Women hate women. It's true. We find the slightest opportunity to tear each other apart; pick on the smallest thing and blow it into all-defining hideous medusa. Okay, maybe that needs to be qualified. Our disdain is sophisticated and comes in layers. The blanket loathing does not apply in all situations to all females. But it is present, and it is real.

This strangeness of our relationships to each other, girl to girl, woman to woman, lies in our readiness to look at each other with judging eyes. We are geared up, quick and adept to dish out criticisms that positions us as the expert surveyor of appropriate feminine ideals.

This happens in numerous encounters. When we scrutinise the portrayals of models, actresses and other public female figures, we note their perfections with (perhaps) envy, then quickly slide to dissecting their minute flaws. From saggy knees to bad hair dos to an irregularly placed mole, we swallow up tabloid writing with a sardonic smile, tutting the superficiality of this judgement while at the same time, sighing with relief that public female figures are only all too human. The latter response is only to be anticipated. We are fed up with impossible ideals and are only too ready to tear down this myth. However, the contradiction of our response are often not dealt with. We position ourselves as 'different' and implicitly superior to women who apparently rely on their looks for success.

Why is this unconstructive? Simply, it does not change the patriarchal system of value at hand. Take the example above; the bottom line is, women are measured against a superficial scale of appearances and it becomes to easy to counter that with an oppositional value. We do a search on our attributes which disclaims this need to impress by looks like intelligence or wit and then wash our hands off the matter. However, we forget that we do care about our looks. It's hard not to when the entire world depends so much on the eyes to evaluate things. Instead of looking at the points of connection between this supermodel and us as 'mundane' individuals, we become alienated in our experiences. Our personal anxieties over self-grooming for public appearances becomes privatised events instead of being related to the larger politics of policed femininity.

Looking at another example of women in the workplace. Grouses about female co-workers or worse, bosses, abound. When we cannot get along with a colleague or manager, it becomes an almost automatic slide from boss to b*tch - that easy tag to encompass all forms of difficulty with working with an employer who happens to be a woman. Her decisions are swiftly categorised as irrational, we see her as moody, indecisive, wonder about her next period and so on. To appease the anxiety of our peers by assuring them that we are different from those 'other' women in the workplace, we start to wear pants, speak in 'male career lingo' and adopt almost unconsciously, an oppositional behaviour to how she is judged. This might be seen as a logical behaviour. If we don't like the way someone works, we would work differently from them. The problem is, we do not realise that the hell we raised would come right back and bite us at our buttocks.

When we rely on existing sexist stereotypes to dish out judgements unthinkingly, we reinforce these images as apparent reality.

Instead of questioning and challenging the assumptions used to evaluate work, and the inherent sexism that much of current employment depends on for its functioning, we narrow down the space for our own validity and participation in this space. Imagine, work in public spaces was facilitated by someone taking care of the labour needed in the private spaces of our homes. For centuries, this work has been on the shoulders of women. Meanwhile, the rules and systems of the workplace is being developed and defined from the male perspective. Values such as stoicism, determination, single-mindedness and so on are propagated. With the advent of the industrial revolution, a couple of World Wars and rapid development, suddenly there is a shortage of workers. Women are grudgingly allowed into the workplace (and even then, generally at the lowest rung), and after much energetic activism from pioneer feminists, this is now almost an unquestionable fact.

But if the rules remain the same, women will lose out. Our strengths, skills, knowledge and experiences will be discounted from validity since they have no place at work. Caring about another colleague (or indeed, the family) is a sign of weakness, being able to multi-task is still held with scepticism, a more organic approach to work is regarded as disorganised and the list goes on. When we diminish the capacity of women who have actually made it into decision-making positions through gender role stereotypes, we diminish our own ability to be taken seriously - purely on the basis of our sex. A classic demonstration of one step forward and two steps back.

The connections between us need to be unravelled if we were to achieve actual equality in reality. We cannot afford to alienate ourselves from other women's experiences as though we are somehow different and better.

The criteria of judgement that are used against them are the same as the ones used against us. To dismantle this misplaced sexism, we have to learn to see ourselves as all connected to the bigger picture. Unravel the heavy history of discrimination and exclusion from this one seemingly innocent incident of stepping away. Maybe, instead of being our own worst enemies, we might want to think about being friends with the so-called 'b*itch' next door!

Jaclyn Kee
12 December 2004

Talk Back to wao@wao.org.my
* Ten Years After Beijing was the last issue of WAO's Fortnightly Column on Sunday Mail. We were informed by Sunday Mail that the space for this column has been designated for advertising. We will continue to post previous articles that have not yet been posted on our site until this final one.