The Office Bully is Most Likely a Woman

According to the Workplace Bullying Institute, 71 percent of office bullying is the result of women harassing other women. Dr. Gary Namie, the institute's founder and co-author of the book The Bully at Work, written with wife Ruth Namie, suggests several reasons for same-gender conflict, the first being the bully's proximity to her target. "Since most bullies are bosses, women who are bosses are sadly lower ranking than their male counterparts, and thus are most likely to supervise women," Namie says.

According to Namie, another reason women bully other women is out of sheer indolence. "All bullies want an easy mark," he says. "They want a target not likely to counter aggression with aggression. They want someone who abhors confrontation." Therefore, women being more passive in nature, are less likely to be aggressive when responding to another woman's heavy-handed tactics. According to The Bully at Work, while a target is a bright, ethical, hard-working employee -- and usually smarter than her bully to boot -- she may project through her body language or through self-deprecating comments that she is painfully insecure. A bully also tacitly picks up when her target has a history of childhood or domestic abuse and uses the target's learned "don't tell" behavior to her advantage.

Early socialization also plays a critical role in shaping the office she-devil, Namie says. "Intimidating women started out as mean girls early in life and honed effective methods to undermine their peers," he says. "By the time they reach middle age, their expertise is sharpened and not something they want to give up. They want to stick with what got them there and made them who they are. Why change, if it worked to get you promoted?" Additionally, Namie points to a "sorority pledge" mentality women cultivate after bumping up against the glass ceiling. The female bully, having endured severe "hazing" to reach her own level of success, does not want to make it easy for her sisters to follow suit.

Finally, Namie points to evolutionary sociobiology as yet another culprit that leads to women-on-women aggression. "In a weird way, these intragender destructive practices may be an evolutionary remnant from our species in which women compete -- to the death -- for the right to mate with the strongest male in the herd to produce the strongest offspring," he says. A woman's predatory impulses, which may begin rather innocuously earlier in life when she purloined her best friend's boyfriend, act as a "precedent for fostering disharmony within a group setting," Namie says. This behavior keeps her perceived competitors off-balance, guessing, apprehensive, and with a feeling of impending doom.

Outside of work, the target's emotional trauma continues. She can experience such shame as a result of the bullying that she feels reticent to communicate her problem with loved ones. She might find herself taking more and more sick days to avoid her bully. She may even dry heave before leaving for work, experience sleeplessness, pronounced hair loss, and in extreme cases, may even seek the help of a medical or mental health professional for anti-depressants or anti-anxiety medication.

"I'll never work for another female boss again!" Most women have heard this statement uttered by female friends, or perhaps they've said it themselves. Turns out that there could be a good reason for this sentiment. Any vestige of gender biasing disappears when looks at the evidence that supports the fact that same-gender harassment accounts for most cases of office bullying. And the final outcome is no laughing matter, either: According to Namie's research, one out of six people have quit their jobs because they could no longer endure a co-worker's harassment. Most of these were most likely women.

Federal laws prohibit harassment and/or discrimination against an employee or potential employee based on the following: Race, color, religion, creed, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, and sexual orientation. If an employee is harassed and/or ultimately fired as a result of discrimination against her as a member of a protected class, she probably won't have an easy time proving it, but filing a civil suit is within her rights -- if not her expense account.

However, there are no laws that protect workers who are harassed for absolutely no reason by members of the same class. This legal impunity makes every woman a prospective punching bag for the female office bully.

If you are someone you know is being harassed on the job, please see the Workplace Bullying Institute for more information.