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“You ‘re Supposed to Be Nice:” Women, Work, and Conflict in Peer Relations

By Julie Withers

November 21, 2005

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Abstract

The purpose of my study is to gain a better understanding of the nature of conflict between women co-workers. Studying conflict between women is difficult because how women negotiate peer relations and manage everyday events of incivility is absent in the literature on co-worker relations. For this study, I conducted fifteen semi-structured qualitative interviews with eleven women and one man. I also participated in and observed women-centered events to explore the real world of women’s interactions in formal, hierarchical social spaces. To analyze the data I did Grounded Theory, a rigorous process of comparison and abstraction of social patterns and themes. As a result, I constructed a typology for how women negotiate peer relations and manage co-worker conflict. Women felt they were supposed to be nice to their peers and customers/clients, and that it was important to give an impression of a nice or friendly woman toward co-workers; reinforcing among women co-workers the idea that direct conflict should be avoided. In addition, disliking or having problems with the behavior or actions of a woman co-worker created self-conscious ambivalence that was managed by saying the woman was “loved” or “liked.” Finally, mother-henning emerged as a technique for avoiding conflict and expressing indirect power by giving an impression of solidarity and nurturance.

Background of the study

Sisterhood is an idea that came about as one of the dominant values of 1970’s feminism.

It represented an ideological attempt to transform society by raising women’s consciousness and

creating a sense of culture among women. The belief was that shared experience and solidarity

between women was valuable and that mutual concern could positively affect many women’s

experiences. Commonly held opinions about how women relate do exist and they are influenced

by cultural ideologies like the idea of a Sisterhood among women. As a result, there is a cultural

assumption that women are expected to get along with one another better than men get along

with each other.

On the other hand, the idea that women are ‘catty’ and engage in stereotypical

“catfights,” also flourishes in the cultural consciousness, along with the idea of the Sisterhood. In

their book, In the Company of Women, Pat Heim and Susan Murphy (2001) explored indirect

aggression among women co-workers and found that “when women work together they often

experience conflict with one another” (p. 5). They defined the term “catfight” in contextual

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terms, saying that the women they interviewed referred to a catfight as a “negative interaction

with a female colleague;” such as, an indirect attack by one woman on another’s “personal power

with other co-workers, the boss, or both, via gossip, sabotage, or withdrawal of friendship”

(Heim & Murphy, 2001, p. 6). Though negative interactions between co-workers are not

uncommon, there is a sense that conflict between women is more intense and difficult to resolve.

Consequently, the possibility that women often experience conflict with women co-

workers contradicts the ideological concept of the Sisterhood and the idea that in general, women

experience feelings of shared unity with other women. Thus, my goal is to explore how women

negotiate the real world of co-worker relationships and manage conflict with other women in the

formal, hierarchical space of work. Considerable thought has been given to conflict in men and

women’s interactions but not to the question of how women negotiate peer relationships and

manage conflict with other women at work.

I. Introduction

Women at Work

Most women work in the labor market sometime during their lives, be it the swing shift,

graveyard, or the coveted nine to five, a fact that reflects one of the most important social

changes of the last century: Women’s entry into the paid workforce in large numbers (Johnson,

2002). Yet, in spite of the large numbers of women working today (70%) (p. 3), the workplace

remains a pernicious source of inequality for women (Tanenbaum, 2002).

In today’s workplace, women cope with obstacles such as sex discrimination, wage

disparity, and sexual harassment. In addition to this, many women remain occupationally

segregated in the service-centered pink-collar world of “women’s work”; working very hard in

the clerical, retail, or caregiving fields but earning only a portion of what is paid for men’s work

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(Howe, 1977; Kimmel, 2004; Reskin, 1998). Johnson (2002) says that the new service economy

has, “been kind to women, but not equally kind to all women” (p. 33). As a result, sociologists

have looked at differences between occupations, a problem that does not get at the heart of

differences within occupations and how those differences might affect the individuals working

there (Johnson, 2002). Because of these studies, attention has primarily focused on the problems

of middle-class women and the barriers that prevent professional women’s advancement in

formal organizations.

The Critique from Feminism

The Radical feminist movement rejected the idea of professional, formal organizations

because they represented patriarchal structures that were regarded as controlling and oppressive

of women (Ferguson, 1984). Dismissing the male world of hierarchical status and competition,

the goal of feminist collectivist organizations was democratic, non-hierarchical, and called for

the open participation of all members. As a result, some feminist organizations throughout the

nineteen seventies and eighties, worked to create non-hierarchical, democratic organizations that

provided women better work environments and more opportunities to work collectively (Bryson,

1999). An idea supported by later research that suggests that women excel best in a flexible

environment that de-emphasizes hierarchy and encourages a team oriented approach (Martin,

1990).

According to sociologist Joan Acker (1990) however, the experiment in egalitarian

organizations fell short with “women failing to cooperate with each other, taking power and

using it in oppressive ways, creating structures of status and reward” (p. 265), which Acker says

defied the image of the supportive and nurturing woman. Moreover, sociologist Barbara Ryan

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(1989) asserts that the lack of unity in feminist organizations was not ideological but the result of

many feminist leaders who used “ideology and theory to promote radical self-identities that

maintained existing social divisions…based on differences among women” (p. 239).

But feminist assertions that women can avoid characteristically common male traps such

as power struggles and co-worker conflict do not consider that the workplace can be a

contentious, political environment for human relations. That women have similar experiences to

men’s in the structured space of work seems unsurprising given that social science research has

shown that gender differences in behavior are slight, particularly when compared to variations

within gender (Thorne, 1995). Nevertheless, a discussion about women experiencing conflict

with other women is discomfiting because women are different, they are expected to nurture, to

get along, perhaps even better than men do.

Valerie Bryson (1999) says that “difference feminism” (p. 48), the general idea that

women are more communally oriented and nurturing than men, is an aspect of radical feminism

and has been a source of debate among feminists. In spite of this though, difference feminism is

at the heart of the feminist debate against hierarchy and organizations because of the argument

that organizations do not accommodate women’s different needs and that women-centered

approaches—non-hierarchical and collectivist—are the best way to resolve women’s inequality

in the workplace (Bryson, 1999; Martin, 1990).

At the same time, psychologist Paula Caplan (1981) argues that difference theory has

implications for women’s relationships. She says that the general expectation that women are

more nurturing affects how women view other women, that women do not expect nurturing from

men and come to expect it from other women (Caplan, 1981). She adds that some women may

experience disappointment when their expectations are not met and feel “a kind of resentment”

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(p. 44) toward a woman who does not act nurturing (Caplan, 1981). The implications are that

women should act as caring co-workers, that their women co-workers might expect

accommodation rather than confrontation.

By studying how women negotiate the complex world of work relations with other

women, I hope to explore everyday incivilities between women and find out what techniques

they use to negotiate conflict. Women’s socialization in the larger culture reflects a focus on care

taking and self-sacrifice that begins in childhood (Hochschild, 1983). Because some women may

expect other women to perform as cooperative, nurturing co-workers, I reason that in the

bounded social space of work, women use techniques involving care and concern to manage

conflict with other women and suggest that norms for feminine behavior affect how women

negotiate peer relations and manage conflict with their women co-workers.

This investigation adds to present knowledge because it examines how women relate to

and negotiate problems with other women within the context of the workplace. Studies of co-

worker relations assert that positive work relations give busy women a supportive outlet that is

outside the family (Bell, 1981; Hochschild, 1997; Oliker, 1989). Contrary to these findings, there

is a silence in the research literature when it comes to the investigation of women’s conflicts

(Rosenzweig, 1999).

Furthermore, the minimal research that exists tends to support the notion of women as

more socially manipulative than men are and hence more prone to conflict at work because they

do not cope as well as men do (Hoel, Rayner, & Cooper, 1999; Singer, Singer, Hoel, & Cooper,

2003). Not enough however, is understood about small-scale, everyday conflict between women.

Whether women are more prone to conflict than men or manage it differently than men do is not

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to be answered here. What is needed though, is a less pejorative more nuanced understanding of

how women negotiate peer relations and manage co-worker conflict.

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II. Literature Review

Work is a central activity in the social and economic lives of most people. Research

suggests that social connections at work are a clear indicator of job satisfaction, that men and

women like going to work when they get along with their coworkers (Putnam, 2000; Hodson,

1997). Positive peer relations at work provide social support, create opportunities for

promotions, and enhance commitment to the organization (Sias & Cahill, 1998). Nevertheless,

recent investigations of co-worker relations show that extreme acts of violence and aggression—

“going postal”—are on the rise at work. Sexual harassment and verbal abuse are also typical

elements of today’s stressed-out workplaces (Bulatao &VandenBos, 1996; Califano, 2000;

Fraser, 2001; Namie & Namie, 2003; Schneid, 1999).

Current research however, is through the lens of applied methodologies that seek

preventative measures and official policy responses to significant problems such as employee

violence and sexual harassment. Though highly important, missing in the research literature is an

investigation of common everyday events of incivility between co-workers, specifically, how

women manage interpersonal conflict with other women co-workers. Studying small-scale

everyday conflict between women contrasts research that looks more at large-scale problems

such as wage differences between men and women and the lack of women in top-tier

management or corporate positions.

It is vital to research problems such as wage disparity, and women’s leadership. But

statistical studies conducted by psychologist Gary Namie (2000) at the Workplace Bullying and

Trauma Institute (WBTI) suggest that women are having to negotiate other, less tangible

problems in the workplace. Their research states that women experience conflict or “bullying”

(non-sexual harassment) most often in interactions with other women (87 %) (p. 4) and that in

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their study, women were also perpetrators of incivility in over half of the incidences reported

(Namie, 2000). The WBTI’s research illustrates that women’ conflict warrants investigation, but

from a perspective that avoids universalizing women’s experience and considers the context of

the social milieu.

Exploring how women manage conflict with other women at work is difficult because

contradictory stereotypes about how women relate to other women abound: Women’s

relationships are characterized as rife with “competitive, jealous, and catty” behavior (Canary &

Emmers-Sommer, 1997, p. 59), or they are ideal, supportive relationships that do not include

such unfeminine feelings as anger and competition (Rosenzweig, 1999). At the same time,

research regarding women’s relations with each other at work is minimal and focuses on

women’s supportive workplace friendships rather than their conflicts (Bell, 1981; O’Connor,

1992; Rubin, 1979). Because conflict occurs in the public sphere of work, it is important to relate

the kind of work that women have traditionally done, to the expectations that go along with

women’s work, and techniques of conflict management.

Women’s Work

Women have always worked in some capacity, but historically the kind of work women

do is devalued because caring for first graders, the ill, or providing a friendly smile are believed

to be inborn and natural, and not worthy of great compensation (Cancian & Oliker, 2000; Reskin,

1988). Suggesting that women’s care is innate, and that caring is a skill that comes easier to

women than men ignores the ways that caregiving is created and reproduced in social settings.

For example, in her famed study of the emotion work of flight attendants, Hochschild (1983)

found that the women she interviewed were expected to embody feminine caregiving as part of

their jobs. They were explicitly responsible for the emotions of their passengers by both

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absorbing and alleviating their complaints. Further, Hochschild (1983) says that because women

lack material resources they treat feeling and relational work as a resource and offer it in kind.

Being “nice”, not showing anger and giving good service are interchangeable ideas in the

everyday world of women’s work. Those norms considered appropriate for feminine behavior—

the “good girl” tactful, non-confrontational model—have implications for the modern work

world that is increasingly customer service oriented. Despite the women’s movement and the

efforts of affirmative action, women more often than not, continue to fill subordinate positions in

non-salaried, low wage, pink-collar service jobs (Johnson, 2002, p. 33).

In her seminal work, Men and Women of the Corporation, Kanter (1977) suggests that

the problems women face in the workplace are the result of structural, hierarchical conditions

particular to organizations. She says that women’s placement in bottom-tier positions enacts

organizational roles that “carry characteristic images of the kinds of people who ought to occupy

them” (p. 250). Though affirmative action facilitated greater opportunities for women at work,

many women continue to work in jobs that emphasize feminized characteristics such as helping

and serving.

Women and Interpersonal Relations

Women’s ability to help and serve the needs of others is immediately understood as

characteristics that are for the most part, distinctive of women as a gender. For instance, stories

of women’s caring, intimate friendships, in books, in film, and on television are sources of

cultural interest and copious revenue. Women’s relationships with other women however, have

not been an area of serious academic research. Perhaps this is because as Oliker (1998) suggests,

intimate friendships are a construct of the Western, modern world. She explains that with

industrialization and technological advance, men and women’s public and private worlds

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separated—men went to work in factories while women stayed home to raise children. As time

passed, women’s experiences were disregarded because they took place in the private world of

the home that revolved around household chores and caring for the needs of others (Oliker,

1998). Such a disregard for women’s public relationships with other women influences women’s

perceptions, providing grounds for placing less value on the friendship and opinions of women

(Caplan, 1981). Continuing with this idea, Seiden and Bart (1976) propose that women’s

devaluing of woman-to-woman relations reflect the cultural view that women’s relations are

insignificant because they occur in the private, domestic sphere.

In her research of middle-class women’s friendship, Rosenzweig (1999) says that

Western culture has encouraged women’s silence and thus, women’s experiences are absent from

public discourse. She adds that this silencing of women shows in the lack of anger and conflict in

women’s public discourse and reflects traditional Western views that supported affection

between women but defined anger as unfeminine and inappropriate. Jerrome (1984) and Allan

(1989) argue that social science considers women’s interpersonal relationships irrelevant to the

social structure and tends to rely too much on the kinds of stereotypes referred to earlier.

Feminist research has sought to ameliorate the stereotypical views toward women’s

conduct in relationships but it too tends to support a general notion that women are better “social

animals” equipped with different morals about caring than men. Gilligan (1982) says these

morals produce in women a tendency to nurture and be less competitive. Gilligan’s research

reflects the psychological approach, a view that sees women as different and perhaps superior to

men because of feminine qualities such as better communication skills and more nurturing,

peaceful natures (Bryson, 1999). Related is Gaia’s (2002) research of emotional intimacy and

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gender, which claims that women engage in more self-disclosure and interpersonal support than

men do.

In contrast, a meta-analysis (Canary & Emmers-Sommer, 1997) of adult same-gender

relationships found little difference between men and women’s interpersonal styles but took note

of women’s more communal approach to interaction, indicating a greater closeness that could be

difficult to negotiate in the competitive, formal space of work. Furthermore, Thorne (1995)

argues that in boy-boy and girl-girl friendships, variation within genders is greater than between

genders and that conflicts between the schoolgirls in her study had more to do with social

context.

The data on aggression between school age girls provides a research context for

understanding disagreement between peers at work. Sociologist Donna Eder’s (1985) study of

popularity and friendship among girls, found that in the hierarchical social environment of junior

high, girls negatively stereotyped girls deemed unfriendly and were highly concerned with being

viewed as nice to avoid the label. In her exploration of the “hidden culture of aggression” (p. 3)

in girlhood relationships, Simmons (2002) asserts that Western culture teaches girls to value

niceness and cooperation over conflict and competition, and does not educate girls in appropriate

conflict resolution. Based on her research of young women’s conflicts, Weitzman (2001)

suggests that the lack of training in constructive conflict resolution leaves girls and young

women at risk for inappropriate conflict management, especially in real world settings.

In regards to structured social settings, Merten (1997) suggests that the concept of

niceness is oppressive given the tension between hierarchy and equality, while Lamb (2001)

asserts that asking girls to be nice and caring denies their feelings of aggression, forcing upon

girls a more indirect style of handling interpersonal conflict. Other research (Benenson &

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Christakos, 2003) suggests that the greater intimacy in school age girls’ friendships intensifies

their reactions to interpersonal conflicts, making them difficult to resolve.

Women and Co-Worker Conflict

It is possible to infer from the research that a similar construct may exist in the workplace

where expectations are that women behave cooperatively while in competition with one another

for job promotions and social standing. Apter and Josselson (1998) say that in the grown-up

world of work, women encounter the same cliques and clubs they thought they’d left behind as

girls, dealing with similar issues of intimacy and trust, but in a competitive, public environment.

To this point, Simmons (2002) reasons that when girls grow up not knowing how to compete

they might focus too much on personal relationships at work and avoid the risk-taking and

competitive spirit that earn promotions.

Moreover, Tracy (1991) proposes that women are often unaware they are in competition with

other women and suggests that discomfort with power forces women to take on a traditional

victim role rather than confront a female co-worker. In this, she argues that when women enter

the professional workplace they need to give up their common connection with other women as

victims so they can practice the authority over others that are part of the work world.

Wielding power and authority over others can make women feel uncomfortable. Thus,

women’s discomfort with competition and power may explain why women experience work

related interpersonal aggression more often and more severely than men do and recount more

interpersonal betrayal from other women (Bjorkqvist, Osterman, & Hjelt-Back 1994; Kowalski,

2001). Weitzman and Weitzman’s (2001) research of middle-aged women’s interpersonal

conflicts showed that many (43%) (p.287) of their participant’s conflicts with women occurred at

work. Lively’s (2000) study of women paralegals employed at private law firms supports the

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claim that work conflict is difficult for women because of behavioral norms. She says that in the

context of work, face-to-face interactions serve to maintain and reproduce status hierarchies so as

not to challenge the organizational status quo and to “avoid the negative consequences of

informal or formal sanctions” (Lively, 2000, p. 58).

What informal sanctions do co-workers enact when in conflict with one another? In their

discussion of workplace bullying, Hoel, Rayner, and Cooper (1999) report that men and women

both use styles of covert aggression to manage co-worker conflict but that women use the tactic

of social manipulation (“e.g., insulting comments about one’s private life or rumors”) (p. 201)

specifically to manage conflict with other women. Additionally, Pearce and Henderson (2000)

found that women use indirect communication techniques such as gossip to manage problems

that threaten identity or personal sense of security at work.

Sotirin (2000) defines such gossip as informal talk that expresses women’s personal, private

anger. At the same time, O’Connor (1992) says that talk is highly valued among women and she

finds that women resolve interpersonal conflicts verbally through intimate talk. Indeed, Lakoff

(1990) argues that women’s gossip is a misunderstood communication technique and adds that

discomfort with direct expression in conflict situations has more to do with how women have

been socialized to feel about the possession of power, not discomfort with power itself.

How women are socialized to feel about competition and power is vital to the discussion

of conflict between women co-workers. In her book, Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman,

psychologist Phyllis Chesler (2001) says that women are as competitive as men but that middle-

class women have been socialized to believe that open competition is problematic, which she

says resurfaces as a forced jockeying for position and internalized sexism. This is a kind of

sexism that Chesler (2001) suggests might cause women to be “harder on other women than men

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are” (p. 336). In regards to women and power, women walk a fine line with their co-workers. As

an example, Chesler (2001) cites the story of Jenny, a woman supervisor who, “in the interests of

sisterhood…relinquished her power to four other women” (p. 381) who she reports sabotaged

their group project by increasingly questioning Jenny’s supervisory skills. Among women,

power and competition become centered on friendship groups rather than skill oriented networks.

According to Leora Tanenbaum (2002), women’s issues with power and competition

compelled the professional women she interviewed to state “I’d rather work for a man than a

woman” (p. 173). She says that women claim, “women at work refuse to share power or

withhold information” but that “men feel less threatened by women and therefore give them

more opportunities to advance than other women do” (Tanenbaum, 2002, p. 173). Such conflict

makes the workplace environment uncomfortable, and women may find it difficult to get their

personnel departments to intervene because of the opposing stereotypes that women should be

able to “talk it out” or that women “just don’t get along with each other.” Double messages about

how women should or should not get along with other women in structured settings reflects the

cultural norms for feminine behavior with the added complication of its judgment occurring in

the public, formal space of work.

The Interaction Ritual

Erving Goffman’s interaction ritual (1967) sheds further light on the complex social

reality that exists for working women. Beyond the mere tasks of the job, there are expectations

about women’s interactional behavior with other women at work. Regarding workplace conflict

as a micro-political event of interaction allows consideration for the view that social interactions

themselves have an organization beyond the respondents individual personalities and

psychological states (Collins, 1994). In the interactionist tradition of micro sociology, the

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individual self is not a passive actor in social situations. Instead, in an interaction, individual

action influences and is influenced by the presence of others. How a given social situation is

perceived and acted upon does not involve internal states, but is reliant on the subjective and

contextual circumstances of the momentary social experience.

Additionally, the interactionist view posits that there is a structure to society that is

created, maintained, and reproduced by the actions of individuals. Thus, an investigation of

women’s conflict with other women in the workplace considers not only the relationship of the

individuals to the structure of work relations, but considers structure as part of a process that

women maintain and reproduce in their interactions. About a conflict between co-workers, we

sometimes say they take on “a life of their own.” Yet, embedded in this idea of unmanageable

conflict is a sense that interactions are themselves an entity; that is something beyond the

individuals involved. Accordingly, the interaction ritual is relevant to this study because it

provides a theoretical model of face-to-face behavior as well as an understanding of the “ground

rules of social interactions” (Goffman, 1967, p. 31).

Conclusion

The literature has illustrated the complexity of how women’s relationships are discussed.

This review has sought to situate these relationships in the context of the formal, hierarchical

workplace—a micro-political environment of group life, characterized by relationships of status

and power. The literature however, does not answer the question about how women negotiate

relationships and manage everyday conflict with other women at work. Much research has

focused extensively on the problems of middle-class women, especially married professional

women. In addition, the studies are largely about the problems of women that result from their

dominance by men of the public sphere. But what happens when conflict occurs between women

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is poorly documented. There is little heard from the women working in the pink-collar service

world and even feminist Phyllis Chesler’s description of women in subordinate positions rings

with the old view that women working in powerless positions are betraying their personal

feminine power and ability, rather than putting food on the table for themselves or their families.

The literature has been unable to address how women manage conflict with peers in the

workplace. In addition, how women manage conflict with peers while working in pink-collar

service jobs is unknown. The experience of working in pink-collar service occupations has been

lost in the distinction between blue and white collar jobs; and as Johnson (2002) points out, there

is little knowledge of the techniques women use to get through the day in service jobs that are

repetitive, uncreative, interpersonally demanding, and lack autonomy.

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III. Methods

To answer the question about how women negotiate peer relations and manage everyday

conflict with other women at work, I used qualitative methods to collect data; initially I did this

through semi-structured interviews, and later in the study by way of participant observation. I

chose to use qualitative methods for this study because I wanted to explore women’s conflict

with other women in the setting of the workplace to grasp the women’s experiences based on

their descriptions of the interactions. Quantitative methods would not have been appropriate at

this point of the investigation because I wanted to hear and convey the voices of the women

missing in the previous research and understand descriptively the social dynamics of working in

service jobs.

Most of the women I interviewed for this study are employed in some area of the service

economy. And though I did not plan to speak with women solely employed in pink-collar service

jobs, I think the result reflects the reality of working life for many women. In addition to

conducting interviews, I participated in and observed three women’s events on the Chico State

campus, sponsored by the CSUC Women’s Center and Campus Wellness Center.

To make sense of my transcribed data, I began my analysis of the first nine interviews

with the help Atlas.ti, a qualitative software package used to aid in textual analysis and based on

Strauss and Corbin’s method of grounded theory (Denzin & Lincoln, 2003). Although I only

used Atlas.ti in my early analysis, I was influenced by grounded theory and ultimately chose to

use its methodology for my data analysis. I did grounded theory because I found that how

women manage conflict with each other at work is lost in universal theories of behavior and

commonly held social stereotypes. Rather than develop a hypothesis to test, grounded theory

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begins with data collection which is analyzed for abstract ideas that lead to the development of

patterns and themes and eventually, workable theory. Grounded theory offers an alternative to

formal hypotheses testing because it seeks to discover and develop theory grounded in the socio-

cultural descriptions of the collected evidence (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Charmaz, 2000). With

the use of grounded theory and its rigorous methods of comparison and inductive analysis, the

discussion of women’s techniques for managing co-worker conflict is grounded in the

descriptive accounts of the respondents workplaces.

Grounded theory works well for a project that relies on a small pool of ethnically

homogeneous, gender-specific respondents living in a precise locality—Butte County,

California. Collecting in-depth interview data from eleven women that live in a small geographic

locale seeks an interactional understanding of everyday incivility as it occurs in the lives of

ordinary women who are employed in conventional settings. The goal is to analyze and present

the data as case studies thematically “grounded” in the cultural descriptions of the interviewees.

In this way, the study provides a valuable glimpse into everyday co-worker conflict.

Data Collection

To locate and gather my respondents I used snowball sampling, a method of referral that

begins with identifying a few individuals in the population to interview and using those personal

contacts and word of mouth to locate further respondents (Weiss, 1994). This is preferred

because establishing level of trust is important. To identify the individuals for my study, I

handed out flyers to acquaintances and at local businesses I frequent. In addition, my qualitative

methods professor forwarded an e-mail outlining the study to members of her religious

congregation, which also garnered several respondents.

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Interviews

I conducted two sets of interviews, totaling fifteen semi-structured interviews based on a six-

question interview schedule. Initially, I interviewed eight women and one man, whose interview

I wound up discarding because it did not provide the perspective I hoped for and was not

included in the data analysis. Later, I decided to reinterview three of my original respondents to

follow up on conflicts and spoke with three additional women, adding data of women’s

experiences in the workplace as well as in formal campus organizations. Additionally, in the

course of my data collection I spoke informally with Elaine, a full-time student who sought me

out to discuss her experiences in two campus activist groups.

Two of the women I interviewed are in the class of service professionals, Jill, a therapist, and

Susan, a university professor. Both women had their own offices and spoke of being able to work

at home occasionally if they chose to. The nine other women work in nonprofessional service

jobs: Shelley, a registered nurse (within the medical hierarchy, nurses are regarded as

nonprofessionals in comparison to professional medical doctors); Janet, a grocery store clerk;

Diane, a medical office receptionist; Ruth, a women’s health worker; Peggy, a caregiver for the

elderly; Laurel, an intake worker for low income family healthcare; Belinda, a childcare worker;

Amy, an office assistant; and Erica, a retail clerk in the local mall.

Data collection took place over two separate three-month periods during the fall of 2003 and

2004. The forty-five to ninety minute interviews were audiotaped and I transcribed them myself

within forty-eight hours. I met with my respondents at locations of their choice so they would

feel most comfortable. The interviews themselves were loosely structured and I used open-ended

questions, drawing on anthropologist James Spradley’s (1979) method of ethnographic

interviewing—a method that is more akin to a “friendly conversation” than a “formal

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interrogation” (p. 58). This more casual method worked well for this project because it made it

possible for the respondents to simply “talk” about their workplaces and describe their

experiences and moreover, their opinions of those experiences.

Participant-Observation

During several interviews and in casual conversations with classmates and professors I

began to notice that the women I spoke with felt they were supposed to get along with each

other. Many women said they felt more comfortable working with and for men rather than other

women and a few women alluded that they felt that this had something to do with the idea of the

Sisterhood, that sense of shared feelings and unity among women which makes hierarchy more

difficult to navigate. I chose to participate in and observe women’s events on the Chico State

campus because I felt that participating in such events would give me the opportunity to interact

with other women and see how women’s experiences are culturally represented and ritualized,

and how women, myself included, respond to the ritual. The three events of participant

observation provided a contrast to the cases of conflict I was collecting from my respondents. I

also took extensive fieldnotes throughout the project based on my own participation and

observation among other women in the classroom, as both a student and a graduate teacher’s

assistant.

Data Analysis

As the study progressed, I collected and transcribed more interview data as well as

writing up and transcribing my fieldnotes from my participant observation experiences. During

my brief experience using Atlas.ti, I created and completed the first step in the process of

grounded theory: my codesheet. My codesheet was the result of open and axial coding. Open and

axial coding are done together, a process that refers to the examination, identification, and

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categorization of the data for discrete events, objects, actions, and interactions that are found to

be conceptually similar in nature or related in meaning. It is the most important step of analysis

and its goal is to integrate the structure (the ‘why’) of a phenomenon with its process (the ‘how’).

As a result, I identified and coded concepts that I then used to create groups of categories and

subcategories to aid with continued comparison and analysis. Though I did not continue to use

Atlas.ti, my early coding helped me relate those categories and subcategories to the new data I

was collecting and analyzing, and refine their properties into the core categories they later

became.

As I completed the data collection, I re-analyzed the transcripts and began identifying the

main story lines of the study (Dey, 1999). I returned to my codes and began writing up memos of

ideas in order to discern and compare the nuances of my analysis. Many of the coded concepts

that came up in my initial data collection showed up as I transcribed and analyzed the new data.

Some examples of the major codes from the study include: avoiding, emotions, friendship,

getting along, meanness, niceness, organizational structure, and work ethic. After proceeding to

the point of conceptual saturation, I used my word processing program to separate out the cases

of conflict I had collected so I could view them as a whole and compare them with my code

sheet and memo books in front of me. As I re-read and compared my data, I began to notice and

write about the themes emerging from the indigenous concepts that I used to create many of the

codes.

Indigenous concepts are key phrases, terms, and practices that are special to people and

they are used to make sense of the world and/or are related to their worldview. From the codes I

listed previously, I identified abstract themes such as, sisterly, nice, mothering, catty, and

ambivalent. Then, I used these thematic abstractions to construct a typology of women’s

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techniques for managing conflict. Typologies are defined as distinct types people use to break up

the complexity of their reality into distinguishable parts (Weber, 1958). In this study, I used the

participants’ own words to construct a typology of how women negotiate relations and manage

conflict with co-worker peers.

In my findings, I discuss how feminine norms associated with behaving in a nice or

friendly manner influence the technique women use to negotiate peer relationships and manage

co-worker conflict. The major typology in the findings suggests that in a general way, niceness,

that is acting nice or being perceived as a nice woman, is both a technique for avoiding conflict

and a source of conflict among women. The other two typologies that emerged, managing

ambivalence and mother-henning, are related to the concept of performing niceness in that they

are specific techniques for negotiating conflict among peers.

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IV. Findings

The idea of niceness was important to the women in my findings and an important

element in the social gatherings I participated in and observed. Among women, acting or being

nice is something women are “supposed” to do. In addition, the ways women act nicely were part

of a hierarchy of techniques women used to negotiate peer relations and manage conflict with a

co-worker, classmate, or clubmate. In the following fieldnote excerpt, I participated in a

women’s gathering to explore the ritualization of sisterhood; an event where the goal was to

create among women a sense of peer culture, a unity based on our learning to be nice to

eachother and ourselves.

From fieldnotes, October 9, 2004: The Red Tent: A gathering of women

According to the program, it’s time for the final event at The Red Tent, titled: “Living

our wholeness” with Donna Carlson-Todd1, certified life coach. Before us is a petite

blond woman in her fifties who is passing out business cards and telling us about herself

and that we are here to celebrate what it is to be a woman. While finishing up, she says

we need to stand and stretch, voice aloud what we’re feeling at that moment—everyone

stands up and some “Aahs” and whispery moans are voiced from the group. Then she

tells us to sit down at our tables where two sheets of paper have been placed during our

stretch, one a worksheet the other a guide to it that outlines the “Universal cycles of

change” and the “10 keys to living your wholeness”. Donna Carlson-Todd guides us

through the worksheet, prompts us to fill out each section honestly, tells us no one will

look at our answers.

1 All individuals in this paper are referred to by pseudonyms

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After a half hour of being guided through the worksheet, she asks us to stand again, to

leave some space in front of ourselves. She tells us to close our eyes, imagine a circle in

front of us—doesn’t matter how big—where we place (figured out from the worksheet

we just completed) our intentions, groundedness, hearts desire, beliefs/imprints, and

goals. We are told to imagine the colors in our circle, the feelings we felt when we filled

out the worksheet. Then she asks us to step into our circle of intentions, groundedness

and hearts desire, etc and then, step out, step back in again, “how do you feel inside your

circle?” she asks. A woman exclaims, “I feel better!” She asks us to vocalize how we

feel, and several women’s Oohs, Aahs, and hums fill the room. She continues in a soft

voice, telling us to step out (a woman behind me moans) then back in, and a woman

exhales to my left. Then, Donna Carlson-Todd asks us to step out of our circles one last

time and bend over and pick them up, hold them in the palms of our hands, and then close

our eyes again.

I’m not bored, but I’m feeling inauthentic, so I squint my eyes and peek at the women

around me. Two women to my right are stroking their circles, another holds hers up,

close to her chest, as Donna Carlson-Todd is telling us to place our circle to our hearts so

that we always remember how it feels and have access to it. Then she tells us to sit

quietly with our group and unwrap the purple blobs of cellophane-wrapped clay in front

of us to create with it the feeling we felt in our circle of intentions, groundedness, etc.

So, I play with my clay, while everyone else at my table is quiet and busy with theirs. Fae

is good, obviously knows what she’s doing, she’s sculpting a woman laying down with

her arms entwined above her head, but the others are just making odd shapes that don’t

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look like much. I wind up sticking a rose petal in the middle of my clay blob and run off

to the bathroom for some quick jotting.

When I return everyone is standing in a large circle holding hands. I run in and stand

between Connie and Monica and we are lead in several choruses of “Woman Am I”

Woman am I Spirit am I

I am the infinite within my soulI have no beginning and I have no end

All this I am.

My Sister, My Teammate

Though it may seem unusual in a study of co-worker conflict, my participation in the

gathering was an important way to explore how women relate to other women as group mates in

organized, formal spaces. In the process of interviewing women, I started to develop a hunch that

the ways women relate in everyday interactions at work were influenced by well-known cultural

ideologies, such as ‘sisterhood’ and ‘catfight.’ This hunch motivated me to pay more attention

while on campus, the formally structured institutional setting that is a job for many, myself

included. By participating in The Red Tent, a public event that serves as a means of ritualizing

women’s sisterhood experiences, I hoped to understand what is meant by ‘sisterhood’, this sense

of community that middle class feminists talk about. At The Red Tent, I found that shared

experience was emphasized, because we were there to celebrate what it is to be a woman

together and realize together, the “compassionate unity” that binds us. Moreover, I wanted to

understand the idea of “catfighting” better, because several women I interviewed and spoke with

said they preferred men as friends or co-workers because of problems such as gossip,

backstabbing, competition, and meanness.

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In my interviews and informal conversations with women, I was gathering stories about

conflict but also learning that women held clear opinions about how women relate. In one

interview, Jill, a therapist who counsels young girls, says:

I do notice something that concerns me in my practice with teenage girls. I thought that all the good things that had happened [having to do with the women’s movement] that there would be a more sisterly sort of climate. There’s meanness, Oh she’s such a bitch, oh she’s such a whore.

The implication is that the women’s movement created a greater sense of sisterhood among

women. Despite this, the schoolgirls that Jill counseled were engaging in the opposite: Being

mean and catty.

Being “mean” was also a concern among a group of women classmates in the fall of

2004. In this instance, my classmates and I were given the task of critiquing each other’s papers

in a classroom conference.

From fieldnotes, September 28, 2004: In Class

We turned in our research proposals today in class. Committees traded papers and convened in groups for student (peer) evaluations. Sitting with my group of three other women, I’m listening and there is lots of talk about feeling discomfort with the evaluation process. There are two groups of women in our classroom and the conversation is focused on how to evaluate, seems to be an assumption that we are acting unkind for critiquing. One woman asks why Dr. F is having us do this—doesn’t understand how we are possibly skilled enough to evaluate each other. I have my head down so I don’t hear who says it but a woman says, “I feel so mean doing this.” About a half hour later B. in my group starts to grab one of her evaluation sheets from the completed pile—says something about being “too harsh” and wanting to change one of the scores she’d given on an evaluation.

Although our classmate evaluations were anonymous and potential conflict avoidable, there

was concern about how to act, as if critiquing a classmate was a personal risk rather than a

constructive exercise. Being harsh or mean is something women worry about and it is connected

to the broad idea that women relate to each other in the extreme; either as sisterly friends or catty

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“bitches.” Consequently, I too found myself uncomfortable because I did not mind critiquing

other students, and so made a point of sharing aloud to my group positive remarks about the

paper I was reading. Looking back, I think that I was trying to perform non-harshness to the

other women in the room, wanting to appear friendly and nice rather than comfortable with

critiquing a peer.

Performing as a nice person is a technique several women used to avoid direct conflict,

but also was an expected performance in several women’s jobs. The phrase “You’re supposed to

be nice,” was used by Laurel in the first interview I conducted for the study. Linked to the idea

that “you’re supposed to be nice,” is the phrase “I love her, but…” a verbal means women used

to manage ambivalent feelings about a co-worker, couching a criticism of the other in a larger

framework of friendship. By suggesting that a co-worker is “loved” in spite of doing something

that is negatively evaluated, a woman is able to maintain a face of niceness and thus, negotiate a

conflict and avoid seeming like a ‘mean’ person. I did not notice this phrase at first, but instead

coded the feeling it relayed as ambivalence. I coded this with Diane first, but the phrase used for

the typology is a direct quote from a conversation I had with Elaine.

Also related is the typology of “mother-henning,” a performance or face that a co-worker

gives to appear helpful and nice to others. Mother-henning was a phrase Peggy used during our

second interview and was pointed out to me in the transcript by my thesis advisor. Afterwards,

the concept came up in conversations I had with individual classmates and during a group

discussion in the classroom. Thus, mother-henning was interpreted as contributing to incivilities

between women co-workers because it is a way to avoid direct conflict by giving an impression

of solidarity and nurturance. Further, the act of mother-henning is a technique women use to

avoid conflict but also secure power indirectly by performing to the expected norm.

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“You’re Supposed to be Nice”

It has been suggested that women in our culture are expected to be nice and learn to

expect the same from other women. Psychologist Paula Caplan (1981) says that the general

expectation that women are more caring affects how women view other women, that women do

not expect caring from men. This implies that in formally structured interactions, women should

act caringly, that their women co-workers might expect niceness.

In my interview with Laurel, it was clear that she placed value on the expressive behavior

of her co-workers and regarded their conduct as part of their work. At the health outreach agency

where she works, the receptionists at the front of the office are a source of conflict for her:

I’ve had clients actually come in crying because they were treated bad they say, ‘Oh, that girl at the window wasn’t very nice, she was really mean to me.’ And I’ve even had one client cry and she’ll never come back unless she’s gonna talk to me. I thought it was horrible. I complained. But, when I do complain the supervisor goes, ‘Oh, that patient is always like that.’ And then nothing gets done. And the girls don’t get reprimanded and I don’t care who it is, you’re supposed to be nice…

It was important to Laurel that her co-workers treat their clients with respect and when they did

not she came to evaluate them as not nice women because they were not doing their job.

Laurel also told me that the receptionists sometimes schedule appointments into her lunch

hour without telling her, causing the patient to become “irate” and the receptionists to say

scornfully, “Laurel, this lady’s been waiting here an hour.” Because of this, Laurel avoided

engaging in face-to-face interactions with the receptionists and sought the assistance of “the

girls” in the medical records department because she felt they were more helpful. In the world of

service work, where caring is an express task of the job, feminine norms and work ethic mix in a

way that can cause interactional conflict.

In Laurel’s case, the receptionist’s actions lead her to seek out the helpful actions of co-

workers in another department. Laurel felt that the receptionists did not present an appropriate

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face to the clientele. In addition to Laurel’s description of poor customer service, the conflict

caused by their over-scheduling shows that the receptionists are unwilling to perform the helpful

niceness that is, according to Laurel, an express part of their job.

According to Janet, the performance of niceness is also part of her job, a “workface” she

says she brings to work for the sake of the customers.

People do have to be responsible for what they’re supposed to take care of if they’re just not there, it’s bad customer service. That’s what this whole jobs about, it’s about making people happy when they come in and when they leave.

In Janet’s opinion, it is important to not only enjoy work relationships but to remember that at

work, customer service comes first saying that, “you really have to keep work, work and play,

play.” Janet enjoys interacting with her co-workers and finds the familial atmosphere of the

small grocery store comforting because her employers seem “concerned” about the staff.

This closeness causes conflict however, in particular between Janet and her co-

worker/friend Bonnie who is a supervising “key carrier.” She says that she and Bonnie are “best

friends” who met at work and describes Bonnie as someone who is perceived by others as

sarcastic and somewhat harsh. She says their friendship is a problem sometimes, saying:

It’s hard because it compounds the whole ‘I want to be taken seriously.’ They really listen to her and she’s taken seriously and it’s been frustrating. There was this one time when someone was frustrating me ‘cause they weren’t up at the registers when they were supposed to be bagger, and I said something to the closing manager and she kind of made me feel bad, ‘cause the way she said it to me was ‘don’t be bitchin’ about somebody else’. I said something to Bonnie, Bonnie said something to her [the manager] and she totally took her seriously. And she came up to me and apologized because she found out it was true what I said. It was weird, she takes her seriously but not me seriously.

In Janet’s case, she was frustrated with her manager for accusing her of being unkind and

thus not taking her complaint seriously. The manager listened to Bonnie because she is a

supervisor, but the resolution still left Janet feeling weird, as if she were acting “bitchy” instead

of making a legitimate complaint. Being perceived as “bitchy” was a problem for Janet because

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she did not want to give that impression and stated that when she does not feel nice or friendly,

she is “pretty good about being quiet.” It is possible that Janet’s discomfort with giving a

‘bitchy’ face kept her from presenting her complaint to her manager in a way that relayed its

seriousness. Additionally, it may be that Janet was not expected to complain because she was

regarded as a nice person, especially when compared to her friend whose perceived harshness

might help her complaints be taken more seriously by the manager.

But to Shelley, presenting a nice face to the public is not always possible. She works as a

nurse in a busy, stressful hospital unit and says:

The public is coming at you constantly with questions and needs, that’s the nature of it, but it seems that the public is intolerant of you ever losing your cool. It’s like they’re at a five star hotel and you’re the service personnel, and so you’re always supposed to be nice and calm and polite, never rude. So you’ve got that strain, you can never be exasperated or have a facial expression they don’t like. I always want to be good to them, I always want to be nice and serve them well, but sometimes you can’t. You’re running all over and all this shit’s happening and someone asks you a question and you don’t know and they think you’re rude. It’s the nature of our society, you’re supposed to serve the public, the customer’s always right, never disagree with them.

Though it is not possible to present a continuous performance of niceness, its constant

expectation frustrates Shelley. Fortunately, it does not cause much conflict among the other

women she works with. In relaying how they handle job stress as a team, she says that

interactionally, “It’s all variable everyday. Sometimes we are real competitive, sometimes we

hate each other, sometimes we’re comfortable.”

At the women’s health clinic where Ruth works she says, “We all make a point to get

along,” and that because the work is stressful:

…if you’re too sensitive you can’t work there. I think in our kind of environment it’s pretty necessary to be able to train really fast. It kind of seems like a consensus that if you don’t train really fast than there’s no point in doing this. Everything moves so quickly and we want to know if you’re gonna work and if you’re not gonna work we want to be able to find somebody. It’s kind of insensitive, but at the same time there’s a lot of patience.

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About performing niceness Ruth says, “I hate it. It takes a lot of energy to constantly be nice.”

Though comfortable with her statement, Ruth finds performing niceness a useful technique for

managing her conflict with a new employee:

There’s a newer woman that I don’t really like. I think she likes me ok but I have a lot of problems with the way she works and stuff like that. We have totally different things in common and the work thing; she’s always following going ‘when can I get off’ and that’s kind of a big deal because we never really know when we’re gonna get off. We say, We’re gonna leave at six but you know you could leave at seven. She’s always calling her husband, I need to do more of her work and she’s talking or whatever. It’s taken her a really, really long time to train. I try to be as nice as I can.

For Ruth, the act of trying to be as nice as she can shows that she is managing feelings

about her co-worker that could cause conflict. According to Ruth, her co-worker is not

performing personally or to the standards of the job and as a result, Ruth is forced to take on

some of her tasks. Although Ruth does not like her co-worker because she does not seem

dedicated to the job, she does not deal with the problem directly and instead regulates her own

feelings in order to maintain a positive face within the conflict.

Maintaining a positive face in the moment of conflict was also important to Susan, one of

the two professional women I interviewed. Susan is a professor who said during the course of

our interview that women are better “social animals” who are more emotionally connected to

work than men, which she says makes work more stressful. At her job, she performs the self-

described role of “bridge person” in conflicts between a friend/former office-mate and her

department chair:

The aspects of work can be stresses on friendships because the woman that I’m closest with she and I do similar kinds of work but we hold different perspectives on it. I’m a little less radical than her. Sometimes it’s difficult when you have work stuff and when you’re friends too. Like I didn’t want her to not like me because I wasn’t speaking out about something. So that could cause a little bit of stress on our friendships, that kind of stuff. There’s a lot of, the kind of work we advocate for, we’re sort of lone voices so I see myself as a bridge person because I get along really well with administration, with our chair and he likes me, we have a connection and my friend who is the more radical one

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she and my chair don’t have a connection. But she and I do so I’m often the person who tries to get them together, often literally. I’ll say, “ok can you come to my office” and it’s like, “okay you can talk.” Not quite that obviously, but kind of. I’ve had to get them in the same room and say, “let’s talk about this” because we’re not disagreeing, we’re just thinking about it differently. That’s sort of par for my personality anyway, but it’s definitely been heightened because of that situation.

In Susan’s case, performing niceness is not a problem. In fact, Susan said she did not

mind mediating conflicts because she feels she is fulfilling an important role and that she usually

sees both sides of a problem. In Susan’s professional job however, it is crucial to maintain

positive relationships with peer co-workers because as she says,“ I don’t need people to do stuff

for me, but intellectually I need people to back me in philosophical arguments. I need to collect

people to get accomplished what I need to get accomplished.” Thus, bridging the conflict

between her friend and chair serves two purposes: she pleases her chair and secures her

professional career while simultaneously maintaining her professional alliance and future

backing from her friend and fellow professor.

“I Love Her, But…”

As I continued to talk to women about the conflicts they had with their co-workers,

several women used a particular phrase in preface to a negative comment about another woman.

Declaring, “I love her, but…” speaks to the uncertainty women feel when expressing their

displeasure with another woman’s actions or behavior. Criticizing another woman seemed to

make some women uncomfortable, and it is related to the concern of presenting a nice face while

managing unsure feelings about a co-worker. To deal with their unresolved feelings about the

women they worked with, the women were enlisting a phrase that helped them negotiate the

ambivalence that arises when a co-worker is not well liked but still encountered in the

interactional space.

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Erica, a retail employee who works in the local mall, told me about the store manager

whom she also works for as a part-time nanny. She says that when the woman came to the store

they did not “hit it off” because of a conflict in work styles. She says:

She’d walk in, ‘dam’ it, I’m the chief and you’re my Indians.’ I love her, but her business style, she’s very micro-managing. She’s a good store manager…she just manages like an army and I don’t like it. So, I went to kids, and there was a new manager, George, and I don’t know if he was a male or what, but I like it a lot better. He would joke around, he was assertive, but he wouldn’t micro-manage, he was cool.

Erica says she left the retail store for another branch because working for her manager in the

store and as a part-time nanny was causing conflict. She says that she did not mind the other

woman’s personal style, but deeply disliked her management style because, per her comparison

to George, the manager acted in a controlling, not as friendly way. George’s joking, less

authoritarian management style seemed to cause fewer problems for Erica Later, she says that

she and the woman manager “have come a long way”, but followed that with:

She’s got her bad days for sure, but now I know her good days and her bad days. She’s got an attitude, she’s bitchy, she’s bossy, she’s to the rules—she insisted that we mop everyday, the whole floor! We spot mop! She was adamant about so many rules and we told her she needed to lighten up. She had a beef with so many people. Everybody hated closing with her, but she’s really gotten better. But the way she would be talking to you is so demeaning.

Erica’s comments about her former manager reflect the ambivalence she feels. She

avoided the woman by moving to a different store and working for George, yet still has to deal

with her former boss by working for her as a nanny. She shares several negative opinions about

the woman’s management style but then places within her criticism statements that indicate that

she and her former manager are on friendlier terms. These statements serve as a way to balance

Erica’s ambivalent feelings and help her manage her interactional performance during the times

when she is taking care of the woman’s children.

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Unlike Erica and her manager, Amy’s conflict was with a classmate and she says about

her, “I love Linda and I’m one of the few people that does.” Amy’s conflict with Linda began

over an incident in the lab they both worked in on campus. Linda discovered the lab to be out of

printer paper one day and removed ten dollars from a club fund established to pay for printer

paper. Amy said that Linda used to be a member of the club and that the money and paper used

to be her responsibility but that now it was hers. After getting sick and missing a few days of

school, Amy returned to find the ten dollars missing from the fund. She says:

I freaked out. I thought I was the only one with a key and then she wrote this nasty e-mail about me to Dr. G [the club advisor] saying I wasn’t doing my job, blah, blah, blah. She totally went over our heads, didn’t come to us and say, ‘hey, I notice there’s money in the kitty’. She just went straight to Dr. G and just totally cut us out of it and then wanted to pussy-foot around it and say, ‘Oh, you guys weren’t doing your job’. It doesn’t matter that we weren’t doing our job ‘cause it’s none of your business! Like I said, I like Linda, it really pissed me off that she did that, but it’s not gonna affect our, I mean it was a little tense for awhile there. We got it all situated.

After telling me that they had the problem situated, I asked what happened next. Amy told me

that she warned Linda to stay away from the funds because another club member wanted to “take

her to judicial affairs,” to which Linda responded with, “if you can’t handle the job of buying

paper then I’ll just take it over myself.”

I also spoke with Dr. G the advisor of the club who told me that she felt the problem was

solved easily, but that in her opinion the bigger issue was how the conflict seemed to have been

“blown out of proportion.” Indeed, from Amy’s description of her and Linda’s final interaction,

it seems like the conflict was unresolved within Amy because her warning Linda to stay away

from the funds was unnecessary in light of the club adviser’s intervention.

It could be argued that Amy’s assertion that the conflict was not going to affect their

relationship was a way for her to manage her criticisms of Linda to other classmates and her

advisor; a way give an impression to others and thus herself, that she was not being mean. This

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impression eased Amy’s ambivalent feelings about Linda because they made her feel like she

was a nice person for being able to like her when no one else did. Moreover, saying that she

could like Linda in spite of her error helped Amy continue interacting with Linda in class and

feel that further conflict was avoidable.

In Diane’s experience at work, there are “real power struggles among women” but that at

her current job she and her two women co-workers “get along.” In discussing her conflict in the

medical office where they work, Diane says that Kristy misses work sometimes because of

emotional problems and that, “I love her, but it’s inappropriate for the office.” For Diane, being

nice is something she does to deal with her ambivalent feelings about her co-worker, a way for

her to get along with a woman she also feels she has little in common with. In Diane’s situation,

performing the role of the nice co-worker helps her manage the economic differences that she

feels separates her from both of her co-workers:

We are [from] financially different strata, so it’s hard sometimes with your co-workers to do things with…we don’t have…we are very pleasant and very nice and know about each other’s families and are very polite to say, ‘How’s so-and-so, etc?’ We’re very congenial, you want to do that, you want to be that way and nice.

Diane feels they are too different economically, but also emotionally, and these differences cause

conflict between herself and Kristy:

She has all kinds of problems. All sorts of dysfunctionality. And she comes to me, and says, What do you think? I try to help her, I don’t want to judge her because her work is so good. She’s had some real things in her life. Sometimes I don’t feel she’s taken advantage of it, and she’s on so much medication she can swing. She writes me cards saying, ‘I just can’t believe how you’re just so nice and understanding.’ I am to a point though, because when she’s not there I gotta do both jobs. He’s [M.D./boss] come down on her and he’s asked me about her, he’s very angry at it. I said to him, ‘Yeah, I’ll tell you when it comes to a breaking point.’

Although Diane says that she “loves” Kristy, she contradicts this by sharing several

character-based criticisms. It appears that Diane’s performance of niceness and understanding

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with her co-workers enables her to maintain a sense of status among them and helps her manage

her ambivalent feelings. The face that Kristy reflects back to Diane tells her that she is a nice

person, preventing anger on Diane’s part and serving to protect Kristy’s position at work. As

long as Diane feels she is a nice, and perhaps better person for tolerating Kristy’s emotional

problems, her ambivalent feelings about Kristy are managed and Kristy’s job is safe.

Mother-Henning

A caring, but controlling woman is a cultural identity common enough to provide an

image of the mother hen, a woman who cares for the needs of others in an overprotective or

interfering way. Performing the role of the caring mother of others is an interactional strategy

women use with co-workers to maintain a normative sense of feminine power. In organizational

settings, mother-henning is a means to avoid direct conflict by assuming an impression of

solidarity and nurturance towards co-workers in order express indirect power.

Acting helpful and nice while not displaying ambivalent feelings is a technique that

Belinda uses at her work to negotiate conflict. Belinda says she avoids “drama” and prefers not

to open up emotionally to her women co-workers because it makes her feel vulnerable. Instead,

at her workplace she prefers to get along, be helpful, and avoid confrontation. When it comes to

tasks however, Belinda is not indirect and feels that her childcare co-workers do not appreciate

her helpful nature:

Whenever I did something they didn’t like she would just yell at me like I was a kid, behind me sitting way back ‘cause they wouldn’t help. I had to actually buy the cake for the end of the year party because the supervisor wouldn’t release any of the extra money. There was extra money and she wouldn’t even spring for a cake. Then I couldn’t get anyone to help me serve the cake. It took me how many times I called and asked them by name to come and help me and then they’d walk away and still not help. I think maybe they resented that I’d got the cake for the kids in the first place.

38

When asked how her supervisor reacted, she stated that the woman was standing “right there and

she wouldn’t help either.” In Belinda’s case, her conflict with her co-workers occurred because

she did not get the expected response to her mothering performance and thus did not feel

appreciated for her helpful actions. Further, Belinda says she is considerably older than her

supervisor and suggests that this difference threatened the younger woman because she wanted

to “run everything.”

Belinda says that she avoids drama but it would seem that her insistence on acting helpful

is causing conflict for her among her co-workers. She says she does not like confrontation and

prefers to be a “helper,” an indirect means of expressing power that is experienced by others as

bossy and interfering. Belinda’s mother-henning of her co-workers is not only a technique she

uses to avoid conflict but one that actually causes her conflict.

Attaining power by acting as a caring and helpful mother-hen was observed and

experienced by Elaine in her formal campus organization. She told me that the young woman

who is the club president was having a conflict with an older woman in the club named Sandra

who is the “unofficial assistant” to the group. Elaine told me that Sandra has bought flowers,

balloons and has stopped to pick up food for club functions. Elaine told me that the conflict

revolved around the club president accusing Sandra of misappropriation of funds. I asked Elaine

if Sandra had taken money out of some kind of fund but she said she did not know for sure, and

thought that the issue was Sandra’s formal request for reimbursement. In the beginning, Elaine

said she thought that Sandra was trying to be helpful, but that she had “gone too far” in this

instance.

Several weeks later Elaine told me that the president had quit the club, but the issue of

Sandra’s mother-henning lingered and now centered on a daylong campus event they were

39

participating in as a group. Sandra was getting excited about the event and sent several e-mails to

Elaine and another campus leader, Anita, about plans she had in mind and things she wanted to

help with. Elaine contacted Sandra the next day and told her to “chill out,” that they were trying

to keep the event simple. She said that the Sandra became angry and did not want to talk about it

but later that day sent seven angry e-mails to Elaine accusing her of being a “controlling” person

who wants to “get her way” in organizing the event. Elaine said that in her opinion the conflict

was about expectations regarding how to organize the event and added that Sandra is no longer

speaking to her. In this case, Sandra’s help was not needed and her angry reaction reflects her

frustration over a rejected performance.

During our second interview, Peggy and I talked about her job at the nursing home where

she still worked. Early in the conversation, we revisited the discussion of her friendship with the

woman at work who is also her supervisor. She said that her supervisor/friend had a problem

with worrying about others and trying to keep everybody happy and that this affected her

leadership:

…as supervisor she’s a mother hen from the word go. She mother hens all the employees, she mother hens all the clients that we work with. Her leadership capabilities again, she’s mother henning, she wants to have everybody happy with everybody else and it’s very hard for her to draw a line.

Peggy’s friends’ mother-henning caused conflict for her because she felt she had to step in

and “draw the line for her” socially with the other employees. In the context of their relationship,

mother-henning was a source of conflict because it placed Peggy in the position of setting

boundaries her supervisor could not.

In addition to stepping into a role and setting boundaries, Peggy said that her

friend/supervisor expects her to take on extra work without complaining. She says that when she

does question a task, she is told, “that’s what you were hired for.” In this instance, mother-

40

henning is a technique Peggy’s supervisor uses to maintain power over her staff by way of

nurturing. By making friendliness and concern for how the staff gets along valuable, she

maintains her status on the hierarchy because it is difficult to become angry with someone who is

not just your supervisor, but also a caring friend. Further, the supervisor/friend’s expectation that

Peggy should take on both symbolic and concrete tasks without complaint (and on one occasion

without compensation) illustrates how mother-henning in this case, is an indirect expression of

power and a way to avoid conflict by presenting a nurturing face.

41

Discussion

Through the process of interaction people present themselves to others and in this

presentation strive to achieve for themselves and one another a clear definition of the shared

social reality (Goffman, 1967). The women’s concern with creating an impression of

friendliness, niceness, and nurturance supports Goffman’s assertion that people construct

performances of their selves to present in social interactions (1959). In turn, these idealized

selves and the ways, places, and to whom they are presented, act to construct for the individual

and the group a clear sense of the social situation at hand.

According to Goffman, the goal of creating a clear sense of the social situation is to

maintain the order of social life. By performing to the expected norms and presenting managed

impressions, the women avoided conflict with their co-workers and maintained for themselves

and their co-workers, the social order of the work space. In discussing techniques for managing

conflict however, it is important to note that the performance of niceness and friendliness are not

necessarily thought out or pre-scripted but improvised unselfconsciously according to the

interactional situation (Lemert & Branaman, 1997).

The findings suggest that in the micro-political space of work, larger cultural

expectations that suggest women behave in a nice and friendly manner influence women’s

negotiation of co-worker conflict. Thus, how women at work negotiate peer relations and

manage conflict with other women is related to the fact that society does not sanction women’s

expressions of anger or frustration—particularly in the workplace where women are expected to

act nice and considerate while at the same time competing with others for occupational and

social position. As a result, women rely on presenting themselves to others in interactional

conflict in a way that does not create an impression of an angry woman.

42

The findings support some of the research literature that suggests that women are not

taught how to manage conflict and instead learn to stifle feelings of anger and frustration (Lamb,

2001; Simmons, 2002; Tracy, 1991). In many cases, women seemed to feel more comfortable

with avoiding conflict. Nevertheless, the literature suggests that women’s avoiding conflict is

dysfunctional, a result of poor socialization. This idea has implications in the discussion of

feminine norms, conflict, and pink-collar service work.

Women working in pink-collar service jobs lack autonomy. Further, interacting with co-

workers is a major part of the job because co-workers rely on each other to complete everyday

tasks. Choosing to get along and behave in a nice and friendly manner is a necessary survival

skill for women who lack the technical skills or college education to leave a bad job. Working

within their situations and defining it in a way that maintains the social order shows that avoiding

conflict is not always dysfunctional. I found that the pink-collar women I interviewed work

largely in a peer culture with managers. Rather than engage in conflict that would jeopardize

peer relations, the women negotiated their face-to-face interactions by way of performing

feminine norms that ultimately maintained a nice, friendly social space.

In negotiating the work space, women perform the norms of niceness, friendliness and

nurturance, norms commonly associated with feminine behavior. In service jobs that require the

performance of care, concern, and niceness, this should come as no surprise. Furthermore, the

idea that a “work face” can be constructed and put on for the benefit of customers and co-

workers demonstrates the importance placed on presenting a normative impression.

Because the service work they do takes place in a public setting, the women found it

more amenable to perform as nice, friendly, or nurturing co-workers rather than deal with other,

less manageable feelings that arise when working closely in a hierarchical, interdependent space.

43

Further, the fact that the performance of feminine norms is sometimes the source of conflict for

the self or with others supports Caplan’s (1981) point that women not only internalize, but also

externalize the cultural expectation that women are supposed to be nice. Moreover, this

expectation illustrates that it is as important to be perceived as nice among peers, as it is to

behave in a nice, friendly manner.

The importance of being perceived as a nice co-worker brings the discussion back around

to the idea that how women negotiate conflict is influenced by cultural ideologies like

‘sisterhood’ and ‘catfight’. Feeling the pressure to get along with another women in spite of

being treated poorly speaks to the message of the Red Tent: That women share a common bond

that is different from men and as a result of this, experience harmonious relations. Because of

broad ideas about how women should get along, there is a sense that one must perform to the

normative expectation or face being thought of as a catty or mean woman.

On the job and in organizations, getting along is an important part of women working

together. It is difficult for women to engage in direct conflict and maintain a positive face with

co-workers. The face they give their co-workers, whether acting nice or catty is reflected back in

later interactions and can become a permanent impression if not managed properly. Though

women at work are not sisters, they are teammates whose workplace interactions shape co-

worker conflict and techniques for managing it; using techniques of care and concern acts as a

way to manage conflict in the formal, hierarchical space of work. In spite of hopes that women

are different and can avoid interactional conflict with co-workers, it is clear they do not; conflict

is part of the micro-political environment of work.

44

V. Conclusion

The purpose of this study was to answer the question, in everyday life how do women

negotiate peer relationships and manage conflict with other women at work? The main finding of

this paper is the idea that women’s techniques for managing conflict are influenced by socially

constructed feminine norms that are patterned and used. Norms that suggest to women that they

must get along with each other and behave nicely, lest they perceive themselves or have others

perceive them as “mean.” In turn, these feminine norms shape how women negotiate conflict

with their women co-workers.

In this study, women found it more comfortable to avoid direct conflict in favor of being

nice. Yet, this caused conflict, especially if a co-worker did not perform to the expected norm

with clientele or other co-workers. As a result, I created a typology for how women negotiate

peer relations and manage co-worker conflict. Women felt they were supposed to be nice and

that it was important to appear as a nice or friendly woman toward a co-worker; reinforcing

among women co-workers the idea that direct conflict should be avoided. In addition, disliking

or having problems with the behavior or actions of a woman created self-conscious ambivalence

that was managed by saying the woman was “loved” or liked. Finally, some women used or were

mother-henned, a technique of expressing indirect power by acting in a nurturing manner.

The preference among women to avoid direct conflict is supported in the literature. In

addition, the research implies that avoiding conflict is a dysfunctional reaction to competition

that hinders women at work (Simmons, 2002; Tanenbaum, 2002; Tracy, 1991). Further,

researchers (Hoel, Rayner, & Cooper, 1999; Lakoff, 1990) assert that women are uncomfortable

with power and competition and suggest that because of this, women in structured work settings

tend to engage in more conflict with other women. This relates to Heim and Murphy’s (2001)

45

research that points out that women perceive conflict with other women as catfights and that this

perception can lead to avoiding direct conflict. The research literature however, lacks an

interactional framework and tends to support the stereotypical view that women get along either

as sisterly friends or catty “bitches”.

Given my findings, I conclude that women together at work or in other structured settings

prefer to avoid conflict and use techniques of niceness to manage conflict indirectly. Several

women in this study made the choice to avoid a co-worker they were in conflict with rather than

create unnecessary social discomfort at work. In the public, hierarchical setting of work,

women’s relations with peers take on a more instrumental function than more private, intimate

friendships. Thus, performing to the standard of feminine norms is not necessarily a sign of

social dysfunction. In fact, performing as the nice, friendly co-worker is a way that women get

by while working in jobs that they cannot easily quit.

Getting by in pink-collar service jobs is different than in jobs that provide autonomy and

creativity. Though they can be physically demanding, the primacy of service work involves

performing nice, friendly, and caring emotions. Performing such emotions influence how women

experience themselves and other women at work and encourage the need to present an idealized

impression of the self in conflictual interactions.

When women work in jobs with autonomy—having a private office, coming and going

with minimal supervision, along with benefits and a salary wage—it is possible to ignore the

public performance and develop more direct styles of conflict management because the

professional structure allows for it. I only interviewed two women in the category of service

professional, but both Jill and Susan made statements about the importance of being able to “shut

the door” and hence, shut out conflict. In jobs that require a friendly, kind, and caring ‘workface’

46

however, the pressure of the performance is always present in the interactional space because the

service-oriented structure expects it. In this way, women working in the pink-collar world deal

with a structure that reinforces those norms that construct women’s identities as nice, helpful

caregivers.

Based on the findings it is important to consider what this means for women at work.

Though I agree with the assertion that women are not taught how to manage conflict, I believe

they are also unjustly characterized for avoiding it. Moreover, these ideas—face conflict directly,

avoid it at all costs—play into larger cultural expectations of how women are supposed to relate.

Cultural ideas influence women and convey the message that they should get along, that it is

natural and required for women to feel unity with other women. Insofar as the workplace is

considered, this means that women place great emphasis on the normative behavior of their co-

workers. Thus, a positive or negative evaluation of a co-worker’s behavior relates to giving

service to clientele, task completion, and leadership; a positive evaluation in an interaction

maintains a sense of social order in the work space, whereas a negative evaluation must be

managed and conflict avoided so that the social order, however small the crack in it, can be

restored.

From these results, several areas of future research emerge. Foremost, it would be

worthwhile to discuss with pink-collar women how they were socialized to manage conflict in

their childhood and adolescence. Though it did not fit in with the scope of the current

investigation and is not highlighted in the findings, four different women indicated that their

opinions about women developed in their childhoods and were related to either caring for a

dependent mother or having a mother who dismissed or had conflict with other women. A study

that considers the influence of the life course on women’s techniques for managing conflict

47

could shed light on the reproduction of feminine norms and their possible role in avoidance of

conflict in the workplace.

Another potential area of research is to contribute to the investigation of workplace

bullying. Gary Namie’s (2003) research finds that women experience bullying most often from

other women and that this often results in interpersonal threats, insults, rumor spreading, and

social exclusion. From the basic finding that women feel they are supposed to be nice, it would

be worthy to explore the performance of feminine norms and how they might relate to the

concept of bullying. Academic and popular writing have documented bullying among girls. And

Namie’s reports give voice to adult victims of co-worker bullies, but not much is known about

who bully’s and how bullying behaviors develop.

Finally, this study provides a place to begin an investigation of the social perception of

women in authority positions. Several women’s conflicts were hierarchical in nature and had to

do with perceiving a woman in power as being weak if she is too nice or ‘bitchy’ if too

controlled. How women feel about women in power positions could give depth to the discussion

of women’s enactment of feminine norms to manage conflict. For women in authority, dealing

with conflict is an aspect of most management positions and acting in a nice, nurturing way is

regarded as unprofessional and breaching social boundaries.

There are limits to this study. For this project, I relied on a small pool of gender-specific

respondents living in a precise locality—Chico, California. Moreover, the respondents in this

study were primarily white, with the exception of one woman who identified herself as Hispanic.

Data collected from twelve women living in a small, ethnically homogenous geographic locale

warrants a discussion of feasibility. But, this is not a large-scale investigation; rather, it is one

that seeks a microscopic, contextual understanding of everyday incivility as it occurs in the lives

48

of ordinary women employed in conventional settings. The goal is to analyze and present

empirically obtained data as case studies “grounded” in the cultural descriptions of the

interviewees. In this way, the study is small but may provide a valuable glimpse into everyday

co-worker conflict.

As this is only one small study, it is vital to continue investigating women’s conflict. The

tendency to avoid the topic in academic research reflects the discomfort with discussing how

women manage conflict. Nevertheless, a scholarly discourse is important because the non-

academic work lacks the depth of understanding about women’s diverse realities. And the

academic research tends to focus their examination on women’s historical oppression as workers

but avoids the topic of conflict between women. The knowledge that work means the task but

also the social goings on, is crucial to realizing the interplay between the self and the social

environment.

49

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Appendix A

Interview Schedule and Copy of E-mail to Recruit Volunteers

Interview Questions

Research Questions: How do women negotiate peer relationships at work with other women? How do they manage conflict in these relationships?

1. Tell me about your current work environment. 2. Describe any close relationships/alliances in your current job.3. In your current job, have there been times relationships are better or worse?4. How would you describe a good co-worker? A bad co-worker?5. Thinking about the jobs you’ve had, where did you have the best interpersonal

experiences?6. Following that, describe the worst experience you’ve ever had with a co-worker?

E-Mail

Hello,

My name is Julie Withers and I am a graduate student at Chico State. Iam looking for working women interested in participating in a study Iam conducting about co-worker relationships and work friendships.

If anyone in your organization is interested in participating and wouldlike to tell me about their work experiences, please respond to me at this e-mail address or contact me at the number below. The interview will lastabout an hour. Participation is greatly appreciated, and I amreimbursing participants ten dollars for their time.

For more information, please contact me at (530) 521-2640.

Thank You,

Julie Withers

57

Appendix B

Sample Interview Transcript: Laurel

J: The first thing we're going to talk about is...I'm curious if you could tell me about your current work environment?

L: Oh boy (laughs). There is front staff, girls, women in the front staff, no men in the front staff that I have to deal with on an everyday basis. They're probably the only section that I would ever have concerns with. When there's a conflict it's usually with them.

J: Is that who you're part of too, are you part of the front staff?

L: No, no I'm in a different department.

J: What dept. are you in?

L: Community health and outreach. But because I have clients that come in, they make the appointments. And they don't, because I'm not a provider, because I'm not a Dr. they don't go out of there way to help me in any way. Now the medical records dept. they help me all the time. But the girls in the front I have to kinda budge 'em to get 'em on the computer to tell me who's coming in.

J: For your appts.?

L: Yeah, for my appts. I don't even bother asking for a list of clients, you know like a schedule, because they won't print it. They print for the doctors but they won't print 'em for me. I have to do that myself. And I, it's kinda weird I don't have a password or anything to get on the computer so I have to ask them to give it me. I usually go to the medical records dept. where I have a better relationship with the girls, and ask them for a schedule. I just kinda jot down who’s coming in. If I miss an appt. because of bad communication, they sometimes schedule me at really weird, like if I don’t know what my schedule is sometimes they’ll book me into my lunch hour and then a patient will come in, the patients irate, guess who gets mad at me, they do. They’re like, “Laurel, this lady’s been waiting here for an hour.”

J: But you were at lunch and didn’t know.

L: Yeah. And also the front staff I get mad at them sometimes, I don’t really tell them that I’m mad at them (laughs) but , I don’t like the way that they treat people that come into our clinic.

J: What do you mean by that?

L: If I was...a patient comes to the window has an appt. I don’t think that they’re qualified to be dealing with the public. Except for maybe two people out of the six girls that are at the front window. I would have fired them a long time ago.

58

J: What do they do that makes you think that you would fire them?

L: One time, well I have clients that come back to my room and they say, “Oh, that girl at the window wasn’t very nice, she was really mean to me.” And I’ve had clients actually come in crying.

J: Oh, really?

L: Because they were treated bad. And I’ve even had one client cry and she doesn’t come to our clinic, so she’ll never come back unless she’s gonna talk to me. But I thought it was horrible. I complained, I did complain about that. But, when I do complain the supervisor who is also the clinic manager always asks, she goes, “who is that? Which patient is that?” ‘Cause she thinks she knows which ones are the trouble makers. And so she wants to know if they’re a trouble maker. And if it’s a trouble maker patient she’ll go, “Oh, that patient always is like that.” And then nothing gets done. And the girls don’t get reprimanded and I don’t care who it is, you’re supposed to be nice.

J: Yeah, you can bet that’s part of the job of the front desk person.

L: It’s bringing people back in and saying “Hey, how’s your day.” Even if you are someone that might be kind of weird.

J: Why do you think that they treat them poorly?

L: Well, our clinic has a mix of all different kinds of people. We, a lot of them are on Medicare or Medi-cal and some of them are on sliding fee and they don’t have any insurance at all. Then we have our patients that come in from Behavioral Health. I think it’s the Behavioral Health ones that get treated differently. Because they’re the ones that might have a behavioral problem. And then the girls kinda get snappy and so they don’t know how to deal with ‘em.

J: What are the girls like? Is there anybody specific that you’re kind of thinking about when you’re talking about a lot of this. You said a little while ago that there was 6 and there were a couple that you considered okay.

L: Well, there’s this one girl Holly, she’s out on medical leave. She’s really nice (emphasized). And she always treats everyone really nice and I’ve never had any complaints about her. Mainly the other girls (laughs). And, there was one lady that doesn’t work at the clinic anymore and she was really good too. And she was there with me once when there was an irate patient that was in with a Dr., the lady was wigging out, she wasn’t getting her medication. She was definitely at fault, she wanted her vicodin and the Dr. wasn’t going to just give it to her. But, the unprofessionalness came because they should have just closed the door so no one else could hear. Luckily there was only one patient out in the area during that time. But all the girls, the door was open, so I could hear what was going on and the girls were all talking and laughing and whispering, going, “psst, psst.” And talking out loud and I would have fired them all that day. Except for Holly, she came in and said, “my gosh I can’t believe they’re sitting there laughing and talking about a client.” Now these same girls also, I think it might be a female thing, because

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I’ve never seen men do that. I don’t know. I guess, but these same girls they’re really gossipy, they have talked in front of our staff that speaks English, they’ll talk in Spanish and talk bad about ‘em.

J: You can understand I imagine, right?

L: I can understand. A couple of weeks ago a gal who was just hired through a temporary agency she got her feelings hurt because they were sitting there talking about her. And she could understand everything they were saying. So, and I don’t usually have a problem with them because I know how they are, they’re gossipy. Again, a lot of it has to do with their Hispanic culture (laughs). And I’m Hispanic so I can say that. But, I just act like myself I let it go in through one ear and out the other and just keep on doing my own stuff I don’t get really involved in their things at all.

J: Do you have a close friend or somebody you kind of hang out with at work that you talk to instead of them?

L: You know, I had a really good friend Nancy who unfortunately doesn’t work there anymore. She was like my mom, she was a mother-figure. We would talk and if I had anything that made me really upset I could talk to her. I have some other friends that are like that and they’re nurses, and they’re, they’ve been through a lot more than these…these girls upfront are all really young and immature, is the way I look at it. And the nurses are older women and they’re more mature. And they’re not gossipy.

J: They’re not?

L: No.

J: Do they talk about each other at all?

L: The nurses if they tend to have a problem, it’s usually with their supervisors. Or with a Dr.

J: Would you say that they have pretty good alliances then?

L: Yes, yeah they have a good, they work well together and they. If there’s a problem with the nurses they have a meeting immediately. Yeah, a couple of weeks ago they had a meeting. Someone did something, someone else was unhappy and within thirty minutes they were all in the conference room having a conversation and talking and working it out. I get along better with the dr.s and the nurses than I do with those girls up in front (laughs).

J: How long have you worked there?

L: 5 years

J: Have there been times when relationships have been better or worse in the past that you can recall?

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L: Oh Boy. A couple years ago we had an “Enron” problem at our clinic. Our CEO, I guess there was some embezzlement going on in one of our dental clinics (this after explaining that there were at least 5 clinics in the Yuba City area etc…:14), and we got some letters instructing us not to talk about it and not to make any assumptions or whatever, but everyone at the top got fired. We figured out that they all knew about it and maybe they were all in on it together.

J: In thinking about that, do you remember that having an impact on you or any of the relationships? L: Yeah, it was causing problems down below because there was other people that had been working for our clinic for a really long time and when that happened a bunch of people quit. I think the people that quit didn’t have anything to do with the scandal but they, we (note chg. In pronoun) were being kind of treated really weird at that point. They weren’t treating people very nice at that point and the head of the department, this horrible woman (lowers voice), and I’m so glad to see her gone. She was at the top of our HR and she’s also, she ran everybody, like she had our CEO in a string. So, when the CEO got fired she got fired as well. As far as being a dominant female, she was like a black widow (038) (lghs). That’s the only way I could explain her.

J: What kind of things did she do that you would say would make her be a “black widow?”

L: Well, one of my coworker’s, who’s this wonderful woman who never got an education, but she’s a really good outreach worker. She goes out to the migrant fields and she talks with the men about AIDS, she’s not embarrassed about anything. She talks to ‘em in their language so they can understand. She does all kinds of outreach work for our clinic. Right before this woman got fired, black widow got fired, she told Erma that she would never, ever get another raise unless she went back to college. And Erma’s probably 55 or 60? And Erma doesn’t know how to read. She probably knows how to read a little bit, but you know, that’s not her cup of tea. Her thing is outreach and everybody loves her. And our clinics are for migrant people.

J: So, what happened?

L: Erma’s still working for us and she’s great and she has gotten raises now that we got rid of that woman.

J: Did that (incident) upset Erma?

L: Oh yeah, she told me crying that so and so had said that to her.

J: So, Erma sounds like she’s a good coworker, for sure. What other qualities do you have in mind to describe someone who’s a good coworker like that?

L: (069) If people are doing their load and not leaving you with a load to do and you get along with them well and you know, they’re not talking bad about you behind your back or anything then everything usually goes fine at work. Now I work with Steve, my boss a lot because we work at the same clinic on MWF. And I work good with Steve as well. But I don’t like , I’m glad

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my office is on the other side of the clinic so I don’t have to be working with him looking over my shoulder because he’s my boss and that kinda intimidates me. He knows that I carry a lot of the load. Because he’s the coordinator he has to do a lot of work and he’s always, “Laurel, can you help me? Can you do this, can you do this” and so I do most of the work that we’re supposed to do and he does the rest.

J: Do you like that relationship?

L: Yeah. He’s a little bit intimidating. You kinda feel that feeling that they’re your superior and also because he’s a male it makes it even more ingrained. I try to get rid of those feelings but I just can’t. It’s really hard. But now that we’re working in a different program, so I have to work more with him now. And make sure that I try to make more at the same level as him so we can actually work together. So I don’t feel like he’s above me or anything.

J: You mentioned though that he’s cool to you?

L: Yeah, he’s really nice. And he’s honest with me too. If I’m doing something that he doesn’t like he lets me know immediately. I like that in people, I don’t like people to beat around the bush. When we had the other lady, the black widow lady, at our clinic? She had this rule where we had to wear nylons and closed toe shoes, we had to look super professional and I got in trouble, I got written up. It’s the only thing I’ve been written up for is unprofessional clothing. When they had that rule, rather than me to my face, they (people) would call up my boss and tell ‘em that “Laurel’s unprofessional today.” And that really ticks me off.

J: Do you know who made those calls?

L: They were all females. Yeah I do (lghs). They were supervisors at other clinics. I guess that’s the way that they do it in that setting. I don’t think that’s a good thing to do. I think that of there’s a problem you tell the person (instead of their boss), if the person doesn’t do anything than you go to their superior.

J: That makes me think of something you said you liked about the nurses. You said they just dealt with things. That sounds like something you really value. You like directness, what do you think makes a bad coworker?

L: That would be one, not being honest. That would lead to a gentleman that used to work with me. He was a womanizer, oh, he was horrible. He was the epitome of a bad coworker. He wouldn’t carry his load. He would lie and say he did all this work and he really didn’t do it. And we all knew that he really didn’t do it. And then he got caught working on the computers at Butte College when he was supposed to be doing outreach. But I did go t my boss. I said I don’t want to work with Him, he humiliated me, he’s creepy, I don’t wanna work with him. And then soon after that he was gone.J: Given this (experience), thinking about the different jobs you’ve had, where would you say you’ve had the best interpersonal sort of experiences.

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L: I really liked plaza school, where my kids went, but they didn’t have any benefits and they paid really low wages. So, it didn’t work out. I didn’t make enough money to survive. Now, I get benefits. I get raises and p.t.o. (paid time off), so it’s one of those things where you think, if I’m having a problem I’m gonna work through it and keep on workin’. It’s not like I hate going to work or anything. As long as I don’t hate going to work I’m fine.

J: What do you think would make you not want to go to work?

L: If I had to deal with really horrible people. If the clients got really nasty or the people at work, if the turnover rate just kept on. Like for awhile where we were having those problems where all those people got fired I thought boy, people don’t stay here very long, I wonder what the problem is.

J: Was that when the black widow was in charge?

L: Yeah, I’m thinking that she was the problem. Because now we have a new CEO, and she, no one’s really quit in awhile. Ever since she started. It’s been like two years when that happened. One of our drs. Was a temporary CEO.

J: You mentioned earlier that you got on well with the drs. Is that men and women?

L: Yeah, I only had one problem with one dr. He thinks the clinic should provide medication. But we provide life-saving medications and we don’t have a pharmacy right now. It’s amazing how many drugs they can be on.

J: Have you ever quit a job because the work experience wasn’t good?

L. Round Table Pizza in Santa Cruz. Someone stole some money out of the cash register and they fired everyone. And I was the first one to go. You know how those kind of jobs go. The mgr., I did not like the mgr. at all. ‘cause anyone who does things like that they’re, to treat people like that…

J: What did he or she do?

L: She wasn’t direct. She didn’t say, “ oh, Laurel you’re not doing a good job.” I mean she was just never direct all the sudden they just took me off the schedule. That was it, I was off. They didn’t even call me up or anything.

J: Was that her responsibility to call you?

L: I think it’s a mgrs. Responsibility to let you know you’re fired. And why you’re fired.

***Conversation digresses, end of interview.

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Appendix C

Sample Fieldnotes

11.09.04/Conversations with Elaine and Dr. G

Heard two stories of women’s conflict today. Ran into Elaine in BMU cafeteria (???) on my way to the library after lunch. She talked me into hanging out while she ate her meatloaf. We b.s.’ed a while and she then she starts telling me about a conflict in the club she belongs to on campus. The girl who is the president (and she stresses the word “girl” is on purpose, she’s only 21) is having a conflict with an older student in the club who is the “unofficial asst.” (u.a.) to the group. She has bought flowers and balloons for club functions, stopped and picked up food, etc. The president accused the u.a. of misappropriation of funds for buying stuff. I asked Elaine if the u.a. had taken money out of some kind of fund but she said she didn’t know for sure, thought the controversy centered around the asking for reimbursement. She said that the u.a. was not at the most recent meeting (following the accusation) and that the president was really “bad-mouthing” the other woman in her absence and that it made her feel really “derailed”. She thought that the u.a. was trying to be helpful but had “gone too far” (?). Elaine said she contacted and spoke with the club advisor seeking resolution.

Spoke with professor G. in her office today about my project and where it is going. She said she had a story of conflict to share with me which I said I was there to ask about because she’d mentioned it on the interview she’d just reviewed and returned to me. She said that students in an academic club she advised had had a conflict over printer paper use in the lab. She said this related to the concept of mother-henning that we’d talked about in class. Dr. G said that one woman student who used to be in the club had a tendency to mother hen and had taken on the job of keeping an eye on the printer paper in the lab. At one point money in the fund (people who copied in the lab paid 25 cents to make copies) exceeded 20 dollars and the woman removed it to a drawer and left a note in he money box that it was locked away in a drawer (that Dr. G seemed surprised she still had a key to). This caused all kinds of havoc, according to Dr. G. and many students in the club came to her office to weigh in on the conflict. The question was whether the woman had the right to manage the printer paper, esp. the funds, even though she’d done so for a year and a half. Dr. G solved the problem but the important thing to her was the ferocity of the conflict in light of the real issue at hand, that it seemed in her words, “blown out of proportion”. Itold her that I’d noted in class the previous week the tension in the air when she’d brought up the printer paper in class, that the two women had seemed on the defensive.

11.30.04/Phone call from Elaine re: Mother-Henning

Just got off the phone w/Elaine. I want to get this down. She told me about encounter with professor W. who teaches in our old dept. She said she was really tired and Dr. W asked her about it, said that she looked tired and asked if she was going to be getting some rest soon. Elaine said was really tired and had a lot of school and family stuff she was dealing with. She said that Dr. W didn’t pry and responded by saying that she didn’t want to “mother- hen” her that

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she “hates that stuff.” Elaine said that she didn’t mind Dr. W mother-henning her because she didn’t seem as “controlling” and more genuinely caring.

12.03.04/The unofficial assistant continued…

Just returned call to Elaine who’d left me a message that she’d had more to tell about the “communication breakdown” in her campus club. She said that the conflict had gotten “out of hand”. I asked if there was an issue between the club president and the u.a. again and she said that the president had quit but the issue lingered and now revolved around a day-long campus humanities event they were participating in as a group. Apparently the u.a. was getting very excited about the event and was e-mailing Elaine and another campus leader, Anita, about plans she had in mind an things she wanted to help with. Elaine said on one day she received 7 e-mails in just a few hours and Anita had the same. Elaine contacted the u.a. the next day and told her to “chill out” that they were trying to keep the event simple because it’s right before finals week. She said that the u.a. became really angry and didn’t want to talk about it but later that sent an angry (“passive-aggressive” to E.) e-mail to Elaine and Anita saying that Elaine was “controlling” and that she just wants to “get her way” on how to organize the event, and that Anita was her “weak puppet” in the whole thing. Elaine said that the conflict was about expectations about how to organize the event but that u.a. is no longer speaking to her. She also went on to share that the u.a. was “kicked out” of an ethnic campus group because she was too helpful and that she’d told Elaine they’d complained “why are you helping, we don’t want your help”. I asked Elaine if she’d say the u.a. was mother-henning and she said yes, that she “thinks she knows best” but that she became very confrontational when others didn’t agree. She added that she felt the u.a. was using the event (planning of it) to deal with personal issues, but didn’t specify which ones. Elaine said,“ I love her, but I think she’s losing it.”

12.13.04/Conversation with Helen, re: Mother-Henning

Just got off the phone with Helen. We’ve been too busy to visit, but both of us were home working today, so we bitched about finals (hers) and papers (both of us) and talked about her two sisters who are having problems with their guys. Helen’s family is huge, nine kids, and married Helen often counsels her sisters. Anyway, thank god for my friends who haven’t told me to shut it, who know that when they ask how it’s going they’re going to get the latest theoretical spew from my project. I told her about Dr G’s pointing out the mother henning concept and what I think it might mean. She said she hated to be mother-henned, that she’d think, “I have a mother, and you’re not it!” She went on to say that it was really condescending, so of like of being treated like a kid when you’re not one (made me think of the discussion following 4th grade teacher Eva’s presentation about how she has to mother-hen her kids at school and Dr. G saying that it’s one thing with kids but another when we’re talking about co-workers and equals). She said that she doesn’t like it because it makes her feel like the other person doesn’t think she knows anything. Her perception is more along the lines of disliking it because it’s infantilizing vs. simply being overprotective, which can be positive at times, I think.