Yes, definitely! I would much rather throughout my professional career, to get to report to a male superior, versus to a female boss. I am retired now from medical world, but the most difficult bosses to please, or to have acknowledge your quality work were consistently the females! It seems that many women in positions of authority are unduly critical of their peer females, and I never could decipher whether that was just classic bitchy competiveness, or base insecurity. Male bosses I found to be far less judgemental, and less inclined to micromanage, and demean their female reportees.

I wish there were more good old gal clubs like I see with men. Yes, I believe we are harder ourselves. Jealousy, envy, lack of self esteem? Why?

Peggy Sue’s answer gets my vote - but just why we are this way I’m not sure. Perhaps because basically one woman is a threat to another woman - men are not a threat because on any given day we can out think them. Too bad that does not translate into superior compensation!

Definitely. All my immediate supervisors were women. Some favored the men who reported to them and raised the bar for the women under their supervision. Made me furious, but I’m also grateful because I worked harder, longer and smarter than most of my male colleagues.

Yes, I agree women are much harder on each other. Perhaps it starts as little girls. I grew up in the 30’s and 40’s when men ruled the home. Brother’s generally got away with more than girls. We learned to be subservient to them. (that sure changed for me as I grew up) I think by nature we are jealous of each other. I’ve never heard men sit around and criticize each other the way women do. I often wonder why the same little boys we raise as our sons adore us yet seem to want to control every other female in their lives. I love my daughter in laws……..but I see so many women who never think any woman is good enough for their sons…..therefor all the terrible mother in law jokes. When I was a Younger woman I preferred the company of men to women…..as I’ve gotten older I value the intelligence of other women and find them great people to spend my time with…….I have a fabulous sister I adore…..great wonderful granddaughters. I encourage them to be strong thinking women who value other women also. I agree with Maurine…….women are smater than most men. If you were GOD who do you think you would give the most intelligence to. The seed spreader or the giver of life and the nurturer of the young. I say WOMEN

I say we are smarter and then spell the word smarter incorrectly……….I hate to make spelling mistakes.

Yes, I think we are, for two reasons. One, we expect more from women than we do from men, generally. Second, men are very literal creatures. They don’t look for / expect sub-text. Women are just the opposite. The words that we say to each other will be dissected, analyzed, debated, and replayed over and over to try and distill the “true” meaning from them. We interpret not only the words but their context, the body language used and inflection of the delivery of the words, and facial expressions, previous experience at the sincerity of the message from the deliverer, etc, etc, etc. When a man asks a woman if she’s ok, and she says, “fine,” the man interprets that as the woman being fine. If a woman asks a woman how she is, and she answers, “fine,” the woman who asked knows that “fine” can mean any of 100 things, because it does to her too!

Certainly depends on the context.

Guess I’m harder on men. Every so often I run into women who share that they generally dislike the company of women, and that always puzzles me. I grew up with all sisters and for the most part thought of men as uncivilized, alien beasts (altho my hubby’s an exception). I speak up when girlfriends are quick to criticize other women, yet cover or make excuses for their men behaving badly.

We’re harder on our own gender. Why? Peggy Sue’s answer gets my vote, in addition to my personal observation that many women are AFRAID of the repercussions when being harder on men [because women perceive men have more power to retailiate].