Comments on: The Cattiness of Women

By: Tyouth

Tyouth — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 01:42:21 +0000

“there is always something going on that we in our concocted pretend deny to ourselves and seem unable to fathom so we decide that all is well and as it seems.”

A very nice sentence Clifford. It sounds Shakesperian (Richard III, maybe). My compliments in any case, but is it a quote?

By: Ginny

Ginny — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 22:29:24 +0000

In re. to Jonathan's note: A couple of weeks ago we saw Oleanna (another thanks to Netflix). What struck both my husband and me over and over was how stupid the two were in their interactions. But, then, that was not particularly unrealistic. People who get caught up in things like this generally have insufficient people skills. (Those who like - and many people do and did - Henry Cisneros complained that it was more his naivete that got him in trouble; certainly his partner seemed more adept at wringing money from him than would most.) Mamet can be riveting, though the movie looks like a staged play and,like that other academic drama, Who Killed Virginia Woolf?, the staginess lends it a pressure-cooker tension.

By: Clifford Roster

Clifford Roster — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 20:10:40 +0000

there is always something going on that we in our concocted pretend deny to ourselves and seem unable to fathom so we decide that all is well and as it seems.

By: Dan from Madison

Dan from Madison — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 12:15:46 +0000

“…because we are both women of a certain age – when we speak, we understand each other, in more thorough ways than I (and I suspect she as well) do with much younger people or with men.”

I like this quote Ginny and would go one further – that this would apply to an office with, say, people from a certain geographical region that understand each other. When attending national meetings I always find the scene in the bar after the formal presentations most interesting. The East Coast guys typically congregate with their own, as do the Midwest, Southerners, West Coasters, etc.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 03:23:40 +0000

The findings, based on experiments carried out among more than 700 people, suggest that the “queen bee syndrome” of female rivalry in the workplace may sometimes be as important as sexism in holding back women’s careers. [emphasis added]

Translation: Everyone knows that nowadays women are institutionally favored as often as not, and that accusations of sexism not infrequently reflect either social-skill deficits on the part of the accusers or are themselves tools of intraoffice competition, but we’re too timid to acknowledge this openly.

By: Lexington Green

Lexington Green — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 03:03:11 +0000

I have observed the phenomenon mentioned in that study with my own eyes.

It is commonplace and only PC prevents it from being more widely discussed.

By: david foster

david foster — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 02:21:40 +0000

The study was based on an experimental scenario using “705 participants living in southern Spain.” I’d be curious to know about who these participants were–were they managers and executives in real life, or not?