Judgement Day: Why are women each other’s worst critics?

Emma Wood - 5 Jan 17

Whose opinion would you fear most at Judgement Day – a God’s or an army of women who don’t know you but are ready to (tear you apart) judge you anyway?

I know many who would fear the latter. I know many who have experienced the latter. I’ve heard women say ‘girls are mean’ and ‘women are bitchy,’ and relay run-ins with other women that left them emotionally or socially devastated. I am baffled by this – it’s 2017, surely we have moved on?

In my eyes a clear indicator of change is the 15% drop in sales of traditional women’s magazines – you know, the ones that name and shame women’s flaws for money every month – and the emergence of a new media for women that is topical, witty and co-operative (such as the media you are reading right now). Does this mean we are tearing our attentions away from each other and turning them towards ruling more of the world instead? Oh, I do hope so. That would be much more fun.

But before we do, there is a history of competitive female behaviour that we must understand if we are to overcome it –  our demons, if you will. The psychologist Joyce Benenson dedicated thirty years to researching competition within the sexes, publishing ‘Warriors and Worries’ along the way which surprised everybody by concluding that evolution designed women to be the more competitive of the sexes, whilst boys form more forgiving groups. What is riveting about Benenson’s research is that it tells the story of a perfect storm of social, psychological and biological factors that produce a fearsome survival instinct in women; an instinct so clever and so intuitive that I don’t know whether to applaud or run for the hills.

If a perfect storm is created when a centre of low pressure develops within a system of high pressure, then the first gust of low pressure in female competition is that female new-borns are at greater risk of rejection than males. In many cultures girls are, or have been, considered less valuable than boys – right from day one girls must work hard to stay alive. According to Benenson, girls do this by endearing themselves to their caregiver – they smile more, cry less, are more helpful and – most interestingly of all – they learn to read adult emotions. It seems that early on girls are learning that bashing each other over the head to get attention will get them nowhere, but directing their energies to get closer to the source of food and shelter, will.

Where this becomes even more interesting is that as a girl grows and the resources her mother can offer dwindle her competitive focus must shift to men to secure not only her own survival but that of her offspring and female relatives too. If this is the centre of low pressure, then the high pressure which surrounds it and turns it fearsome is, Benenson’s research suggests, the fact that women need to protect their bodies for life long childcare and dare not risk physical damage via competitive retaliation. The result is that women must disguise their competition. The only time a woman may risk competing overtly is if she has high social status therefore little chance of retaliation.

Joyce says: ‘From early childhood onwards, girls compete using strategies that minimize the risk of retaliation and reduce the strength of other girls. Girls’ competitive strategies include: avoiding direct interference with another girl’s goals; disguising competition; competing overtly only from a position of high status in the community; enforcing equality within the female community and socially excluding other girls.’

To my ears, one of the most interesting tactics listed is ‘enforcing equality within the female community,’ which on the face it seems like a jolly good idea, but a darker power lurks behind it. Benenson’s research highlights that high status and very attractive women need less help and protection from other women and are less motivated to invest in other women (who represent potential competition). Therefore, a woman who tries to distinguish or promote herself is a threat. According to Benenson, a common way women deal with the threat represented by a powerful or beautiful woman is by insisting on standards of equality, uniformity, and sharing for all the women in the group and making these attributes the ‘normative requirements of proper femininity’.

Does this ring any bells yet? To me, it reads like every women’s weekly – a way of being that we need to move away from.

But this does explain a modern-day confliction – our sensibilities bind us together but the darkest part of us is relieved when the most beautifully turned-out woman in the room spills wine on her dress.

The final source of pressure in Benenson’s perfect storm is that the lack of group cooperation means social exclusion is a prime weapon. Additional women in the community means additional demand for scarce resource, mates and status therefore new arrivals are under threat of elimination by coalition – a coalition being the safest bet as it minimises the chances of retaliation by outnumbering the victim. American High School movie script anyone?

This is an entirely different picture to a man’s world where, Benenson says, men are designed to form tight-knit groups to protect their reproductive assets and are motivated to help each other be successful as they do benefit from each other’s success. So, whilst they are giving each other a leg-up the ladder to gather resources, women are forced into clawing each other down simply to survive.

But, in an era that welcomes our second female prime minister to the stand and women’s direct access to resources is greater than ever – is Benenson’s research outdated?

Alfie Kohn, the author of ‘No Competition,’ who openly criticises the competition and rewards culture, is at the source of a movement called ‘Non-violent Communication,’ which believes that the motivation to compete is a taught behaviour, not an innate one and that anything which has been learnt can be unlearnt.  This ethos tells us that we don’t need to be at the mercy of our survival instincts but can, instead, make intelligent and harmonious choices. When I put the question of Benenson’s research to Miki Kashtan, a prominent speaker on Non-violent Communication, she responded that she didn’t share the premise that there is a competitive instinct in women.

The means through which women will survive is different today and we are stronger together. We need our female peers to rise to the top of the chain so that they can play a role in managing our healthcare, our education, our workforce and our security forces in a way that supports women, children and older relatives.

I asked Benenson if she believed that women’s improved access to resource in today’s world might eradicate the need for competition between woman and she responded that: ‘When men’s wives have children, everyone at work congratulates the man. When women have children, everyone is afraid. For most women, the competition between a job’s demands and the needs of children leads them to privilege the needs of their children,’ and she added, ‘in hunter-gatherer societies women are more equal to men, because they are surrounded by kin and in-laws with whom they will spend their whole lives, and who help them with childcare. On the positive side, women are the ones who keep the most vulnerable members of society alive and invest in them throughout their lives. This is probably more important than anything else in the world.’

So, other than live with your mother for the rest of your life, where do we go from here?

For me, the positives of Benenson’s research is that – at the centre of the storm – women’s primary motivation is to provide for their kin. We have a deep-rooted fear that our children and female relatives may perish because our options to provide for them are restricted by our social environment. We aren’t deriving pleasure from competition – we are merely under pressure to survive it. This is worth noting when we are running low on compassion for ourselves and others.

The other positive is that it’s in our own hands to change. Perhaps Benenson’s perfect storm of social, biological and psychological factors is on-the-money, but the will to change can emerge from our own intentions. In fact, those intentions are already out there: in the emerging new media* that is replacing women’s weeklies, in universities, in new Government policies, in new female political leaders. We are pulling together more than ever before.

Barbara Markway, founder of The Compassion Project, psychologist and author offers some wisdom in her Ten Reasons to Stop Judging, to tip us into a less judgemental species. Interestingly, number one on her list is: ‘Don’t blame yourself. We are instinctively hard-wired for survival. When we see a dog (or a person) that might bite us (literally or metaphorically), of course we feel threatened. We go into fight-flight-freeze mode, and are unable to see the myriad possible reasons for another’s behaviour. This is a normal first reaction. The key is to pause before we act out of this mode.’

This is sage advice and, as a teacher friend says to me on a weekly basis, ‘there is nothing that can’t be learnt,’ which gives me hope that there is no bad habit which can’t be undone, no matter how many centuries old it might be.

*The Pool

Selfish Mother

Huffington Post

Proceed Until Apprehended

Standard Issue Magazine

Womanthology UK

The F Word

Image source: Floyd Brown http://bit.ly/2iUygvk

Emma Wood

By day, I write articles for a children’s charity (a job I adore), for fun I write for blogazines and - if I'm not crying with exhaustion - I write fiction for myself.

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