The Distressing Dilemma of Toxic Competition: An Essay on Women in the Workplace

In our mid-”Me, Too” era, dialogue abounds around the topic of men mistreating women in the workplace. In fact, in an early bonding encounter with a new close friend, she and I swapped workplace sexual harassment stories as casually as if discussing our weekend plans. Waiting tables in a restaurant? Check. In an office space? Check. Within fill-in-the-blank male-dominated industry? Check, check, check. While the “where” may have varied, the “what” remains a tale as old as time. Nothing bonds two women, after all, like finding affirmation in a fellow compadre through these shared (disturbing) experiences that women everywhere can relate to.

There is a comfort in that common understanding we know all too well as, at once, normal (commonplace), and also, not normal (unacceptable). There’s no arguing that casual sexism and misogyny persists even still: “Me, Too” reckoning, or not. And women know all too well how it feels to face that residual (tenacious?) patriarchal entitlement men have, shown in the ways they continue to interact with women in whatever manner that pleases them. (In fact, in an acutely satisfyingly angry moment confronting a married male coworker after months of harassment, I fumed at his infuriatingly arrogant reply: “That’s just the way it is around here.” Never I have uttered a phrase more lividly than when I seethed through my teeth, “Be that as it may…” But I digress. Story for another time.)

What’s less discussed, interestingly, are the spaces and patterns where it’s not men, but women, mistreat each other, sometimes as overtly as to sabotage them, others as covertly as to refuse to help them.

Women have a multitude of reasons to band together. I have this vision of women who’ve achieved great success in their career or calling in climbing the proverbial ladder. No doubt, they’ve surpassed in quiet (or not-so-quiet) strength their own steeplechase of gender-based hurdles to get there. As much as I looooove making 83 cents to my husband’s dollar as a white woman…

These women may, at some point, decide to pause their ascent, and glance downward at the women beneath them, climbing, toiling away, struggling, in their own ascent.

These uppermost women have two choices: will they extend a hand to the next one climbing the ladder, help them up, and buttress their success, too? Or will they smirk, turn their gaze back skyward, and assume their climb without a second thought toward assist those struggling behind them? Perhaps even stepping on their fingers and faces as they resume their own upward trek?

In spite of my hope that experienced career women will lend that helping hand, time and time again, I’m yanked back down to earth, where the disappointing reality of women’s behavior toward one another stings even worse within the context of a man’s world.

Having been in the full-time workforce for nearly a decade, it’s an ongoing challenge to stave off succumbing to this cynical acceptance. It threatens to drown out my hope of ever seeing a healthy work environment we’re about as close to achieving as Eden: one in which an allegiance among women is strong…or one that even exists at all. As a youngster in my twenties, and new to the workforce, so eager and keen was I at each new opportunity to work for and with seasoned working women I could learn from. I longed desperately for someone to take me under their wing, to mentor me through what she wished she’d known when beginning her own career, in likely an even more unfriendly environment to women than one those my age know today. Gone were my college days when my heavily female-majority student body (where women outnumbered men 70/30) beget fierce competition: for sorority seats, for friends, but especially, for boys—winning their attention, their invitations to Beach Weekend and date parties, and their votes for Sweetheart, were invaluable social currency.

Now, at thirty, the reality hits me that little has changed since graduating from my uber-fratty university. When I tally my most distressing, toxic, and insufferable work settings as an adult, most of them have been facilitated—if not created—by other women.

While I cannot speak to their motives–jealousy? competition? ageism? I can only speculte, and there’s only so much one can address in an exit interview–I can say that the impacts of their damages linger long after my departure. Like anyone who’s suffered abuse or mistreatment, to reach the other side of healing is to find ways to avoid perpetuating the pattern by passing it to other/younger women who succeed me. It may sound and feel like a noble effort, but after years of repeat offenses and the chronic mistrust it breeds, it’s certainly easier said than done.

In my first PR role in North Carolina, I reported to a manager who was incredibly talented at her job. She had a boastable background with experience enticing to anyone in the field, having worked with celebrities from her tenure in the New York PR scene. I couldn’t wait to fall into step with her as a teammate, and learn from the best.

What ensued instead would later shock me. Off came the pleasantries she’s shown in the interview, in my first few weeks: indeed, she had morphed into Bad Female Boss (BFB) #1. As my manager, she opted for demoralizing, demeaning, degrading leadership tactics that not only did little to foster any meaningful learning or growth, but also crushed my confidence. Following our weekly one-on-ones, no sooner would I step out of her office would I burst into tears. Walking a lap around our building to compose myself became a weekly recurrence. She rebuffed my questions, chastising me for lacking information I “should have already known,” only to then reprimand my silence, sneering at my lack of initiative. If I missed mention of something important in a team meeting, she rebuked my “ability to pay attention” so vehemently–and often–that I considered asking my therapist to put me on medication to help me focus. (I had neither been neither diagnosed with any such condition requiring it, nor have I since.)

In my sixth month in the role, the company laid me off, citing budget cuts, assuring that my job performance had not been a factor. But after months of hostility from day one, if ever there was a chance for my manager to go to bat for me, I imagined that she’d have icily let it pass. Months after I left, I felt the shuddering aftermath of having been treated so ruthlessly by someone I’d so hoped to please, someone I’d hoped to learn from. So I left, deciding to move cities, with better hopes for my next job.

I chose a new life in Washington, D.C., and found an in-house marketing role. I’d report to a manager who had earned her JD but decided to switch from practicing law to communications management, and now oversaw the firm’s marketing activities.

While I reported to her on paper, my daily direct report—BFB #2—turned out to be a coworker a few years my junior. This had been her first job out of college. She had mastered the role to an impressive degree.

What had originally meant to be a more experienced teammate whom I would shadow for the first several months and then branch off on my own, morphed into an opportunistic lack of oversight, and one she took full advantage of. For the first few months, she played nice, before shifting her demeanor entirely: she barked orders, scolded me for mistakes, huffed at my questions, and snidely commented on when and how I took lunch breaks, or if left the office before she did in the evenings. One afternoon when I returned to my desk after going shopping at my lunch hour, Forever21 bag in hand, she sneered, “Don’t think you’re not being watched.” Panicked, I approached a senior team member to ensure I hadn’t violated lunch hour protocol–which, even if there had been one, now sounds about as absurd a workplace dress code mandating high heels for women. She assured me no such rule existed, which did little to assuage my now spiked anxiety.

At my annual review, my [actual] manager (BFB #3) handed me a manila envelope, sheepishly, advising I wait to read it until after I’d gone home for the day. When I did, my stomach sank. I held a log of several months’ worth of my coworker’s tattlings–on every misstep I’d made in the job, often unknowingly. I knew they’d come from both her and another female coworker. Humiliated, ashamed, and filled with newfound, gut-wrenching distrust, I felt a burning resentment toward everything that soiled this majority-female environment: cattiness, gossip, contention, and backstabbing. Frustrated and angry tears spilled onto the envelope in my hands. I fought the urge to rip it to pieces.

Every day, for a year, I endured her petty behaviors. I dreaded going to work, and for the first time fully understood what “Sunday Scaries” felt like. She and I shared a dual cubicle, sequestering us into privacy, allowing her to continue ongoing verbal abuses, threats, and nitpicking without anyone overhearing. And because I was terrified to lose my job and face the prospect of moving back in with my parents, I stayed quiet, and I took it. On a regular basis, the empty conference rooms became my space for solace, where, on days she would lash out the harshest, I’d duck into to sob, quietly, and alone. Her vitriol was inescapable. And no one had any idea.

Finally gathering courage to voice my concerns to my manager, she vowed address the issue in a way she saw fit. Which, as it turned out, was to do nothing. The abuse and bullying ensued. Relief only came on my last day of work, before transitioning (more grateful than I’d ever been in my life) to a far healthier job setting (which, as it turns out, was nearly 100% male). In my exit interview with the HR manager–also a woman–my efforts to describe my experience were coldly dismissed, wanting to ask me questions pertaining little to my experience with them. I pushed back and insisted on having the conversation, knowing this would bemy last chance to shed light on the hellish environment I’d endured with zero oversight or disciplinary action. If the slightest chance existed that someone else wouldn’t have the same experience I had, I’d say my piece, dammit. Eventually, I learned the cruel reality that going against someone far more valued by your employer meant my chances of seeing any meaningful change were dishearteningly slim.

And once again, years later, I find myself in yet another similar dilemma. In January, I accepted a job offer of cinematic proportions. I was thirty years old, had earned the arbitrary amount of Work Experience, and had now secured The Job. The one you call all your friends and family about, the one you celebrate as an answered prayer. At long last, this felt like the career win you spend years cutting your teeth for, putting in your time for. Finally, all the crazy jobs with all the terrible bosses I’d dedicated my twenties to would pay off.

Three months later, I find myself battling that familiar Sunday dread…and BFB #4. In my twice-weekly, mandatory, insufferable check-ins with my new manager, I endure a new level of psychological distress. Once again, I face off with yet another woman colleague whose end goal seems to be to push me to quit. The tightrope of considering financial responsibilities and mental health is a precarious, exhausting balance, and a daily battle. In every conversation, she reminds me early and often that I am unfit for my role, my quality of work is lacking, and her frustrations in showing me how to do a job I should, in her mind, already know how to do. After month one in my role, mistakes of any kind became unacceptable, another strike. BFB #4 selects put-downs, humiliation, demoralization, and stony condescension as her leadership tactics of choice.

When we join larger team calls, I watch, astonished, as her demeanor softens from unfriendly and hostile to jovial and collegiate, joking and laughing with our teammates as though she hasn’t just undressed me in our one-on-one. I am dumbfounded by the Jekyll and Hyde act.

This company, I thought, has a robust HR department–practically a luxury. Surely, they would help me find a solution. Hopeful, and again, naively, I sought their help, presenting solutions, suggesting reassignment to a different manager, citing as diplomatically as I could that it was “ a poor fit.” They asked me if they could bring these concerns to BWM #4. I hedged. After repeated reassurances from HR that I needn’t worry about retaliation…can you guess what followed?

My latest workplace assailant, no doubt incensed by my insubordination, easily spun the narrative from her shortcomings as a manager, to my lacking performance as an employee. When we all came together for follow-up, I was put on a performance improvement plan for the month leading up to my 90-day review. Her mistreatment continued, worsened. Eventually, they fired me.

For weeks leading up to the final crescendo, twice a week, I’d hang up, step outside my home office, sink onto my kitchen floor, and sob. Was it me? Why was I stuck in this pattern of abusive women I worked for? Did I attract this type of energy? Was I doomed to a lifetime career filled with BFBs? I was understaffed, overworked, overwhelmed, and chronically stressed. So I sought help. Now, she was making me pay for it, fully backed by HR and her own manager—all women. I felt ignored, unvalued, and further isolated in a new remote job, with few ways to build alliances with those who could vouch for me as a colleague.

On my worst days when I wanted so desperately to quit—when I still had the choice—I’d tell myself I would sooner scrub toilets than work for this dreadful person for one more day.

Now, clear-minded and calm, I consider the larger picture. I wonder how I can combat these toxic patterns that surely affect other women in their careers. When I looked into the research, there is little to find, sifting through a thick growth of gender-based violence or mistreatment stories committed by men against women, not women against women. There had to be more than silently accepting a fate of constantly looking over my shoulder, wondering who else will try to sabotage my career next.

While the dialogue around this is small, I did start to find it. One Australian study found that younger women are more likely to experience a form of online abuse in a professional setting (43 percent), often resulting in severe career consequences, including “severe impacts on their mental health, loss of confidence in their ability to do their job, concerns for their safety and the safety of their families, and of reputational damage.” The caveat, in this case, examines abusers who are either men, or strangers on the internet.

I sought and found affirmation in articles like this one from Harvard Business Review on psychological safety, and the adverse consequences for those whose workplaces lack it. The following describes a psychologically safe environment. The familiarity ran cold in my veins, but still, it gave language to my experience:

If you make a mistake on this team, it is not held against you.
Members of this team are able to bring up problems and tough issues.
People on this team sometimes accept others for being different.
It is safe to take a risk on this team.
It isn’t difficult to ask other members of this team for help.
No one on this team would deliberately act in a way that undermines my efforts.
Working with members of this team, my unique skills and talents are valued and utilized.

Even–maybe especially–I think to myself that there has to be more than this. Aren’t females meant to set a higher standard, for both men and for ourselves? There has to be hope beyond the unbearably hurt many women cause each other, especially in a shared work environment, where gender equity is not quite within our reach. It’s tempting to throw up our hands and accept a hopeless reality–that women are just as capable of abusing their power and clout in the workplace as men, and sadly, at the expense of other women. And yet, I know we can do more than merely forestall despair. I want to offer hope—to have hope—for those rising up after us, not yet jaded by the maelstrom of career hurdles, leering men, and undermining women.

Today, in 2023, when the rights and freedoms of women remain frightfully under threat, we have come too far to accept this framework of women eyeing each other as competition, rather than allies.

I admire the newest adults now entering their own careers, who are demanding so much more from the world than I dare say any of their predecessors (my generation included) ever have. As a student, I cared about whichever fratty rugby bro whose attention I was entertaining, wherever I’d graze for my next snack, and whatever would supply my next handle of Smirnoff that weekend (Whipped Cream, obviously. IYKYK.)

Meanwhile, today’s twentysomethings are advocating on behalf of our dying planet, pledging loyalty to brands only if they align with their own values, and refusing to accept any answer short of justice. I also wonder how they’ll fare in a world that still disvalues young women who are learning how to exist in the workplace for the first time, often by women who may still feel they need to undergo a bit of hazing in order to “earn” their right to be there. Hazees almost always beget hazers.

For now, I can do my small part. I can step into spaces to mentor younger women. I can remind them they do have options, even if they might have to diligently seek them out. Last weekend, I met with our college student companion whom my husband and I “adopted” a year ago, with whom we regularly take out to coffee or dinner. Our friendship has allowed a space for her to ask the same earnest questions that overwhelm many juniors in college: how to date, how to set up your new career, how to juggle the million demands that compete for an undergrad’s time and energy. It’s a feeling of satisfaction that’s so easy to achieve, simply by offering the small things to her that I can–sometimes answers, sometimes consolation, but most often, the willingness to listen. Things I craved at her age, and still do now.

I can also remember and appreciate the supportive women I do know in my life. I may not work with them, but I continue to befriend them, love them, respect and admire them. I keep them close, my “kitchen table” as Michelle Obama describes her own tribe of female friends, and receive their kindness as the gift that it is. They remind me that not only am I enough as I am and that my “doing” does not define me, but that my manager (BFB #4) is a poo-poo head threatened by my goddess aura and can crawl back into the miserable, lonely mire of workaholicism she came from. (Fact: I fucking love my friends. I owe them everything.)

Whomever the source of my latest woes may be, I’ve also learned from working with difficult bosses to take full ownership of my own happiness. That is not to say that abusive or poor treatment does not affect me, or that it’s excusable. That is to say that taking the best care of myself will help me stay as resilient, confident, and kind to myself as I can, regardless of what happens around me. Prioritizing my mental health has never mattered more than now: meditation, therapy, amazing books (this one is next) and taking every thought captive (2 Corinthians 10:5), meaning approaching each day as openly as I can, accepting that which I cannot change. The thoughts that I allow (yes, allow) into my head will later show up in my body, for better or for worse. However poorly my today may have gone, tomorrow is always a new day. Jobs do not last forever, or in this case, thank God in heaven, even past the spring. Next time someone tears me down behind the safety of her computer screen, I can smile and think, You really have nothing on me. Also committing to maintaining my physical health (eating well, maintaining a regular sleep schedule, and moving, exercising, and stretching often, to avoid shriveling into a crusty, crackly flesh ball), and spiritual health (remembering my value comes from my faith, and restoring my inner peace with truth reminders from the Bible) are ongoing efforts that are well-worth the self-discipline.

I can also do, as Glennon Doyle says, hard things, wherever I am (and reread her book, Untamed). In a perfect world, there’d be no problems that require an HR department. In a semi-perfect world, HR would resolve all of our workplace disputes easily and painlessly. But in the real world, I can speak up anyway, professionally addressing workplace hostility both head-on to my offender and to those whose job it is to mediate (whether they do so successfully or not). Even if neither have solved the issue, there is the small but sure satisfaction in knowing I’ve done what I can.

Those of you experiencing similar woes in their own careers, I see you. I can assure you, if nothing else for now, that you are not alone.

And finally, perhaps the most profound way I can rebel against all things that continue to challenge my hope, is to hold tight to the belief that I’ve always had: that women are incredible. We endure more (childbirth), have a higher pain tolerance (again, childbirth), are an ongoing mystery to men, model how to feel, serve the reminder that we are human “beings” (not human “doings”), and embody a strength that balances our male counterparts in a way that often gets missed.

Women are remarkable. And we are frightening. We can perpetuate unimaginable suffering by lashing out in our own pain. Or, we can create unimaginable beauty in our closeness.

And we are a force to be reckoned with when we can surpass our own insecurities enough to realize that we are stronger together than we are apart. The strongest mark that sin leaves on us, to me, is its success rate in turning women against each other. So much unravels when that happens. So much is stifled and suffers when women become each other’s enemy. We are not enemies. Conversely, the most potent way women can fight back is by supporting one another.

So while the broken world we occupy cannot and will not fix itself overnight, hope lives on when those oppressed and abused look up from their scars, and decide that destructive patterns will end with them. We can do as others before us have done, by leveraging our own unfortunate experiences to fuel helping those around us. So, reach down the ladder, take her hand, and pull her up with you.