Sheryl Sandberg on the Myth of the Catty Woman

[athena]

1. My own experience,

which is consistent with this article, is that a minority of women tend to see women as competition and are therefore cold and mean to other women; but if you want to see true nastiness toward a woman -- I mean, back-stabbing, career-destroying nastiness -- you will find that the perpetrator is invariably a man. There are some men out there who cannot stand a woman who is smarter or more competent than they are, and there are no lengths to which they will not go to destroy that woman's reputation and her career. People other than the victim seem incapable of noticing such men's obvious jealousy; they instead blame the woman for being unable to get along with all of her co-workers and for being involved in "conflict".