Are Women "Hard-Wired" To Be As Awful As Researcher Joyce Benenson Believes They Are?
I have great respect for Joyce Benenson as a researcher and as a human being. You'll find her work in my science-based syndicated column, and her terrific book on sex differences in human behavior is "Warriors and Worriers."
It's my impression that she's generally pretty dismayed by her findings and others' on, well, what nasty bitches women can be to each other.
Women are covertly aggressive and will stomp down any woman who stands out. Joyce notes that women bond through "shared vulnerabilities" -- like how women trumpet their weaknesses and errors to each other. Joyce considers this a protective measure by the individual woman -- to avoid standing out.
Essentially, it rather often seems that when a woman appears to have another woman's back, it's just so she can get stabbing when nobody's looking.
Olga Khazan has a piece in The Atlantic, "Why Do Women Bully Each Other at Work?" She asks "why women sometimes find themselves trapped and sniping at one another":
Joyce Benenson, a psychologist at Emmanuel College, in Boston, thinks women are evolutionarily predestined not to collaborate with women they are not related to. Her research suggests that women and girls are less willing than men and boys to cooperate with lower-status individuals of the same gender; more likely to dissolve same-gender friendships; and more willing to socially exclude one another. She points to a similar pattern in apes. Male chimpanzees groom one another more than females do, and frequently work together to hunt or patrol borders. Female chimps are much less likely to form coalitions, and have even been spotted forcing themselves between a female rival and her mate in the throes of copulation.Benenson believes that women undermine one another because they have always had to compete for mates and for resources for their offspring. Helping another woman might give that woman an edge in the hot-Neanderthal dating market, or might give her children an advantage over your own, so you frostily snub her. Women "can gather around smiling and laughing, exchanging polite, intimate, and even warm conversation, while simultaneously destroying one another's careers," Benenson told me. "The contrast is jarring."
Perhaps not surprisingly, Benenson's theory is controversial--so much so that she says she feels sidelined and "very isolated" in academia.
If Benenson is right, women would have to struggle mightily to repair their poisonous dynamic, since it is biologically ingrained.
Khazan, like so many writers in the po-mo "social justice"-tinged atmosphere of today, leaves off Joyce to blame the workplace itself (which I see as a way of covertly blaming "the patriarchy"):
But many other researchers think women aren't hardwired to behave this way. Instead, they argue, bitchiness is a by-product of the modern workplace.
But I think this is an important clue, and I would say it reflects adaptive behavior by women in situations of scarcity:
The key point to remember, according to Naomi Ellemers and other researchers, is that queen-bee behavior arises under certain circumstances--like when a woman believes that the path to success is so narrow, she can barely squeeze through herself, let alone try to bring others along with her.
I suspect that women who have social and emotional as well as career capital -- and who also feel secure in that -- are the women other women are more likely to be able to trust.
What do you think?
UPDATED: Loved this tweet in response to my tweeting this post.
Yes, that is built into the female mind. But beating people up and raping women is built into the male mind. Just because something is instinctual doesn't mean it can't be changed. Learning how your body works and then learning how to control yourself is good for both genders. Unfortunately with third wave feminism we actively discourage women from developing self control. A policy that only leads to their unhappiness.
Ben at August 4, 2017 6:27 AM
To reinforce Ben's contention, I observe that postmodern feminism encourages women to behave in ways that are primitive. It encourages women to engage in hypergamy, demands tribal conformity, and teaches women that men are an expendable source of resources. I can't tell you how many women I observe going into a relationship with the up-front assumption that the man is going to disappear at some point, and then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It's often stated that men are more comfortable finding places in a hierarchical organization, while the type of organization women are more comfortable with is more like an extended family. Hierarchies are good at designing and building things: supercomputers, skyscrapers, militaries, moon rockets. They aren't good at raising children or caring for sick people. Extended families are better at those jobs. I think one reason a lot of women struggle at work is because hierarchical relations seem strange and confining to them. The other side of the coin is that one reason things like welfare and socialized medicine don't work is that they are trying to apply hierarchical-organization principles to an extended-family job.
Cousin Dave at August 4, 2017 6:48 AM
And in considering all of the above, remember: Statistical concepts like means, medians and distributions tell you the average behavior of large groups. They do not necessarily tell you anything about the behavior of a specific individual.
Cousin Dave at August 4, 2017 6:49 AM
"I suspect that women who have social and emotional as well as career capital -- and who also feel secure in that -- are the women other women are more likely to be able to trust"
I think this is true to a degree. My daughter was brutalized in high school because not only was she extremely pretty, she was also a gifted athlete, artist and musician.
She had a few friends in high school but they were girls who had moved into her school in Jr High, and were outside the pecking order.
I have had nothing but trouble with women bosses. Wont work for one ever again. The few that were ok tended to struggle in an envorionment where they didn't have much control over who works for them, and how the job responsibilities were allocated.
My one close female friend, a West Point graduate, encounted the same.
Hard to watch someone elses back when you are too busy protecting your own.
Isab at August 4, 2017 9:24 AM
> Instead, they argue, bitchiness is a by-product of the modern workplace.
Suggesting that women wouldn't do this if we had a better work environment?
Look how catty and bitchy women journalists are on social media, or in the articles they write. Is there any reason for that? Who are they competing with?
Some old text by David Gerrold, author of Tribbles "Klingons build their battlecruisers without toilets; it makes them nastier. Klingons pick on old ladies. Klingons fart in air locks."
Why do women spend so much on clothes to go to work, wear heels to work, then complain about wearing heels to work?
These are valuable activities for women, this is how women entertain themselves.
Women even tell us, they dress for other women, not for men.
I see no reason to think the insanity in how women treat each other is a by product of some cruel and oppressive work environment when we see that same insanity in so many other things women will do.
Does anyone think Cosmopolitan or even a Portland Lesbian Bookstore are paradigms of women helping and mentoring each other?
(Now all work places are about the "mentors", but was mentor a thing in predominantly male work world? Mentor relationships still often seems to be a thing intended to help younger women up, and also to help younger women up OVER men and other women.)
jerry at August 4, 2017 10:55 AM
Cousin Dave....Extended Family vs Hierarchical Organization....reminiscent of the sociological concept of Gemeinschaft vs Gesellschaft
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemeinschaft_and_Gesellschaft
I think many of our problems today have to do with trying to turn Gemeinschafts into Gesellschafts and vice versa.
David Foster at August 4, 2017 12:04 PM
Women imagine that men are Klingons, and ignore the chivalrous things men have always done. If a man works 2 jobs to support the family, wives complain they are never home.
There is a tendency I have seen for women in professional roles to resent being judged on productivity. They think it is enough that they show up and do stuff. If the male professor publishes twice as many papers, he should still get paid the same. Women tend to favor socialism for this reason. The figures on voting patterns support this claim: single women tend to vote far more democratic than married women who vote dem more than men. Men who are self-employed vote repub even more.
cc at August 4, 2017 12:04 PM
Jerry...mentors....I think mentoring has always existed, but has not been so explicit or necessarily exclusive to a single individual...a person could have several people from whom he learned and by whom he was inspired, without any 'Will you be my mentor?' conversation.
David Foster at August 4, 2017 12:07 PM
To chime in like David, mentorship has always existed. In the distant past you actually had to pay your mentor in order to get guidance from them. The recent change is an effort to take control out of the hands of the person giving the guidance and put that control into the organization's hands instead. Which yes coincided with an effort to increase female participation and promotion at work.
Ben at August 4, 2017 6:17 PM
cc Says:
"If the male professor publishes twice as many papers, he should still get paid the same."
This is not a good example of what you are trying to say.
In academia one is often evaluated on a combination of factors (quantity of published papers is just one component here).
The quantity of papers is actually a poor metric on its own because it doesn't distinguish between quality high impact work and just a bunch of low impact follow on publications.
Just to put things into perspective for you, Peter Higgs has an abysmal publication record in terms of the number of papers published... and yet he won the Nobel prize in physics in 2013 due to the quality of his work.
The field will regard you more highly if you have a few extremely high impact papers over a barrage of low tier publications (obviously having many high impact publications is best).
Artemis at August 5, 2017 4:46 AM
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