Are Women As Competitive As Men?
Is Competition Unfeminine?
In A Mind of Her Own, the academic psychologist, Anne Campbell, discusses evolutionary reasons that explain how each sex competes. She states that—evolutionary-wise—men compete with each other for the opportunity to select a healthy, fertile mate who will produce offspring and stick around and not fool around. Women, on the other hand, must appear healthy and fertile and must be especially careful to preserve a good sexual reputation.
She states that women must use low-risk and indirect forms of aggression in order to ensure their own and their offspring’s survival. Ah, she’s saying women don’t want to get into fistfights. I can buy that. She suggests fear of injury has evolved as an emotional trigger to provide restraint from direct forms of aggression. This explains why women, in general, are more risk adverse. Women’s aggression is also reduced by the neurotransmitter serotonin. There is a sex difference favoring women in the availability and uptake of this transmitter. So, it’s sounding like there are evolutionary reasons for indirect aggression. We see some of this in the workplace, but I’ll talk about catfighting another time.
There are evolutionary reasons for how women handle competition, but right now I want to talk about cultural reasons. Research shows that women tend to shy away from competition when men are included. Does that mean women are not as competitive as men? No, it doesn’t. It means we’re letting the stereotype, It’s Not Feminine To Be Competitive, influence our behavior. In elementary schools we see this behavior taking hold at about age 10. One of the reasons some people favor same sex schools is that girls perform differently when boys are not present. I’m not in favor of segregating education, but I certainly don’t like this sad situation.
I’m all for getting girls into sports where they can learn to handle competition as well as the boys. And no, I’m not talking about cheerleading the boys who are actually playing a sport! I know I’ll hear from some people about how cheerleading is a real sport—actually, I already heard that yesterday. My argument was that these girls could be competing in gymnastics instead of reinforcing the stereotype that women defer to men. We have enough of that elsewhere.
Well, what did we learn today? We learned that women are competitive, but it’s expressed differently from men. We learned that women are not as aggressive as men—not a surprise. And we learned that women take fewer risks than men. How can we use this information to help us in the workplace? Here’s the tip.
Tip:
Most of us are not taking care of children in the workplace, so we don’t need to automatically dampen our risk-taking. As you begin to shy away from a possible risk at work, such as a new product or a new management tool, remind yourself to take a few minutes to consider the pros and cons to this move. If you increase your risk threshold, what would your decision be? Take a few more chances. It might be good for business.
Further Reading:
Podcast, Working in Heels, by Nancy Clark, The Stereotype Myth —Power or No Power Creates Stereotypes, Not Nature
Blog, Women’s Lunch Talk, Stereotyping Hurts Women In Business —Those Little Put-Downs Add Up
Podcast, Working in Heels, by Nancy Clark, Nature vs Nurture —Men and Women: Different But Equal
Website, WomensMedia, a Mini-Coaching Lesson by Jenn Givler, Identifying and Overcoming Your Blocks ________________________________________________________________