Are women really each other’s worse enemy or is it just a myth and a stereotype? What does the research show about women’s hostility to other women, sometimes called bullying, in the workplace? Bullying is a learned behavior that gets fine-tuned during our school years. Girls and women tend to bully using more subtle nuanced types of tactics that are relationship-based. Men’s ways of bullying tend to be more aggressive. Is female to female bullying an issue that deserves attention apart from general workplace bullying? Is discussing women’s hostility to women feeding into the stereotype of women’s  “nasty” behavior at work?  Perhaps if women are bullying other women they need to be told to “put on your big girl panties” and deal with it, as the saying goes. Do we have different expectations of women’s behavior at work than we do of men’s behavior? If so, could that be playing a role in the perception that women bully women? Do we have a responsibility, as women, to support our “sisters” at work?

Some do not believe there is a difference in the ways men and women bully, and if there is, what is the big deal. They may be right. The research suggests, however, that the two genders do tend to bully using some different tactics. Because women’s ways of bullying are generally more subtle, managers may not recognize it as bullying and ignore the behavior thereby giving tacit approval for it to continue. This leads to poor morale, lack of trust in management, poor performance, absenteeism and turnover. This webinar discusses the phenomenon – or lack thereof- of women’s hostility to other women, outlines what one should do if bullied, and discusses management’s role in the prevention and intervention of the behavior.