I had dinner with a group last night that included a woman who recently got a new job with a title promotion to Vice President. She was rightly thrilled. However, she was surprised and hurt that most of her close female friends had absolutely nothing to say to her when she emailed the exciting news to them. These same friends would call her within 5 minutes to see if she was okay if she had so much as a hangnail. With minor exception, only her male friends and colleagues went out of their way to express congratulations. She wanted to know why?
I have to say that in my years in the workplace I’ve seen this happen often. Women get promoted or perform well, and many of their female friends and colleagues have no kind words or even turn on them in a negative way. Meanwhile, their male friends and colleagues are thrilled about their accomplishment and express it openly. As difficult as it can be for women to be successful in a male-dominated business culture, it does seem quite puzzling. Especially because I rarely see the same thing happen between male friends and colleagues.
Is it biological? Environmental? I’d say it might be based on a perceived threat in a competitive workplace, but the scenario described above involved mostly women who don’t work in the same industry as this individual, let alone at the same company. There is no direct threat to any of the women who went out of their way NOT to congratulate her on the new job and promotion in title.
Perhaps it is a biological response for competing against other women to stand out and get attention in a male dominated world. But then why don’t men have a similar biological competitive response to each other to be the most desirable to the female population? My experience has been that men can compete ruthlessly against one another in business and in sports, but they congratulate other men when they have business success. Especially when there is no direct competition within the same company. Not to mention that fact that I’ve also observed that women seem to have no problem congratulating their MALE friends and colleagues! The individual in this story experienced the same thing with women who didn’t congratulate her but openly congratulated male business colleagues for similar successes in the past.
It is a peculiar behavior that I’ve observed with many women in the workplace, but certainly not all. I’d be curious to get thoughts from others on this?
