Why Are Women So Horrible To Each Other?

From judging celebs’ looks to competing with other mums at the school gates, it’s time we stopped criticising each other, says Angela Epstein

- Angela Epstein

How would you feel if this happened to you? It was a classic double-take moment. The kind you see in those goofy comedies when a character doesn’t quite believe what they’ve just heard. Except this time, it wasn’t funny. At all. I found out a couple of women I know were arranging a mutual friend’s surprise birthday party.

‘I’d be more than happy to help, too,’ I began amiably when I bumped into one of them.

Without flinching, she replied, rather sharply, ‘No thanks. We don’t need help.’

‘Er, sorry? What did you say?’

‘We don’t need anyone else,’ she repeated, unapologetically. ‘Three’s a crowd and all that.’

And that was it. Too speechless – and upset – to do anything more than mumble, ‘Right then,’ with a churning stomach and head held high, I walked away.

‘It’s not about you,’ commiserated another pal when I relayed this story later on. ‘It’s about her. She’s just the jealous type and doesn’t want anyone else to steal her glory.’

I use this energy-sapping, pointless and entirely unnecessary episode in my life to illustrate a question that has bothered me for quite some time: Why are women sometimes so mean to each other?

No sisterly solidarity

Why, instead of being a tightly connected bunch, woven together by struggles for equality and a fabled notion of sisterhood, do some women simply make life difficult for each other?