Women Bullies at Work, Can You Deal with Them?

by Catherine MatticeOct 13, 2015

According to the result of a nationwide poll made by Employment Law Alliance, women are the new face of bullies in the workplace. Forty percent of the workplace bullies are women; they pick other women to be bullied more than seventy percent of the time. Women bullies prefer weaker women to intimidate and undermine.

Why do they do this? These workplace bullies want to enjoy the feeling of being powerful, especially when the person being attacked doesn’t try to defend herself. If they feel their position is being threatened by another worker’s success, they will step in to put a stop to it.

Workplace bullying might not be recognized instantly. Generally, women are not straightforward when it comes to showing their abusive behavior, as they choose behaviors that are more insidious. The same is true in school age bullying, where boys tend to demonstrate outright aggressiveness where girls use what experts call “relational bullying.”

Workplace bullying should not be taken lightly.

Now, how to deal with these workplace bullies? There are ten tips shared by Dr. Michelle Callahan at HuffingtonPost.com.

Do you know how much money chronically bad behavior costs your company? Spoiler alert – it’s a LOT higher than you want it to be. Download our data and worksheet to see how it’s costing your organization and what you can do to fix it.

About Catherine Mattice

Catherine Mattice, MA, SPHR, SHRM-SCP, is the founder/CEO of Civility Partners, an organizational development firm focused on helping organizations create respectful workplace cultures and specializing in turning around toxic cultures. Civility Partners’ clients range from Fortune 500s to small businesses across many industries. Catherine is a TEDx speaker and an HR thought leader who has appeared in such venues as USA Today, Bloomberg, CNN, NPR, and many other national news outlets as an expert. She’s an award-winning speaker, author, and blogger and has 60+ courses reaching global audiences on LinkedIn Learning. Her fourth book, Navigating Toxic Work Environments For Dummies (Wiley), is available in all major bookstores and where audiobooks are sold.

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