In your opinion, which gender is most likely to instigate or participate in workplace backstabbing, undercutting, and overall bitching?
Poll coming.
It’s an equal opportunity thing where I work.
Sad to say, female poster voting that female co-workers tend to bring a lot more drama, in my experience. OTOH, most of my workplaces have been heavily female-dominated, so I have a lot more experience with how women behave as co-workers than I do with men in that role. Thus, my observation may very well not reflect a more balanced setting.
In my personal experience I’ve only seen it from men, honestly.
I’ve mostly seen it from men, but men dominate the places I work. It’s telling that there are no options for it being equal.
I also work in a female dominated workplace (60+ nurses, two of whom are men). The men bitch, whinge and complain more than all the women put together.
It depends on the workplace itself, both on whether it is male or female dominated and on the attitude of management.
Both sexes bitch, whine, and backstab. In my experience, women bitch a little more, but men would rather backstab than co-operate, as a general rule. Of course there are exceptions, the worst backstabber I ever worked with was a woman, and the bitchiest person I ever worked with was a man.
Bitching is female dominated. Backstabbing? More or less equal. But then these are not the only things that make a workplace problematic. Men and women tend to dominate various ones.
I’m female and chose other. Bitchiness and backstabbing seemed to be gender-neutral behavior at my workplaces over 35 years or so.
Other – I’m one of those people who manage to tune out all the petty office politics and back-stabbing. Because I just don’t want to know.
Which is not a good thing – it means I’m never “in the know” about who is about to be kicked out of where, and what positions may be open, etc… Basically, it means I don’t want to know, and I’m willing to remain a non-manager rather than stick my nose in the fray.
I think the terms poison the well. What is “bitching” in a woman is “not putting up with crap” in a man: what is “backstabbing” in a woman is “ambition” in a man.
I don’t think so. Backstabbing is backstabbing. It’s about being untrustworthy, dishonorable and unscrupulous; not gender. Plenty of men get called backstabbers.
I’ve worked in both male and female dominated workplaces. Both behaviors are equal opportunity. They just manifest themselves differently.
I think the line is often drawn in different places for men vs woman. Let’s say someone gets a heads up that there is going to be an opening above them in the organizational chart, and so they go speak to the appropriate person to let it be known that they would like to be considered for the position. No one would blink if a man did that, unless it were unbearably presumptuous, and even then he would be seen as clueless, not backstabbing. But a woman could be seen as “backstabbing” if she didn’t “deserve” the position because she hadn’t been there as long as some other people or otherwise hadn’t “earned” it. Simply not mentioning the opening so that others could also apply would (in some places) be labeled “backstabbing” in a woman but “discreet” in a man. If a woman gets a new job and leaves an old one at a bad, crunch time, it’s sometimes looked at as a betrayal. With a man, it’s more likely to be seen as “well, he has to do what’s best for his family”.
I think these things are getting better. I think they’ve gotten markedly better just in the last 10-15 years. But the idea that a woman has a greater obligation to the community still lingers.
I work in a female-dominated profession, and I am a female. I’ve never experienced bitching or backstabbing to any significant degree. In fact, quite the opposite - I’ve seen coworkers go out of their way to build the other person up. The few ‘‘bad’’ jobs I’ve had were directly attributable to the person in charge, and I left them pretty quickly. In my experience management sets the tone for employee behavior.
It’s also self-reinforcing. If men are taken more seriously in their complaints than women are (because the men’s complaints are seen as normal calling attention to problems and the women’s are seen as “whining”), the complaints are more likely to have action taken about them, removing the complaint. If men have to complain less than women in order to get the same action taken, the perception will be created that men complain less than women.
I agree that it’s a matter of perspective. A man who carefully manages his career- negotiating hard, carefully handling his opportunities, managing his networks and being prudent with what he shares is being smart and ambitious. When a woman does it, it’s seen as being difficult, cold, catty and manipulative. If a man is a hardass but manages to get things done, he is a leader. When a woman is a hardass, she’s a bitch, even if she’s doing a great job getting things done.
IMHO, many women need to learn to be more assertive at the office. Women are significantly less likely to negotiate their salary. Many don’t negotiate at all, or they’ll start negotiating, and then they will immediately talk their offer down (“I’d like XYZ, but I understand you are a growing company, so I could consider A, B, C.”) Women are less likely to ask for raises and promotions.
Broad here, and while each gender does both, I say women are more prone to bitching and crying, but the backstabbing is an everyone game, maybe even tilted *ever *so slightly toward men. In short, all people are terrible.
Last year I worked with a gentleman named Phil Kessel who had been transferred to us from the Boston office because of unspecified character issues. He seemed to be doing great at first but by the end of the year his complaining and lack of effort basically “backstabbed” our group and we were unable to meet the goals we had publicly announced earlier.