Women vs women Can we break the glass ceiling?

By Chani Imbulgoda

Women often claim that men repress women and put up a glass ceiling blocking women’s way to the corner office! As International Women’s Day approaches, corporate tycoons are getting ready to make speeches at public fora. Women’s rights organisations are in full swing, vying with each other to organise the best pink forum in the country. Yet, there is something that women need to discuss openly.

We often voice concern about violence against women by men. Sexual harassment, patriarchal dominance over women, condemnation of women’s capacities and competencies are examples of suppression of women by men in the corporate setting. Violence is not only physical but psychological as well. People can instil fear in the mind of the other by using threats and abusive language, which could affect them psychologically. Emotional violence can be as serious as or even worse than physical violence. Emotional violence occurs when one says or does something to make the other feel threatened or worthless. Campaigns are organised locally and internationally to raise awareness about violence against women. Men are always blamed when it comes to violence against women. ‘Educate men to protect women’, is a popular slogan on the subject of discrimination against women. According to the UN website, “violence negatively affects women’s general well-being and prevents women from fully participating in society. It impacts their families, their community, and the country at large. It has tremendous costs, from greater strains on health care to legal expenses and losses in productivity.”

But how do women perpetrate violence against women? I recall a speaker at one of the pink fora declaring, “It is not men who blocked my way towards success but fellow women!” She added, “it is the women who were talking behind my back, spreading rumours, carrying tales and gossiping while males were supportive.” Not an uncommon experience! Violence against women by women mostly represents emotional violence, which would have a long-term impact and result in personality disorders. Women prefer ‘cold wars’ rather than ‘wars using physical power’. Their congenial outward behaviour is often a facade, which reminds one of the dual personalities of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

During social gatherings, women exchange smiles and pleasantries and engage in empowering talks. Alas, in dark corridors and behind closed doors, they conspire against other women. They use abusive language, undermine and tarnish the others’ character, spread rumours and pull down the other who is trying to climb up the corporate ladder.

Surprisingly, except talking behind closed doors, violence against women by women hardly take centre stage.

When a woman walks into an office as a fresh team member, it is often fellow women who try to make life hard for the newcomer. It is common knowledge that women continually harass their kind who receive the most attention from the higher management. It is the women who first harasse, criticise and damage the image of another woman. There are countless instances, where corporate women are distressed to the point of quitting as they could no longer bear the pain of backstabbing by their own kind.

Women take the pleasure of taking it out on other women, sometimes even disrupting the victim’s family life. Husbands are often made witness to the outpouring of their wives’ stress, in the form of narratives of incidents at work, as soon as they come home from work. As such, the disturbed mindset of victims would badly affect their spouses, children and parents. One of my friends, a senior officer in a public sector organisation once said that she was less comfortable with her female colleagues than her male colleagues at the office. She said that male colleagues were supportive and offered advice, whereas her female counterparts tried to repress her. She confessed that she could no longer bear the distress and had decided to quit. And we talk of capacity building and strengthening the female workforce!

Research has revealed that women are more critical of women than men are of both men and women. Women display competitiveness and authoritarianism negatively to safeguard their power and privileges. Research also reveals that corporate women compete for power over other women, better positions, or more attention from males. This behaviour of women against women provides a platform for men to consolidate their positions.

A 19th Century criminal anthropologist Cesare Lombroso (1893) argued that as women showed latent antipathy towards one another, trivial events gave rise to fierce hatreds; and due to women’s irascibility, those occasions led quickly to insolence and assaults. This happens more openly among street women. Nonetheless, the behaviour of corporate women of better social status and education is not much different. In fact, it can be worse, they use more refined forms of insult, which does not lead to legal disputes or fisticuffs.

This is a social, economic, political and cultural problem that is cancerous. Attaining equity and equality, peace and happiness would remain a distant dream for women unless the issue of violence against women by women is eliminated. Depression, hampered career progress and unhappiness in private life are the repercussions of violence against women by women. Feminists’ organisations are silent on this issue. Only a few researchers dare talk about it. Perhaps, it is not as appealing as ‘violence against women by men’. Women discriminate against their kind, violate their rights and abuse their independence, but are reluctant to admit it. Slogans such as ‘empower women’ and ‘stand together’ are quite popular during International Women’s Day celebrations.

Why can’t we practice what we preach? Uprooting the weeds of jealousy, selfishness and greed would lead to the purification of the inner soul and help one harbour love and peace towards others, regardless of gender.

Women need to be vigilant of their own words and deeds to make the world a better place for all women. In the corporate world, we talk of smashing glass ceilings built by men to reach higher positions. However, instead of getting together to smash the glass ceiling, why are we women hampering each other’s progress?

On 08 March, when the International Women’s Day is celebrated, we can reflect on our feelings and behaviour towards other women and vow to make a world free of bias, stereotypes and discrimination; a world that is diverse, equitable and inclusive; a world where difference is valued and celebrated. Together, we can forge women’s equality and collectively we can all ‘Break the Bias’, which just so happens to be the theme of International Women’s Day 2022.

(The writer is a senior official at a state University, with an MBA from the Postgraduate Institute of Management (PIM), Sri Lanka and is currently reading for her PhD in Quality Assurance in the Higher Education Sector at PIM. Views expressed in this article are personal. She can be reached at cv5imbulgoda@gmail.com)