Does female solidarity really exist?

The same question could be asked about men, but as a woman I have more knowledge concerning my own gender, so I will talk about what I know better.

Researches have been done to compare the genders in order to understand individual’s behaviors, so no one will be completely excluded.

In order to make the presentation understandable, we will talk about men and women in their most common behaviors.

During centuries women have been reduced to “potential mothers” and had no other functions than raising their children and keeping their house clean. Due to many female revolutions and after fights for equal rights and liberties, women have been able to work and now have officially the same possibilities than men (in Europe at least). This is definetely the outcome of a female solidarity.

However, the patriarchal system is still pretty much integrated in every mind, so sometimes we see ladies stuck at certain levels in the hierarchy of the company and they also struggle with the perfect timing for having kids because, let’s not lie, 1 kid represents at least a hole of 3 months in your career.

There start rivalries: who is going to manage better her professional life and her personal time?

Sorority effect

As mentioned previously, women can support themselves to reach a certain degree of independence. This solidarity still exists when we look at the movement of “women empowering women”, cheering each other up, breaking taboos about periods, reality of maternity, mental charge, harassment…

The women’s empowerment movement aims to raise the status of women through education, awareness, literacy and training. It’s also about making life-determining decisions though the different problems in society. They may have the opportunity to redefine gender roles or other such “roles”, which in turn may allow them more freedom to pursue desired goals. If we try to sum it up, the goal of “women empowering women” is to build a global community of women and experts who can benefit from each other.

Behind the mask

However, the world isn’t a big group of friends. Let’s be realistic, it’s impossible to stay nice with everyone and never compete when you want to be the next CEO. If the competition remains professional and is just about comparing skills that might be useful to do the job, there is nothing to worry about, but what we can observe in a professional rivalry between women is a comparison at a personal level.

Why the girl out of famous universities and chased by recruitment cabinets is bothering the 45 years old who just became manager? Well, the second one probably sees a potential danger for her career, is she going to be better, more sociable, attractive in every way? This potential threat turned into the creation of tensions from the side of the oldest. She wants to defend herself and destroy the ambition of the young lady by reminding her that the "path is long", "should be more discrete", "should pay more attention", "should dress conservative" etc. These expressions are subtle to not be perceived by men but the ton and the frequency of them do not let place to any doubt: jealousy is born.

The situation can also turned pretty "ironic" because the same 45yo will probably compliment the other on superficial aspects, like the color of her eyes, a new dress..., and the moment the conversation turns around working opportunities one becomes extremely cold, defensive, feeling personally attacked.

This happens more than you can think and in every places, no matter if you’re working in a restaurant or a law firm.

In order to avoid these kind of annoying conversations, women prefer in general working with men, because they think the criticisms, positive or negative, will be more neutral. It’s the same thing when it comes to the preference between bosses. Women are in general more likely to accept the authority coming from a man (source: Randstad's article).

After reading a lot about that subject, I noticed the majority of articles talk about patriarchal roots which can still be in our mind, but honestly, I’m not convinced. Men work to obtain what they want and, for the same thing, it looks like women have to sacrifice a personal side, and when they compete for a common working opportunity it's not a comparison between the professional skills which appears, but a comparison between the whole package of sacrifices and this necessarily implies personal aspects.

However, the university of Toronto noticed that men from developed countries don’t really care if the management is done by a gender or another. Probably because they don’t live the situation of women rivalry. Naturally they assess the situation from an objective point of view and look the personality and the required competences to determine who would provide the best leadership. [ This is what happen in general of course, because certain countries particularly “men oriented” like Japan don’t think the same way (source: Randstad's article). ]

Now that we got the facts, let’s have a look at the sources of this problematic

We mentioned previously the patriarchal roots probably still in our mind, but education influences a lot. Let's have a look at the cartoons “made for girls” (I have a pretty limited knowledge about them because I’ve never watched any): the stories can all be summarized by girls ready to do everything just to fall in love with a prince which can protect them and are they constantly fighting with their sisters or mother in law. This creates behaviors that you find decades later in the middle of a conversation for a manager job opportunity. And even if you’re not raised according to these standards, as a woman, you face them anyway.

To conclude this article, I would love to give the perfect solution, but for now I don’t have any, except maybe working with men. I based this article on personal experiences: these unpleasant situations occurred a lot and I'm done with fake compliments and conversations behind my back.

As I'm still pretty young, I can't really know if the future will put a "lady manager" on my path but I would like to stay positive and hopefully will be appreciated at work for my work.

JT