Female competition?

[Babycakes6]

I work in a male dominated field and had my share of dealing with misogyny. After 20 years of this, I finally got some female colleagues who are 20 years younger and new graduates but still I was so happy that my industry is changing.
I tried to mentor one but she said she is fine and wanted a senior male to mentor her instead.
She asked our director to check my work, didn’t stop until she got her way and then started screaming at me saying my work is bad quality, not up to standards but she herself has never done any work! How can she give a constructive criticism if she never constructed anything. And she loves criticising me!
Why does a girl who is half my age, hates me so much? I’m shocked. She sees me as competition and imitates whatever I do. She also always checks/ wants to know what I’m working on and tries to get on the project.
Also I noticed that if I’m a friend with someone in the office she tries to compete for that person/ tries to befriend him/her. Is this bullying?
I feel like I’m back in a high school, which is just ridiculous I have a daughter who is about to start high school!
I don’t know what to do. I started looking for another job. I have never been picked on at school, I was always popular with girls and had a lot of girl-friends. I did have girls competing with me for a certain guys and my mum thought me to blame a buy so I would always let go in such a case, blaming the guy.
I’m not beautiful (I was when I was younger) or rich. I don’t have something that a younger girl would be envious of. I just don’t understand. Why would someone go so viciously after me when I was being nice and try to help her since Day 1?
I had a few female friend in the past which tried to compete but they were few and far between.
Why does she want to compete with me is beyond me. We are not alike, two totally different generations, experiences, personalities. Please help! This is so crazy!

You will have to get past the age thing that happens to me all the time that colleagues the same age as my children get promoted etc. But I certainly wouldn't do anything voluntarily to help her and as others have suggested just answer professionally and ask for any criticism to go in an email so you have evidence of any bullying.

It is voluntary and it requires a lot of time and energy and certain experience and certifications. It is a huge favour!

No it is not a huge favour. It is a voluntary role you took on. It should be viewed as something worthwhile in itself for you and the mentee.

In addition to the mentoring which is part of my job I mentor (by rmail and Skype) third year female law students from my old university. It isn't a favour. I'm giving something back and I get something out of it.

You can’t get chartered without having a mentor who’s got certain qualifications and certifications. It took me years to get chartered because nobody wants to take such a huge task. The law must be different to engineering and also it is not a male dominated field. You don’t know how it feels when everyone above you is male and only help other males, it’s a boys’ club and that’s why I wanted to help her. It is a huge favour as it involves signing off all their competencies and reports.
With all due respect the law is different, it’s is not safety critical and people’s lives do not depend on this. Also there are only 4% of females in the industry whereas the law is a girls’ club. Your training agreement is totally different as well. I find it bizarre that someone with a law degree is attacking me

I am not attacking you. Reading your posts I don't think you are at the moment mentor material. I wouldn't want you as a mentor.

You are fixated on how experienced and senior you are and how this "girl" should be grateful you are doing her a "favour"

Mentoring is not doing someone a favour- if that is your attitude I don't think you are cut out for it.

As I explained, it is not a training agreement as in a law firm. The company does not have enough people to do this and I would never offer to do that much work (years of reports, in my own time, I can’t do this during the office hours as I have a very short time to complete my own projects and already work over time to meet deadlines) but I thought she would get overlooked like I was.
I am certainly not going to help her now. Let the boys’ club take care of it tee her. She’ll be chartered in the next life!

Why aren't you answering any questions about management and why she is checking your work and what your manager says about it? All those seem to me to be very relevant points....

One of the ways for new graduates to learn is to go through a someone’s project/ someone else’s calculations.

I find it weird that she wants to know what I’m doing and asking our director to check those projects. While going through my work, she comes over and asks questions and I explain it to her and that’s how she learns. Then the next time she gets her own project, maybe something simpler but she checked a few others and has an idea how to do it.

So what happened when you talked to your director about it?

So it’s perfectly ok for me that she is checking my project and asking questions but it is not ok that she yells out ‘it’s not up to standards!’ waves her hands at me and yells out ‘Is this your report, Is this your final report? It’s a joke!’ How do you even react to such aggressive behaviour? Grow a thick skin? Quit the job? Ask your boss not to mentor anyone? Is there a course how to deal with aggressive situations?
As I said I am a technical person and not a psychologist and not really used to this.

What does your immediate line manager say? What does she say when you sit down with her and explain how things are done?

I didn’t really raise any formal complaints. I aks the director if it’s possible to be moved to another team (which he said he’ll look into and it will take a long time ) and I’m looking for another job, but I would like to know if this is common/ normal? Is there usually an aggressive female competition at work? The only similar experience I had is from the high school days but it wasn’t anything serious, just someone trying to compete for a guy or something silly. I wasn’t really picked on.

So you haven't done anything about it. Right. Is it possible you have just started this thread to have a go at other women? Because your behaviour is very odd and unprofessional.

I think I understand with the mentor thing

You were asked by your employer to be a workplace mentor, help her settle. And teach her the job by going through your projects.

The work you do is engineering based?

So you kindly offered to be the named mentor for her chartered status? Which is different to workplace mentoring and is indeed huge. Lack of a mentor for my most recent application is what has held me back. They are SO hard to find. Especially one in the actual place you are working, doing the same job, so can direct you to the stuff that really counts towards the application. Mentors are a personal thing, so I get that she might make a seemingly random decision about that. In th past i have chosen a less well qualified person that I just got on better with. No disrespect to the others person, I just felt I could have a more productive working relationship with one rather than the other.

She sounds odd. I’d back right off.

Also someone who thinks this is weird. It sounds like there is a huge problem with boundaries here but why label it ‘female behaviour’? This is one person- not all women. It seems odd for someone with 20 years experience to have one difficult workplace relationship and immediately ask ‘are all women like this?’.

And to be talking about relationships with boys at school and having once been beautiful and all that stuff. OP. Organise a meeting with her and your director or whoever is her line manager and your line manager and sort out some proper working guidelines. She needs to understand what is appropriate workplace behaviour.

I didn’t really talk to her. What am I going to say? Please stop bullying me?
I told our director that new graduates are too demanding ( 5 of them
in my team and it’s hard work) and that she doesn’t respect me and that I would like to change the team. I didn’t really complain about her and I don’t know how to go about this situation. I don’t have the time or nerves for a conflict and I’m tying to avoid her but she gives me ‘dirty look’ every now and then.

How exactly is my behaviour odd and unprofessional? I do not know how to go about it.
They say people get bullied because someone is invious. All I said I’ve got nothing she could possibly be jealous of!!

I'm not sure this belongs on the Feminist board.

Having said that, yelling at someone that their work is a joke is bang out of order. It is bullying whether it's from someone junior, senior or on the same level. I would withdraw from working with her if you can. No doubt she'll be bullying whoever gets stuck with her next.

I also work in a male-dominated industry and for most of my working life have been the only woman on whatever team I happened to join. Just recently we recruited quite a few women, mostly younger than me. There have been no problems.

How have you survived 20 years in the workplace. No, you don’t say stop bullying me, you calmly say ‘the way you are speaking to me is completely inappropriate and I will report it to the line manager if it happens again. I am willing to sit down and discuss the report with you and answer any questions, but the way you have just behaved is no way to speak to a colleague’. You then write up a report of the incident and email your line manager with the recommendation that maybe she needs some training on professional behaviour.

I think you also sound in dire need of some training on how to manage a team.

The situation is just like at school, dirty looks and all, but I’m 45! How am I unprofessional, I am just tying to avoid a conflict and trying to understand how did this come about? What are we competing for?

No, envy is not the sole reason for bullying by the way. And having a clash with one female colleague is not a reason for writing off the behaviour as ‘how all women act’ and posting about it on a feminist board. How is it a feminist issue?

I am not managing the team! I am part of the team, just a senior member who is supporting new graduates with mostly technical questions/ work delivery. I am not a manger, not trained or equiped to be a manager. You said I’m in dire need of training, what training would that be? I don’t mind doing any course/training which would help me avoid situations like this in future. I do not like conflict! I am upset by ‘dirty looks’ and find the situation bizarre.

When did I say ‘how all women act’? I said I don’t want to ruin her career (the boys’ club will take care of it) or have a conflict at work and I was asking how to deal with this correctly.

It is a feminist issue. Why is she picking on me and being super friendly with all the males? What is going on?

Training on how to support graduates? It seems that you struggle with this because of a lack of assertiveness and failing to nip some quite extreme behaviour by a subordinate in the bud. I would say training would be beneficial here.

I still struggle to understand how instead of having a word with said graduate and telling the boss, you start talking about how this must be typical of all women, must be due to jealousy and start thinking of things she might be jealous of (and concluding that the only things she could possibly be jealous of must be money or looks). If you have worked in this industry for such a long time, you must be used to supporting and guiding more junior staff members. I know junior people are capable of bullying older people, but I do struggle with the approach you are taking and your assumption that this is a feminist issue because all women are like this.