InPower Women

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InPower Women
No One Wins A Catfight

No One Wins A Catfight

Reflections on our Mastermind Discussion, Gendered Competition, Women’s Sports, and Women’s Bodies

Dana Theus's avatar
Dana Theus
Apr 30, 2025
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No One Wins A Catfight
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Update: I’m making a change to InPower Women to reorder the topics each month. Our Mastermind Zoom conversations are SO RICH. I always come away with insights and deep reflections, which is why I so enjoy these recap posts. But the conversations wander far afield from the exercises I write into the newsletters earlier in the month. So I'm switching it up. I’m going to start letting the Mastermind dialog dictate the focus of the exercises, which I’ll include in these recaps. And I’ll let the posts at the beginning of the month become more free-form explorations of topical events that the entire subscribership is most interested in. In both cases–current events and the Mastermind deep dive explorations/exercises–I’ll be aligning my writing as closely as I can to the interests of my readers–paid and unpaid. So if you’re reading this, please make your interests known in comments to these posts, replies to chats and direct messages to me. The people who speak up will see their interests reflected most directly, so please speak up!



This month’s Mastermind discussion brought some clarity to me on a topic I often scratch my head about–competition, especially gendered competition.

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Our call earlier this month began as it often does, each of us checking in on how we’re learning to accommodate the craziness in the world alongside the craziness of our lives and careers. Rather than turn to discussions of “balance,” we turned instead to unpacking why we so enjoy coming together with other women to discuss the challenges of career, leadership, and life. Pretty quickly, we arrived at a core concept, which is that in all-women groups we often find a sense of psychological safety with each other that is reasonably rare in mixed gender spaces.

On its face, this makes sense through the lens of shared experience. Although women and men are equally human, we do experience physical and cultural differences that shape us in distinct ways. And our general culture largely defaults to standardizing on the male norm, so sometimes it’s nice to let go of gendered code-switching and relax into thoughts and feelings that come most naturally through the lens of our female experience.

However, as we discussed in more depth, we began to focus on competitive dynamics as one of the areas where we often felt most uncomfortable in male-dominated spaces, and female-dominated spaces sometimes too! We explored the ways competition can reduce the extent to which we feel psychologically safe, regardless of the gender of those around us. Since competition is an area I’ve often puzzled over myself, I thought this would be a good opportunity to unpack it and see what resonance it has for the community.

A Personal View: Why We Need “Sportspersonship”

Much as part of me wants to reject this idea, it’s true that winning is a form of power. And the skills learned in learning to win can make us powerful.

When I first entered the workforce a hundred years ago, I recall people discussing the importance of team sports in shaping leaders in the office. A while later, I learned that Title IX had been passed, in part, to give girls the chance to play more team sports in the effort to better prepare them to be leaders. Though it passed while I was in middle school, its implementation didn’t catch up with me. And I wasn’t all that sporty a girl to begin with, dropping out of competitive swimming in high school to pursue other interests.

Never having played team sports outside of PE class, the importance of the efforts made to give girls competitive team experiences was lost on me for most of my career.

Then I became an executive coach, and I got it. Coaching different people and learning about their sports history, after years of thinking that team sports experience didn’t matter, I was actually annoyed to learn that it did! But I was glad for the reason why. In addition to the tactical learning of how to balance both competitive and cooperative team behavior, it turns out that a key ingredient that men learned more often than women by playing team sports is that of “sportsmanship.”

Sportsmanship is the humanizing force that mitigates the greedy, self-centered idea of winning, making it possible for an individual to win while the team loses.

And don’t we all know “that guy” at the office, who will throw other people under the bus to advance personally? We hate “that guy” because while the fans (shareholders?) get to score, the team doesn’t develop its skills, other opportunities are lost when he doesn’t win, and his teammates (other employees) become dissatisfied with the way he hogs the credit. It’s even worse when “that guy” belittles or ignores others who find the limelight, or even undermines them. That guy isn’t “sportsman-like,” and he should be.

Just like the quarterback who tries to be the hero of too many plays, as they advance higher in an organization, these “that guys” often fail if they can’t figure out how to positively engage the team. They have to learn to share credit and make others successful. The exception to this can be in hyper-competitive cultures where everyone operates this way and competitive takedowns are accepted business practice. Though in my own experience, these cultures tend to churn out many kinds of talent that limits their success in a variety of ways.

Sportsmanship mitigates the “I must win at all costs” mentality that hypercompetitive people (mostly, but not always men) bring to many games, including business.

There’s only one problem with Sportsmanship…it’s gendered for men in both the word and the typical way it’s embedded and presented in our culture.

No One Wins A Cat Fight

The good news is that women are rarely told to be “more sportsmanlike” because they tend to be more that way naturally, more communal in nature, and looking out for others’ well-being. Sportsmanship doesn’t seem as necessary to humanize women and girls as it seems to be for boys and men. At least that’s my impression, but never having raised daughters. I could be wrong. I know girls can be very competitive and do have to learn these lessons, but “girl culture” seems to have tools embedded in it, like empathy for the “loser” and the desire for everyone to go to the same sleep over party after the game, and thus be on good terms.

Which isn’t to say that girls and women can’t be nasty to each other. “Mean Girls” was a popular movie for a reason. The stereotypes of mean girls, bitch-with-sharp-elbows, and Queen Bee dysfunctions in girl/women culture are there because these dynamics are real. As grown ups, men certainly want nothing to do with it. I don’t know how many male bosses I’ve seen refuse to “get in the middle” of two female employees’ disagreements, literally saying to me, “It’s just a cat fight. They’ll sort it out.” And often the women–espeically younger women–suffer for the boss’ lack of involvement to show them how to be more “Sportspersonlike” in the business setting.

While it’s true that women can be “that gal” sometimes, it’s less frequent, for a variety of reasons. There is evidence that zero-sum thinking can lead some women to undermine or refuse to support other women because they believe there’s only room for one woman at the table, however, this is not necessarily the norm. And it’s becoming even less common among younger women, and in organizations with better gender balance. In the research report on gendered competition I asked AI produce (below), the most interesting outtake for me was that women tend to be more competitive when they don’t have to play the game against men (i.e., where they feel the game is rigged against them), and also when the rewards of “winning” will be shared with others.

Workplace Competition Among Women Research Gemini Ai
188KB ∙ PDF file
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Download

It turns out women are more motivated to pursue communal competition and share in communal rewards, where there are as few losers as possible.

Women like to compete when they’re going for the win-win.

Which leads me to my own model of gendered competition and how it offers us different approaches for both competition and growth. I put this on the “health” dimension to distinguish the kind of healthy competition that leads to “sportspersonship,” where the outcome lifts people up instead of pushing them down.

Women Are Wonderful? (Be careful if you want to say “yes!”)

If you looked at the model above and said, “Cool! Women are better because we go for the Win-Win, communal form of competition!” I want to caution you–as I did myself–that you might be falling prey to the Women-Are-Wonderful bias. Women-Are-Wonderful is a bias many cultures carry that tend to polarize women into the “good” (often motherly) picture of perfection OR the “bad” (often slutty) picture of depravity.

While most people, including women, want to see themselves as good–this is a bias that has no room for the complexity of a woman who isn’t perfect or simply acts like a human being with desires and moods. Falling for this bias simply feeds unhealthy stereotypes about women’s need to be perfect. It feeds into stories we’ve been told since the time of Eve, that female archetypes fit two molds, “Madonna” and “Whore.” That to be acceptable (and sometimes to stay out of insane asylums) we must be:

  • “nice” even when we feel bad and want others to be nice to us

  • “perfect” and exhibiting no personal needs, moods and desires in favor of catering to the needs, moods and desires of others around us.

  • “accommodating” even when we’re burned out

  • “collaborative” even when we just need to make a decision

  • “sitting on the sidelines” when we’d rather be competing on the field (among many other polarities).

In fact, all healthy forms of competition have their time and place and require us to be in touch with our own needs and desires. The upper right quadrant in this model is not “the best,” it is the upper half that is best, including the more masculine “best person wins” form of competition. Many women shy away from this kind of winning (falling prey to some form of the women-are-wonderful-bias, and which often makes them feel singled out in an uncomfortable way. But we need to learn to get over that. We need to learn to be comfortable with winning out over everyone else so we can go for the win-win more often, using the power we gain from our personal success.


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Why is that?

Like life, different sports lead to different models of success. In an individual sport, “the best person wins” is a perfectly acceptable way to think about success. Because that’s the way the system is designed and the game is played. There are times when only one person can win, a sport like the 100-meter freestyle or the promotion of one manager to lead a team, for example. When only one person can win, it needs to be “the best” person. There are many other times where the whole team needs to win, or both sides need to win, like in a three-legged race or a complex business negotiation. The point is that the definition of winning is circumstantial and situational, and the best leaders–the ones who can make it to the top regardless of their gender–need to learn how to compete and adapt to different circumstances and situations, including both individual and communal success.

If you think about it, men have an advantage here to the extent that masculine culture more reliably prepares men for both kinds of healthy competitive success if they play both team and individual sports. Yet, men do seem to skew to the “best man” vision of success, much like women tend to skew to the “win-win.” But do men have the advantage because they may have been more likely to play team sports, and have experienced the growth from individual to communal visions of success? I have no idea scientifically, but if you look at one of the biggest tropes in sport-based entertainment, the answer would be yes. Many of our male heroes learn exactly this lesson. When you put yourself above the team, it’s never as fulfilling for you–or satisfying for the team and its fans–as when you learn to be a team player. [I love Jamie!]

I don’t recall many women’s sports movies (at all), making this point as well or as often. As I said above, I think female culture is pretty good at bringing women up with a focus on communal success. If anything, we often need to learn that going for individual success is ok too. And once we have achieved individual power and success, we’re in a better position to bring others along with us by pursuing win-win outcomes. Which is why it’s my experience that women have a different relationship with competitive success, having been shamed–often by well-meaning people in their lives–away from seeking individual success and recognition, as well as the power that often comes with it.

What is it about female culture that leads us to be more comfortable subjugating our personal success in favor of healthy group success or unhealthy cat fights with each other?


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Eve’s Story and Eve Reimagined are a new feature of InPower Women, based on my shift to provide more direct tools and approaches to help women heal their broken relationships with power.

Eve’s Story: Why Isn’t Sportswomanship A Thing?

This led me to wonder about the history of women’s sports. I’ll confess, I’m not personally a sports enthusiast, as a participant or a spectator (though I did go to a Baseball game this week with friends!), but as I’ve aged I’ve become more aware of how our modern culture puts woman at odds with their bodies through deprioritizing their involvement in sports, beginning in childhood if/when girls aren’t encouraged to get active and understand their bodies for what they are, instead of the impossible and external standards about what they should be (Barbie, anyone?) At least that was my experience as a kid, and as my body starts to slow down/break down, I’m realizing just how little I’ve understood about how it actually works, beyond what the tabloids and some old health class text books taught me.

I compare this to my adult boys (men, now!), who are both athletic and exercise-focused. They know their bodies more intimately than I ever will, having learned to pay attention to them from the time they were young. Why did they get this education I missed, in addition to the fact that I didn’t have it to pass on to them? Their participation in sports, where knowing their body was necessary for both competitiveness and to manage/protect against injury. They didn’t just read body-knowledge like I did, they applied it, experimenting with what works for them in ways I’m just learning to do in my later years, to much less effect.

This lack of body intimacy with ourselves affects more than our competitiveness, it affects our strength, reslience, and ability to age gracefully. It affects our sexual knowledge and identity, sometimes crippling our understanding of physical power that doesn’t happen in the gym and pleasure that doesn’t come from food or relationships. Most importantly, a lack of body knowledge and agency takes away a key ability we have to make ourselves feel powerful, accomplished, and pleasured in our bodies–all by ourselves–without the need for others to enable these things.

Like the leadership lessons of team sports, I’m coming to appreciate how competitiveness drives other dimensions of self-awareness, including simply embodying our physical being more completely.

Why don’t girls and women historically get the same experience with recreational sports (and professional sports for that matter) that boys and men do? These missed opportunities, combined with the medical community’s centuries of using the male health standard for women (now threatened with being defunded!), and ignoring women’s unique abilities and needs, gives us a history of alienation from feeling powerful in our own bodies. Why?

Well, I turned to Gemini AI again to do a quick research report on the history of women’s sports to help me find out.


Women's Sports Research History And Disparity Gemini Ai
398KB ∙ PDF file
Download
Download

While the more recent history of how women’s professional sports is catching up with men’s leagues, what struck me most was the history further back. In ancient times, where life was more physical for everyone, there is evidence of women’s participation in female sports activities, often the same as men (e.g., Sparta). But when life became more genteel for many, in Victorian times specifically, new attitudes about women and their bodies prevailed, to the detriment of women at every level of the social spectrum, reinforcing class divides in the Western world. Specifically, new “medical” myths prevailed that upper class women suffered reproductive and “attractiveness” damage by physically exerting themselves. Working class women, who needed physical strength for their tasks were allowed to exert themselves, but were not allowed to organize recreational physical activity, which might have given them joy in their strength and physical power.

So basically, paternalistic society lied to women and men about what made women healthy and happy, and thus, severed the relationship they might have had with their bodies’ ability to feel powerful and joyful through exercise (and presumably sex as well, though Gemini didn’t go there.) This is very consistent with the prevailing “Madonna/Whore” stereotypes about women perpetuated since the story of Eve. To be a “good” woman, one had to focus on the only role your body plays in society, which is childbearing. Interests in other physical activity, like recreational exercise, professional accomplishment, and sex is not only a sign of a “bad” woman, but also (thanks to the medical myths) “unhealthy.” Because of the convenient ways these myths reinforced the Madonna/Whore stereotype, I have a feeling that they were brewing long before the 1800’s. But as medicine became professionalized in those years, so did the myths that served the ruling class of white men.

Crap. Once more, historical patriarchy drives a wedge between women and their power.

Reimagining Eve: Connecting To Healthy Competitiveness And Our Bodies

This is the place in the newsletter I try to imagine these historical limitations hadn’t been put on women. If not, what might our relationship to competition and physical power be today? Unlike some of our past topics, I think it’s fair to say that in the realm of women’s professional sports, and parts of the business world too, we’re seeing more modern role models of what physically and mentally competitive women can look like in the world. These women are exceptional in every way, and to an extent that I personally sometimes struggle to relate. But at least they’re there! Some of my favorites are Ursula Burns, Indra Nooyi and Mia Hamm. And they challenge us to think outside our own box when it comes to the ways women can and do succeed in competitive sports of all kinds. This encourages me to think that I, and many of us, can probably expand our thinking about both competition and physical power.

Exercise: Finding The Places A Competitive Mindset Serves Us

I don’t honestly think that every person can use “competition” to build power in the same way. Personality type and psychological archetype, not to mention acculturation, also play a role. But I do believe that we all have it in us to try to “win” at pursuits that are meaningful to us, and to bring others along with us when we can. I’m challenging myself with the exercise below to get a little braver when it comes to winning and being ok with “losing” in order to learn how better to win in the future.


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