IF ONLY WOMEN COULD HELP WOMEN… –By Edith Jeff-Okoroafor

She may not have been on par with you, but definitely looked up to you. She sought to learn the ropes from you. Through humble and almost unknown beginnings, she strove to be where she currently is, just like you if you care to remember. She tried time and again to connect with you but you acted coldly towards her. Yet, she kept on trying, “I’ve got something to learn from her”, she thought to herself and kept chasing you about for a meeting, a decent phone conversation – anything at all that would result in communicating seriously with you. The messages she left you, you snubbed. That is, if you bothered reading them at all, but smiled gleefully at an ordinary missed call notification from a man. Still, she didn’t relent since she had long held up before her, in place of your face, an image of the woman she would like to be someday – a mirror to her future. In spite of how you treated her, she never put down that image. Her resolve to succeed thankfully was too strong to be swayed by any negative action. Despite this, she chose to be motivated by you even in your oblivion. She is used to having other women’s backs whole-heartedly, and so had a very hard time understanding just why you wouldn’t help her too.

Now, it is understandable if you went through so much to be where you are today – fought many gender-discriminating battles like a man, stayed up late most nights running your “think-and-do tank” generator. In fact, no one can actually explain in clear terms, the travails that led to your present success level, since as they say, “Suffering comes before pleasure”. Was it karma like some would put it? Or was it simply a result of so much hard work and you now enjoy the benefits therein? Was it pure sexism that you had to work twice as hard? Whatever it was, it is not enough to treat another woman disdainfully. It brings to mind, the analogy of an older sister who struggles to get food supplies during a war, only to return home and refuse same to her kid sister who was too young to understand the times. If only she had her older sister’s capabilities and experience, she would have gone to fetch the supplies herself or at least, worked with her.

The above are shadows instances of what (some) women go through in the hands of (some) other women. Sociology tries to explain that there are two dominant cultural ideas about how women help other women make progress at work which happen to be at odds-The Righteous Woman and the Queen Bee. The Righteous Woman is that belief that women have a distinct moral obligation to help one another. While the Queen Bee idea holds that women just can’t get along, arguing that there is something inherent to the female sex that causes women to always undermine each other on the job- a syndrome which dates back to a research first done in the 1970’s. Studies reveal that this syndrome is often activated in women who have low levels of gender identification and who have been on the receiving end of gender bias, like being in a male dominated environment where women are devalued. Hence, to get around, such women try to set themselves apart from other women, by displaying the Queen Bee behaviours.

Thank you, Sociologists, but there tends to be some other women who may not have experienced this challenge, yet treat other women so derisively that Madeleine Albright’s quote became famous; “There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other”. Perhaps, there are other reasons yet to be discovered.

So what is the Cure For The Queen Bee behaviour?

Identifying highly as a woman. Take a good look around us, there aren’t so many women making waves in the world. Globally, women have been through a lot- child-marriage, female genital mutilation, gender-based violence and all other forms of sexism. To your well-deserved success, dear successful woman, consciously add a room for helping other women like you. No woman is in a competition with you, so it is needless accentuating this in the treatment of your kind. We are all in various races- competing with our own selves. Who you are, no one else can be, but with what you are, you can bring out the “who” in another woman.

Today, many women are doing wonderful jobs empowering their kind. Brilliant! A good number however, turn their backs on their fellow women or help them with limited information that will ensure they don’t “out-do” them. Agree with me, if more successful women make half the effort men are making for women in matters of feminism, a greater number of women will arise, blossom and conquer. Here’s my point; Women should help Women!