Whether it’s Regina George, Blair Waldorf or Miranda Priestly, we’re suckers for an on-screen mean girl. Yet, female-on-female aggression – bullying designed to harm a woman’s social relationships and status – isn’t limited to the confines of our TVs.
According to the Workplace Bullying Institute, 90 per cent of female workplace bullies target other women and, as Sydney-based clinical psychologist and commentator Dr Melissa Keogh explains, this form of aggression manifests in countless ways.
“A whole range of behaviours can be seen within such a dynamic, from subtle put-downs, particularly around appearance, to deliberate social exclusion and, at the extreme, cruelty in its various forms – especially if a group of aggressors is formed,” Dr Keogh says.
“In my clinical experience, female-on-female aggression is, for the recipient, a uniquely stressful…