When the Person Undermining Your Judgement Is Another Woman

We don't talk enough about what happens when the person undermining a senior woman's judgement at work is another woman.

The truth is, sometimes it is and that can be an uncomfortable truth and a challenging landscape to navigate.

It may not look like bullying. There may be no raised voices. No obvious hostility. No single incident you could point to and say, There. That's the problem.

It is often more insidious.

Your judgement is repeatedly questioned in front of other people. Your decisions are picked apart. Your recommendations are subjected to a level of scrutiny that doesn't seem to be applied elsewhere.

It is often wrapped in language that makes the behaviour difficult to challenge.

I'm just trying to be strategic.

We need to think about what's best for the organisation.

I'm only asking the question.

We need to make sure we've considered everything.

All perfectly reasonable things to say, right?

Which is precisely why it can be so difficult to recognise what is happening.

You start by questioning the behaviour. Eventually, you question yourself.

At first, you notice it. You feel it. You sense it. It feels uncomfortable but you cannot pinpoint exactly why.

Perhaps you are being overly sensitive.

You know your subject. You know why you made the decision. You can explain your reasoning. You have years of experience behind your judgement.

But it keeps happening and something begins to change. Not necessarily in her, but in you.

You become more cautious.

You start seeking consensus before making the recommendation.

You spend longer preparing because you anticipate the challenge before it arrives.

You withdraw a little.

You soften your language.

And perhaps one of the clearest signs is almost imperceptible.

"My recommendation is..."

becomes:

"I wonder if..."

You still know what you think, but you have learned to make what you think sound less certain.

That is adaptation, and this is where we need to have a more difficult conversation.

The truth is, women can undermine other women.

Women can be competitive with other women. Women can be jealous of other women. Women can believe they are more capable, more intelligent or more deserving of authority than another woman.

The question is what sits behind these behaviours.

For some, it will be insecurity. They may not even be consciously aware of their insecurities.

For others, it may be competitiveness, jealousy or a genuine belief that their judgement is superior.

The fact is that none of this disappears simply because two people share a gender.

And if you recognise yourself on the other side of this, pay attention too.

If there is a woman whose judgement you repeatedly test, whose decisions you scrutinise more closely, whose authority irritates you or whose success makes you feel uncomfortable, ask yourself why.

Is your challenge genuinely about the quality of her decision?

Would you challenge somebody else in the same way?

Is the level of scrutiny proportionate?

Or is something else happening?

Because calling it "being strategic" doesn't necessarily make it strategic.

But if we stop at personality, jealousy, competitiveness, insecurity, superiority, we miss something much bigger.

Women do not learn how to exercise authority in a vacuum. Women have spent their careers operating inside systems in which female authority has historically been more contested and senior positions more scarce.

We learn from the cultures in which we work.

We learn what authority looks like.

We learn whose judgement carries weight.

We learn how many seats appear to be available.

And sometimes women reproduce between themselves the very dynamics that have constrained women in the first place.

This is where ideas such as internalised misogyny become useful.

Not as an insult to throw at another woman, but as a framework for asking a much more interesting question:

What have we learned about women, power and authority from the systems in which we have spent our careers?

Understanding where a behaviour may come from does not remove responsibility for it.

There is also a concept called Patriarchy Stress Disorder, developed by Dr Valerie Rein, which describes the psychological impact she argues patriarchal systems can have on women across generations.

It is important to note here that this is not a clinical diagnosis, but the wider question it invites us to consider matters:

What happens when you spend years navigating environments in which women's authority can be treated differently?

And what happens when women begin reproducing some of those patterns with each other?

This matters because the impact doesn't stay between two people.

A senior woman who repeatedly has her judgement undermined may begin changing how she leads.

She becomes more careful.

More consensual.

Less willing to take up space.

She may speak later in meetings rather than earlier.

She may present a recommendation as a question.

She may gather another three pieces of evidence for something she already knows.

She may stop challenging.

She may withdraw.

Eventually she may tell herself:

Perhaps I have lost confidence.

I think that is often the wrong diagnosis.

Because sometimes a highly capable woman hasn't lost confidence at all. She has spent too long in an environment that has taught her there is a cost attached to trusting her own judgement.

If you recognise this, pay attention.

You are allowed to notice patterns.

You are allowed to question why your judgement is repeatedly being challenged.

You are allowed to ask whether the scrutiny you receive is proportionate and whether it is applied consistently to others.

You are allowed to distinguish constructive challenge from repeated undermining.

And you are allowed to seek support.

That doesn't require you to decide that another woman is jealous of you, threatened by you or deliberately trying to diminish you.

You may never know her motivation. You don't need to. What matters is recognising what is happening to you.

Have you become more cautious?

Are you seeking agreement where previously you would have made the decision?

Are you preparing excessively because you expect to be challenged?

Are you withdrawing?

Have you started saying "I wonder if..." when what you really mean is:

"This is my professional judgement."

Someone else's behaviour may have taught you to question your judgement.

That doesn't mean your judgement was the problem.

Because perhaps the most important question isn't:

Why is she behaving like this?

It is:

What have I started doing differently because she is?

And what would change if you trusted your judgement again?

If you would like a confidential space to navigate these challenging relationships, please do book a complimentary coaching discovery call.