whereas if you were a man you'd be left alone. This kind of picking at each other I see as women feeling bitter about the life choices they've made and making sure any other women who've made different choices don't have something better. Men seem to give each other far more leeway and don't bring each other down in the same way.

Women are half the human race. We're flawed and diverse and complicated and will disagree and that's fine. It doesn't mean we don't deserve equality.

I mean, if virtue led to equal rights, then the fact we commit massively less crime (including just 2% of imprisonable sexual offending) would mean we ran the world. But it doesn't, does it?

Rights don't depend on virtue. They usually rely on power to enforce them, in fact... so the reverse, quite often.

Girls are so mean and bitchy - why can't they be competitive and ambitious like men?

My daughter (15) has been suffering from a lot of sexism within her school, both from students and teachers. Her and her friend have created a survey to present to their school board to try and get change done! If anyone wants to do it and share it, we would both be very thankful :)

The survey is here:
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeSi3eqbPymoPMNoPdfO96a8EqW4Z5ynbWawel1RzHzhHys_Q/viewform?usp=sf_link

Often in reality women are very supportive of each other, even to random strangers they see in trouble.

MN is a pretty good view of this.

Plenty of the three am threads where a few women awake with babies and toddlers or coming off night shift are holding together a woman locked in a bathroom who thinks she has a broken nose and is too scared to call the police on her abusive partner. They'll spend hours helping and check back for days.

Plenty of 'my kid's in hospital hold my hand' or 'I'm in this situation and don't know what to do' threads where women advise, comfort and in a few cases I've seen MNetters make phonecalls or send emails or physically go and take needed things to another woman in trouble.

AIBU is a blood bath - and when you look there you see how high the expectations are that women hold of each other. To me it's one of the biggest giveaways with a poster who is known to be or coming across as biologically male: they get the punches pulled, and slack cut where if it was a biological woman the other women would tell it far more like it is - in the good ways and in the get it together, stop whining, don't be a doormat, you're going to have deal with this kind of way.

I see wonderful things about women's relationships with other women and the wonderful culture that female people have together all the time. I often see women talking here about how important it is that young women have access to talking to older women who have the t shirts and can help and support. There are women here investing hours and hours of their life into the FWR threads to try and protect other females.

It's pretty good really.

TemptingTess, I work in an increasingly female dominated industry and definitely this is a thing (no one did that for me so why should I make it easy for someone else kind of thing).

In workplaces it often comes down to bad management though, rather than women being “bad girls” or whatever.

In one work place, we had an (all female) teamwork culture and although there were minor disagreements, generally the team were kind and supportive to each other. A lot of experienced staff who had worked together for a long time.

The business sold, from small independent to corporate owners, management changed and it was all targets and 1000 emails and bulletins a week, initiatives about mental health stuck on the wall but very stressed workers, managers sitting in the office staring at spreadsheets and not acting on concerns raised in the team. We lost a lot of staff in a short time frame and all of a sudden it was every woman for herself, blaming each other for mistakes rather than having each other’s backs and with the inevitable talking and cliqueing that goes with that.

Managers then tried team building days to make people get on, rather than working on the stress points and issues in the workplace where the disagreements were (which mainly came down to trying to run understaffed all the time). In the end it felt like gaslighting and I left.

Make a workplace a pressure cooker and people will take it out on each other/behave ‘mean’ This can be even worse when women are on low pay or have limited options due to childcare etc because they feel trapped there as well. It explains why a lot of women put up with sex discrimination and bullying at work.

Try putting any other protected characteristic in to your OP and you will see how ridiculous it sounds.

E.g. Until all disabled people are nice to each other it’s their own fault if they don’t get equal rights.

I share a management role with another female. One of females we manage cane to us with an issue and needed to change her work pattern. We met to discuss and my other manager was uncharacteristically horrible, inflexible and uncooperative. When I addressed her later she said "But it was so hard for me to get ahead, work around my family that it's not fair if this person can just request it and she gets it?" She did not appreciated the fact that we could change and pass down positive experiences. There were no work reasons for this difficulty, just a jealousy that it could be easier for those coming behind us.