Women Occasionally Mean, Unsupportive Of One Another

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Breaking news: Women in the workforce, despite being generally regarded as frail and timid, are in fact too aggressive. Especially to other women. Sometimes.

Just the mention of women treating other women badly on the job seemingly shakes the women’s movement to its core.

Oh, feminism, how frail thou (seemingly) art. A gentle spring breeze might blow you away. Only last week, I failed to give a pregnant lady my seat on the T, and God killed a radical lesbian-separatist kitten. So much for sisterhood being powerful.

According to a story in yesterday's New York Times, women are not as prone to bullying their subordinates as men, which fits nicely with received notions of women being altruistic. But when they do go rogue, they pick on other women, which is nasty, and hurts feminism. Also, they are stone cold bitches. (And here we thought putting women in charge was going to magically reform our corporate culture and fix the recession and stuff.)

It’s probably no surprise that most of these bullies are men, as a survey by the Workplace Bullying Institute, an advocacy group, makes clear. But a good 40 percent of bullies are women. And at least the male bullies take an egalitarian approach, mowing down men and women pretty much in equal measure. The women appear to prefer their own kind, choosing other women as targets more than 70 percent of the time.

What is this "nationally representative" study, you may well ask? Was it peer-reviewed? Did it appear in some fancy science journal thing? And where on earth did they get those lovely round numbers?

Actually, it's by a bunch of seminar-peddling consultants, who can be found here, here and here. Or if you like, you can help them make the world a nicer place by getting lawyers involved. And if you're really into this anti-bullying stuff, this June, you can spend three days with them in the glorious environs of Bellingham, Washington, learning to be an anti-bullying lobbyist just like Doctors Gary and Ruth Namie of the Workplace Bullying Institute. Only not as good.

No one else in North America can train you on this topic like Gary and Ruth Namie can! You will learn to customize the components for your personal needs and upon completion of this course you will be certified to deliver a presentation introducing Workplace Bullying to a variety of audiences — public or business groups.

See? You, too can be certified to give other people a PowerPoint presentation on Workplace Bullying! And, since the Workplace Bullying Institute is a nonprofit, Gary and Ruth Namie are doing this for the poor downtrodden American worker. Out of the goodness of their hearts.

Fee: $3,600 (USD) per person

Oh. Right then.