Women's Month Series | Part 4 - WOW or SOS?: Women Against Women? Or Systems Against Solidarity?

In one candid conversation, a gender equality advocate — a colleague and friend, clearly exhausted — said something that startled me: “Direk, maybe we should stop promoting gender equality.”

It did not sound ideological. It sounded like fatigue. Beneath it was a quieter frustration: if women are already the majority in this organization, why does “women support women” sometimes feel absent? It is an uncomfortable question. But it is worth asking.

The Myth of Natural Rivalry

Let me begin with what I do not believe.

I do not believe women are naturally wired to undermine other women. In more than three decades in public service, I have seen generosity, mentorship, protection, and quiet sponsorship among women leaders.

But I have also seen something else — competition that feels sharper, criticism that feels personal, and distance where solidarity was expected.

Over time, I have learned that what we sometimes describe as “women against women” is often something deeper. It is not gender. It is structure.

The Scarcity Trap

Even in organizations where women are numerically dominant, power is not always equally distributed.

Consider a few questions:

• Who controls budgets?
• Who defines promotion standards?
• Who shapes informal networks?
• Who determines visibility?

When advancement feels scarce — when it appears that there is only one seat at the table — rivalry increases. Scarcity changes behavior. If a system quietly communicates that there is room for only one woman at the top, competition becomes survival. Not sisterhood. And survival is not cruelty. It is adaptation.

The Quiet “Queen Bee” Dynamic

Research sometimes refers to the Queen Bee phenomenon, where senior women distance themselves from junior women. But experience suggests something more complicated.

Many women leaders rose through systems that rewarded toughness - hindi mga balat sibuyas - over tenderness and individual resilience over collective lift. They had to prove competence in environments where authority was often defined in traditionally masculine ways.

If survival required blending into those norms, mentoring women can feel politically risky. Distance then becomes protection. Again, this is not nature. It is design.

Majority Does Not Equal Power

We often assume that once women become the majority in an organization, equality has arrived. But numbers are not the same as influence. An institution can have a majority of women while decision-making authority, strategic voice, and informal power remain unevenly distributed.

When pressure is high and recognition is limited, tension rises. It becomes easier to compete with the person beside you than to challenge the system above you.

When Power Uses Proximity

Another dynamic complicates the narrative.

Sometimes one person becomes the one who disciplines and delivers the uncomfortable messages others prefer to avoid. Meanwhile, the system itself remains untouched. Over time, the narrative shifts until the story becomes that women are hard on other women.

In some cases, a woman leader may encourage — or quietly expect — another woman to become the organization’s whip, the enforcer who calls out mistakes and carries the friction of discipline.

When this happens, the conflict appears to be woman against woman. But often it is not rivalry at all. It is power using proximity. Authority is exercised through someone close enough to the group to enforce discipline, yet far enough from the top to absorb the resentment. The result is predictable: resentment flows sideways while the system remains intact. What we are witnessing is not rivalry but the delegation of control.

A Harder Question

Perhaps the more useful question is not: Why don’t women support women? But rather: What in this organization rewards competition over collaboration?

Are promotions opaque?
Are leadership standards unclear?
Is performance evaluated individually while risks are shared collectively?

Systems that reward individual survival inevitably produce guarded behavior — across genders.

The Exhaustion of Advocacy

When my colleague said we should stop promoting gender equality, I heard something else. Burnout.

It is tiring to push reforms that move slowly. It is tiring to defend inclusion when backlash is subtle but persistent. It is tiring to hear that equality has already arrived when daily experience suggests otherwise.

Fatigue can sound like surrender. But often, it is grief.

What I Have Seen Instead

Despite these tensions, I have also seen something else.

• Women sponsoring other women quietly.

• Women protecting junior staff from political crossfire.

• Women recommending colleagues for roles they themselves wanted.

Support exists — I have experienced it myself. But it flourishes best in systems that clarify promotion standards, create multiple leadership pathways, reward team outcomes, and normalize sponsorship. Solidarity grows where fear decreases.

Director’s Cut

After three decades in public service, here is my unvarnished view.
Women are not systematically against women. But institutions designed around scarcity will make anyone protective.

If we truly want women to support women, we must design systems where support is safe and collaboration is not quietly penalized.

Equality is not the problem. Unfinished equality is. And perhaps the real work is not persuading women to be kinder to each other — but building organizations where kindness is not punished. Because in the end, real equality begins the moment kindness stops being a liability.

- Director Noreen