Why Women Compete

The New York Times recently published an article by Emily Gordon about this interesting tendency women have to compete with one another on all levels. There is a prevailing theory among experts, but Gordon's own theory is unique and refreshing.

One theory suggests a scientific reason that women often view other women negatively.

Evolutionary psychology, which uses natural selection to explain our modern behaviors, says that women need to protect themselves (read: their wombs) from physical harm, so indirect aggression keeps us safe while lowering the stock of other women. Feminist psychology chalks up this indirect aggression to internalizing the patriarchy.

As Noam Shpancer writes in Psychology Today, “As women come to consider being prized by men their ultimate source of strength, worth, achievement and identity, they are compelled to battle other women for the prize.” In short: When our value is tied to the people who can impregnate us, we turn on each other.

Gordon talks about how she used a combination of self-promotion and degrading her rivals to achieve this goal in high school.  The theory holds merit, but it doesn't speak to all the different aspects of a female relationship in the post-feminism modern world we live in today.

Research tells us that women are compelled to level the playing field by any means necessary to make sure we have access to the best genetic material, but since these are not real concerns in our modern lives, our competitiveness becomes something a bit more private and understandable.

So, if we buy that theory, we're all just trying to make our selves look good to score the best baby daddy.

Gordon's own theory is insightful and inclusive of our modern experience:

That’s the third theory of female competitiveness that I’d like to propose: We aren’t competing with other women, ultimately, but with ourselves — with how we think of ourselves. For many of us, we look at other women and see, instead, a version of ourselves that is better, prettier, smarter, something more. We don’t see the other woman at all.

It’s a fun-house mirror that reflects an inaccurate version of who we are, but we turn on her anyway, because it’s easier. But we don’t need to lower the stock of other women, either for the future of the species or for our own psyches. When we each focus on being the dominant force in our own universe, rather than invading other universes, we all win.

I hate to knock the experts, but it seems to me that Gordon has come a lot closer to the truth with her assessment.

After all, our current society may have made us less kind to one another, but it has first made us hypercritical of ourselves and unreasonably obsessed with all our personal “flaws.”

Want to learn more about this tendency we have to get competitive with one another? Check out Gordon's complete assessment in The New York Times.