To think women are more toxic than people would like to admit?

[MarthaMayver]

I'd like to start by saying by no means are all women toxic, I'm a female myself and have always been a huge supporter of feminism and "sisterhood" if you will. However the more behaviour I witness from women, I'm starting to stray away from seeing them as allies.

I have worked in female dominated sectors my entire life and have constantly had to witness cliques, gossiping, power plays, passive aggressiveness, and downright bullying. I had to leave my last job as it was affecting my mental health so badly.

I always thought this was just part and parcel of working in groups. However I started a new job last year, with an equal spread of male and female colleagues and there has been none of this. I'm now wondering if the problem with all of my previous workplaces was the fact that they were female dominated.

To me, it's very obvious in person how women favour men over their own gender, regardless of how much "female empowerment" and "Women Supporting Women" is preached these days. For example, they will let men get away with mistakes they wouldn't let other women get away with. Male incompetence is often seen as "cute", whereas the same behaviour coming from a woman would be laughed or sneered at.

There are so many stories coming out in recent years of mothers favouring their sons over their daughters, and at worst bullying and abusing their daughters whilst worshiping their sons. I now think back to my own childhood and I can remember many occasions where my mother would put me down for something, while supporting my male siblings for doing the same thing. There were also a lot of sly, underhand insults that I didn't realize at the time, that were never directed towards my brothers.

I'm prepared to be told IBU, but I'm also very interested in knowing how many people agree, or if anyone has any similar experiences.

YANBU. My MIL is positively radioactive!

Agreed, women friendships too as we see on here. Drama drama.

It's not unreasonable to acknowledge that women can be every bit as bad as men, but it's not a given that women usually excuse men or favour sons over daughters. That's sometimes true, but certainly not for everyone. I can more easily picture a (young, attractive) woman getting away with incompetence because she's "cute" than a young man doing the same.

Patriarchy wants us at each other's throats so that all our time is tied up otherwise we could be ORGANISING ourselves, very scary prospect.

I wouldn't say that women necessarily favour men. But having worked most of my early life in male dominated workplaces and then changing to a female dominated environment, I'll just say that I'd rather work with men any day.

I totally agree ! ( I am a woman)

When I started work it was an all women office, most toxic place ever. Full of little cliques and bullying. Glad it was the patriarchy that was causing them to be so nasty rather than them just being a load of horrible people.

Some people love to find excuses for the fact that sometime women (individuals or groups) are just nasty people.

I don't understand why you are surprised. We all grow up under shit, patriarchal structures....is it only going to be the male half that absorbs misogyny? Of course not.

You need to ground yourself in reality. Look at the Yazidi girls and how they have been treated by men. Women do 70% of the world's work for 10% of the pay. Men keep 99% of the world's assets for themselves. One in three women and girls in the world face sexual or physical violence in their lifetimes. By men. Every nine minutes a women in America is sexually assaulted. By men. Men commit 98% ox sexual violence and 99% of child sexual abuse. They commit 92% of violent crime.

We all know a few crap women but I would say for most of us, the amount of good women we have once known outnumber them. Can we say the same for all the men who have entered our lives?

I think this is correct. Patriarch tempts us it's crumbs and then watches us compete with each other. Normalise criticism of women for periods of economic inactivity due to having babies or caring responsibilities and you condition women to know what patriarchy says they need to do to succeed.

And woe betide a woman if she's smart slim and attractive. I've seen women driven out of the workplace for those reasons . Men are culprits too .

You make some valid points but your thread title is over dramatic. Don't women have enough probing at present? In fact, being a woman seems to be the punch bag of the 21st century.

You're over generalizing. Groups of people can be toxic, individuals can be toxic but women are certainly no more toxic than anyone else. I think women and girls get an unnecessarily bad rep for being "bitchy" but it's based on upbringing, personality, values and education, not their sex.

That is not the foundation of why women act the way they do as you well know

Hmm. My husband works in a very male-dominated sector and the stories he comes home with and the emails he shows me are crazy. So many fragile egos, dick-measuring contests, and just a constant attitude of aggression. It's a wonder they get anything done, tbh.

So I don't think it's a 'woman thing' at all, really.

Well if women can say “patriarchy made me nasty” then why can’t men use that excuse too? Where is the individual responsibility?

Some are, some aren’t, because they’re people.

I know what you mean about the workplace. I have never, ever had a decent female boss. All four of them have been unpleasant to work for in one way or another. The male bosses have been a right mixture, but in the main they have been decent and have treated me well. I much prefer to work in a mixed office. One temporary job I had was for a call centre (I was implementing a new accounting function) and the call handlers were all female bar one bloke. OMG what a toxic bitchfest that place was. Thank goodness I wasn't there long.

There is no such thing as "people would like to admit ". You are setting up a straw man.

Me too, men are much better to work for, or with, but then I am good at my job, turn up on time and don’t flirt

People are toxic, not women.
Toxic is mild compared to what men do to people.
I work in a place where we have to get on with it, the job is bigger and more important than individual egos, so I think these gossiping, bitching cliques come from a place where there is nothing that matters more.
I've met loads of great women in my work place, who I can professionally disagree with and we remain warm hearted towards one another afterwards.
Just focus on the fact that they don't have anything more important in their lives than personal vendettas and talking badly about others.

That's not been my experience in over 30 years of working.

I haven't liked all of my colleagues and certainly none of us have been angels 100% of the time. But I've only experienced/witnessed two occasions of sustained bitchiness/bullying in cliques. Both a long time ago with relatively young women.

I've worked with 90% women only & 95% men only. The men are just as bitchy & gossipy & cliquey imo.

Yes this is a point, actually.

It's very easy to see how toxic masculinity affects men negatively. I feel for them, honestly. But personal responsibility is important, though. You can explain any behaviour if you look deep enough, it doesn't mean we should excuse it.

One thing I didn't mention actually on my last post - I've personally witnessed more "bitchiness" in male dominated workplaces than female ones. And I'm talking proper catty stuff, sometimes. But when I described my husband's male-dominated workplace in the post, I didn't instinctively use the word bitchiness to describe it, even though on reflection it is the perfect descriptor.

I think that words like bitchiness are clearly inherently gendered, and when we continue to use them as such it reinforces this idea that women are bitchy and men are not. And perhaps when we do that, we also make it easier to identify "bitchy" behaviour in women than men, and make it seem as though women are worse culprits for this.

This is so true. My husband works in a male dominated industry and doesn't tell them ANYTHING as he says their envy and jealousy are off the scale! He actually loves when one of the female directors comes onto Zoom as he thinks a lot of the men discipline themselves more. But yeah...he doesn't enjoy working with mostly men one bit.

Men dominate the work place and often women are fighting to be seen and often end up pitted against each other. Some women will act more Male to be seen and valued.