Women (Female) Rivalry: Dynamics and Cautions in Women’s Interactions

July 17, 2023

/ No Comments

Why does a woman oppose a successful woman? Why should a woman be cautious about other women more than men? - Eva Makdessi, Media Personality

Criticizing Women – A Gendered Dilemma

It might be conditioned as normal to find a man criticizing women and accusing them of falling short, as his excuse could be not having experienced the same circumstances or not feeling the same emotions. However, when you find a woman taking on that task, it is not just a violation of the rights of her own gender, but also one of the most painful things for them.

It’s because what truly hurts a tree is not the blow of an ax, but the fact that the ax is made of wood. Two of the same materials. What woman hasn’t been attacked at some point by another woman she doesn’t know, and without reason? Aggressive and anti-feminist women are violent, malicious, bitter, jealous, and resentful towards any successful woman in her family, work, or social and academic position.

Painful Dynamics of Women-to-Women Criticism

It is important to know that jealousy and insecurity incite others to want what others possess, and this feeling in women leads to envy, fear, obsession, contempt, and anger. The question that the jealous woman constantly asks herself is why she is not successful like other women and why she can’t achieve the same success. There is a difference between admiring others and taking them as role models and attacking others aggressively to destroy them.

Scientific research confirms that hormonal, neurological, and social factors play an inevitable role in the competitive behavior between women. This includes physical, intellectual, and moral differences as well as the environment in which these women were raised. In general, insecure women tend to attack women who surpass them in intelligence, knowledge, and balance. While the liberated woman wants to have the choice in the way of life that suits her ambitions, without being judged, opposed, or criticized by other women who differ from her, traditional women prefer to be under the protection and control of men. They believe that women are inferior in their social and physical roles. With traits like being weaker, less competent, and less intelligent than men.

Scientific Factors in Competitive Behavior

They simply agree with the stereotypical image created by some chauvinistic men that embodies their strength in muscles and intelligence. They describe the role of women as satisfying the desires of men and their biological “role” of giving birth to healthy children for them, reducing women to mere symbols of pleasure and fixed social roles as mothers, nothing else. Numerous studies have shown that women’s aggression is due to the difficult situations and daily stress they face. Provocation gives women pleasure and satisfaction in attacking successful women. According to psychological research, aggressive behavior without reason stems from a lack of self-confidence, making the aggressive woman feel threatened by the successful woman. Therefore, she tries to undermine her self-confidence to elevate herself.

Frustration motivates the aggressive woman to pursue the successful woman and do everything in her power to bring her down because she knows that there can only be one winner and it requires arbitrary force. Due to the disruption of the general context of society, various deviant personalities have emerged, including those who highlight their achievements at the expense of the flaws of those around them, even if their flaws exceed those of others. Psychological specialists state that women’s hostility towards their own gender can be attributed to three psychological possibilities.

Psychological Motivations for Aggression

The first is unconscious defensive projection mechanisms. Some girls, due to harsh and oppressive upbringing conditions, whether by their mothers or older sisters, redirect their anger towards women, manifesting their apparent hatred for women because of their weakness and limited resources, as if they are saying, “I don’t belong to this weak gender.” The second reason is their affiliation with dominant personalities. They constantly seek successful personalities to submit to, and since our society is male-dominated and patriarchal, these girls tend to defend males and attack weaker women.

The Call for Change and Unity

In the end, factors such as jealousy, social, professional, and political inferiority make it easy for us to see the emotional reactions of women on social media. Often, we get the impression that there are women who deliberately target each other by sending mocking and malicious messages on their pages. There are also many women’s movements that support male dominance.

How long will this continue? How long will women remain enemies of other women’s achievements, attempting to bring them down instead of applauding them?

Written by: Eva Makdessi