Adult bullying on the rise

Adult bullying is on the rise — and it’s other women we need to watch, says Laura Bond

George and Jerry, in one famous Seinfeld episode,

recall their tyrannical gym teacher who used to

give boys ‘wedgies’ and encourage them to beat

each other up. ‘Girls don’t do anything like that,

do they?’ Jerry asks Elaine. ‘Oh no,’ Elaine replies.

‘We just tease each other until one of us develops

an eating disorder.’

The sadistic, passive-aggressive female bully is celebrated in popular culture. We revelled in Meryl Streep’s ruthlessness in The Devil Wears Prada (pictured), and shows such as The Apprentice and Big Brother rely on pitting feisty females against one another to guarantee ratings success. But we are less happy to admit to the existence of female bullying in our own lives. We might be unwilling to blow the whistle o n the female boss who subtly but relentlessly undermines our work, and we may ignore the daily snide remarks doled out by a colleague, for fear of becoming her next target.

But our dirty secret is very much a reality. A recent UK study of more than 5,000 workers revealed that at least 45 per cent of bullies are women. And who are their victims? According to research, women attack other women 71 per cent of the time. ‘I think women now have more opportunities to bully one another,’ says Cheryl Dellasega, author of ‘Girl Wars: 12 Strategies That Will End Female Bullying’. ‘There are far more arenas for women to be openly competitive, but I don’t think that we’ve learned to do it very well.’

Underhand behaviour

Instead of owning up to our desire to dominate in a meeting, or boasting about sales figures to our colleagues in the same competitive spirit as men, we prefer to release our feelings of envy and jealousy in more underhand ways. So what exactly is female bullying? It’s often referred to as relational aggression — the word ‘relation’ being central to the shadowy nature of the problem. ‘There are no closer relationships than between two women,’ says Dellasega. ‘We nurture, we care and we can read body language better than men — but all of that can be used against someone when we’re feeling insecure.’ Founder of the Workplace Bullying Institute, Dr Gary Namie, agrees: ‘The basis for the initial relationship is also the tool women use to destroy that relationship.’