Women Constantly Undermining Each Other In The Workplace? Total Myth.

1:00 pm, January 14th | by Amy Tennery

You know the stereotype of the catty women coworkers who delight at each other’s misfortune? Unsurprisingly, that’s total B.S., according to a new report.

Women actually feel worse watching their same-sex counterparts being mistreated at work, according to a new study from researchers Texas A&M University and Buena Vista University in Iowa (Springer is publishing it this month; you can check out the outline here).

The report examined how male and female workers react when witnessing incivility toward their colleagues (i.e., when someone spoke condescendingly or rudely to them). And while both men and women often displayed four key emotions during said incivility — “anger, demoralization, fear and anxiety” — the study found that female workers reacted more powerfully when they saw this happening to other female workers. Even more interesting, “demoralization was the strongest negative emotion experienced by observing women.”

Watching women getting mistreated makes you feel “demoralized,” eh? Imagine that.

TAGS: report on women in business | study on women workers