Do I happen to just work with these type of women..?

Question

I work with a lot of catty, gossipy, judgemental women. The office i work in has i'd say close to 200 people in it of varying ages and levels in their careers but I can't get over this fact that i see.

Theres a lot of judging other women on their looks, bodies, family life, etc and soooo much energy put into it. Even the women I consider sweet hearted have on occasion (if drinking at a company outing for example) have expressed some of these same traits.

And i just don't see it in the men i work with, we just don't seem to care enough about others situations to talk so much about it. I brought this up to a guy friend of mine at work and he basically said "it serves no use and i get nothing from it and quite honestly don't care". The only negative talking i hear from any guy at work is directed toward our VP because they don't think he's a liar or not a nice guy, but thats it.

Why do these ladies get so personal and seem to just be on constant whispering personal attack mode??

Answer 1

JEALOUSY. ENVY. The Green Monster. Women (or men) who put down others like that aren't happy and hate the lives they are living.

For women to see another woman with all the things that they had wished for just brings out the venom. Pure jealousy.

Answer 2

birds got to fly..fish got to swim..women like this though are actually usually non feminist.

Answer 3

It's a self esteem thing.  A way to make ourselves look better in the eyes of others and maybe our own eyes.  If we point out other women's' flaws, it distracts from our own flaws and makes us seem and feel superior.  I try not to engage in such conversations, but all women have done this at some point.  

Answer 4

If this goes on then I don't participate. I have a guy's attitude it would seem because I don't care. I don't want people gossiping about me. I would hope that they have other things to talk about. It sounds like the woman are jealous. She's young, petite, desirable figure, and drives a nice car. It's her business. Some women are like this, shallow and have nothing else to say or talk about or they are so jealous. That's just my guesstimation. I would advise leaving the conversation when it starts getting negative and personal.

edit: I think all women have participated and/or been the victim. I can say when I've participated, it's been because I just don't have anything else to say because I really don't care. I've had women say things about me. One of my friends told me it was jealousy. Now, I try to avoid it. I don't care. It's hurtful too. I'm not mean. Some women are just mean. They are self-righteous and have high self esteem.

Answer 5

Let me think back to my days in a chatty office with about 50/50 males and females.

Conversations I remember guys having:

Cars.  Cars cars cars.  The guys in the cubicles next to me could not stop talking about cars.  They were upgrading their cars. Decorating their cars. Racing their cars. Thinking about what cars they would buy if they were rich.

Hockey.  

Computers and computer games.

Politics and conspiracy theories.

Conversations I remember women having:

-Stuff about the weekend.

-Wedding planning.

-Computers and computer games.

-Their kids

What I remember everyone talking about:

-Annoying customers.

-What was up with some girl's weird looking eyebrows and hair.  (Chemotherapy, as it turns out. Poor woman.  Everybody thought she shaved her eyebrows and drew them back on for no reason, and had weird looking hair, but it was a wig.  We were all such jerks.)

So hmm... I guess the women tended to go on about more personal stuff, but when it came to being mean about people, I really think the guys did their share and maybe even a little more, if you count being mean about strangers.  We worked in a tech support call center, and the guys seemed to have a lot less patience with customers who didn't know things about computers, and rant about them more.  From listening to them, you'd think only complete morons don't know how to find their IP address or what a DNS server is.  But then, I think more of the guys had IT degrees and were frustrated to be stuck in a call center because they had no experience to go with their degrees, so maybe that was part of it.

Answer 6

It's the nature of the beast.

Women will put down and sabotage what they cannot achieve.

Answer 7

You have discovered that women are nasty and judgmental and vindictive and ....Welcome to the 21st century.

Men have know these personality traits of women for ages. You don't think they get their reputations overnight did you?  

Answer 8

In ten years of working in various offices, bars, call centres, hospitals and other workplaces I have only experienced a group of 'catty women' in one particular office. I left pretty quickly - life's too short to be working in bad environments. So yes, it just seems to be unfortunate that you are working in such a place. Can men be catty too? Yes, of course. You only need to look at some of the anti-woman and anti-man questions written by men on GWS and it's quite easy to imagine those same men gossiping and judging people, and trying to stir up trouble, in their workplaces.

Answer 9

Thats just women being women.

Answer 10

Raphy, I guess you've never been in a guy's locker room or any place where there were no women around..  When there are no women around, the GUYS are saying the same things about women and girls that those women you heard say about each other; things like, who's got the biggest b***s, who's the biggest who,' what you did to your girl friend or the neighbor s**t last night, etc.  Even I know that. I'm not saying that women don't do that, 'cuz we do (and it depends on the women, too), but I'm surprised that you're acting so shocked!

Answer 11

This isn't just you. This has happened at every place I've experienced women whether it be a part-time or full-time job, in my neighborhood, all levels of school, etc. Now a lot of women are going to give juvenile answers such as "men do it too" or "not all women are like that".

But this is a common thing. Usually men are blamed for putting social pressure on women, while partially true, it's usually a woman who is the first to call another woman "w***e", or to judge her hair and outfits, and pick at everything about other women.