Feminine Intuition

Last night I had dinner with two people I had just met through some colleagues: a young woman and an older man. We talked about our industries, our careers, and our frustrations. The woman talked about how her two bosses made life hard for her, how they held her pending promotion over her head, and how there was a lot of competition and other workplace challenges in general. I asked her if she mostly worked with women (and her field is not a traditional field for women). She said yes.

Her male boss was impressed with my "insight" but I was just sad. I explained that I didn't want to assume that women were making her work-life a living hell, but that was simply the only scenario I could picture when she described her situation to me, even though she used gender-neutral terms like "boss" and "nazi" and "hell."

My intuition told me that this young female professional was having problems in a workplace that was dominated by women. And I was right. I'm not sure what causes these female troubles in general but I really think certain women might bring it upon themselves. I've heard female friends make negative assumptions about their female counterparts at work based on the woman's looks and on how they perceive the woman interacts with their male counterparts. More often than not, an attractive female who gets along better with the male coworkers is written off as spoiled, under-qualified, overly sensitive, and attention-mongering.

We bring this female vs. female attitude on ourselves, and on each other, although it's horrific and unnecessary, because of tradition/unenlightened values/personal competition/jealousy/our own personal baggage. It makes me feel awful because women should be the ones supporting other women and making each others' lives a little bit easier.

Women face enough challenges in life as it is. We could do everyone a favor and treat each other with some honesty and respect, at the very least. Or, we women could surprise the world and maybe treat other women just a little better than we would treat men because we women know what it's like to have menstrual cramps and need a little extra fiber in our diets. It's not fun.