From: Beyond Sex Rules by Alice G Sergent St. Paul: West Publishing Co.

197

some notes about power
relationships between women
Judith M. Bardwick
The idea for this paper originated in experiences I had and ob­
servations I made during a five day lab. the Women’s Development Pro­
gram for the National Training Laboratories Institute summer program
at Santa Cruz, California. Especially in sessions involving smaller
groups I was startled to hear women participants say. “Don't interrupt
me. Don’t do that. You are taking my power away.” The discussions
usually involved familiar topics: how to be assertive, how to get hus­
bands and children to cooperate when a woman returned to school or
took a job. criticism from neighbors, uncertainty about goals, and guilt
about leaving young children. These themes of needing to achieve,
dealing with role conflict, and needing to be loved did not seem, how­
ever. to be the crucial variables affecting what was happening within
j- the group. Instead, the interactions between the participants and
between the leaders and the participants seemed to be grounded in
issues of power: either getting power, wielding power, or attacking
those who seemed to have power. That was a stunning insight for me.
"Psychologists never write about women and power. In this society we
do not associate women with power; women in this culture do not think
of themselves in reference to power. The women who came to the 1ab
were a varied group of about fifty. Those who had been sent by their
firms were generally employed at the level of executive secretary. Only
a few of the participants had unusually high levels of training such as a
doctoral degree. Some of the women were students, many were house­
wives and mothers. The great majority of those who were employed
were not especially successful. In general, women came or were sent
to the lab in order to explore and share concerns which are of special
interest to women today. The great majority of these women did not
occupy roles with significant power and very few had unusual skill or
0personal power. Yet once the interpretation was made that power was
the crucial variable, apparently inexplicable events became understandable ~

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There was one particular incident that especially jarred me and
pushed me to reinterpret what was going on. There was a remarkable
middle-aged woman in our group of twelve. She was a handsome
women, widowed, now enjoying a relationship with a man she loved, a
mother of two sons, one of whom had died, and a woman with a highly
successful career. Mature, warm, integrated, intelligent, realistic, not
hostile or threatening, she impressed me enormously as a marvelous
person. Certainly everyone in our group seemed to respond to her in
the same way; we talked about her as an admirable and likable person
and role model. On the last day of the lab. group activities began where
they had left off the day before and the women seemed to be basking in
those earned feelings of mutual trust, intimacy, and self-affirmation.
Rather suddenly and without any obvious reason one young woman,
who had initially acted passive-aggressively but who had seemed to
relax and become more spontaneous, direct, and honest, interrupted
the discussion. She turned to the older woman, thrust her arm out.
index finger accusing, and said. “1 hate you." Others instantly joined
her in this chorus of rage. The older woman listened, contained her
anger and replied. "I am sorry that you bring this up so late because it
is not possible to deal with it now. I do not know how you think I threaten you but I would have liked to have helped you if I could." Later 1
understood this to be a confrontation between one with and those
out personal power..
This is a personal rather than a scientific paper. It is an inter­
pretation of my impressions and is intended as an exploration of
hypotheses rather than a presentatior of firm conclusions."People who
have read the draft have been in surprising agreemen about the main
ideas and some have told me that they have seen these dynamics
operate in similar labs with mixed groups and with all-male groups.
That may well be the case, but in this paper I will confine myself to
speculations about what I observed.
After writing the draft of this paper. I chanced to reread Abraham
Maslow’s Toword a Psychology of Being, and was taken by some pasages which had not made as much of an impression before:
There are certainly good and strong and successful men in the world—saints,
sages, good leaders, responsibles. B-politicians, statesmen, strong men.
winners rather than losers, constructors rather than destroyers, parents
rather than children.... But it also remains true that there are so few of them
even though there could be many more, and that they are often treated badly
by their fellows. So this too must be studied, this fear of human goodness and
greatness, this lack of knowledge of how to be good and strong, this inability
to turn one’s anger into productive activities, this fear of maturity and the god­
likeness that comes with maturity, this fear of feeling virtuous, self-loving, love^worthy. respect-worthy. Especially must we learn how to transcend our foolish
tendency to let our compassion for the weak generate hatred for the strong |
^Preface to 2nd ed. p. iv).

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some notes obout power
relationships between women

In a later passage Maslow wrote:
The commonly seen hatred or resentment of or jealousy of goodness, truth,
beauty, health or intelligence ('’counter-values'*) is largely (though not al­
together) determined by threat of loss of self-esteem, as the liar is threatened
by the honest man. the homely girl by the beautiful girl, or the coward by the
hero. Every superior person confronts us with our own shortcomings (p. 196).

types of
power

To begin, let us enumerate some different kinds of power. There is the
power which comes from a role is part of the role, and accrues to anyone who occupies that role. For example, in organizational hierarchies
those who occupy positions at the top of the pyramid have a great deal
of responsibility as well as enormous power in making decisions that
-affect people below them in the hierarchy. A second kind of power
; comes from skill and with unusually high skill people tend to make de­
cisions. even in the absence of a role which assigns them that respon­
sibility. because their expertise leads others to look to them for leader­
ship. For example, in a group of scientists, if one person is acknow­
ledged as having greater scientific authority, when decisions involving
scientific content have to be made, this person assumes the leadership
of the group. A third kind of power is exercised for.psychologically
' compensatory reasons. Here, people who are vulnerable manipulate
and take power from others in order to protect themselves. The over­
bearing. overassertive. overintrusive, didactic leader comes to mind.
When arrogant decisiveness and certainty are too great, the psy­
chologist must suspect bluff and compensation.
r
There is yet another kind of power, which Maslow described and
which I saw in the middle-aged woman. This is personal power, a feeling of power that resides within a person and comes from maturity
'ego-integration, security in one’s relationships with others, lack of
need to gain from others, and confidence in one’s impulses. These are
strong people because they trust themselves. They hear others but
Their behaviors and judgments are not dominated by a need to conform,
to be liked. or to lead, rebel, or manipulate others. They can be spon­
taneous and honest, being less coerced than most people are by their
past, present, or future needs. Maslow calls these people “self- actualized*'*; in this paper I use the synonymous terms strong and
powerful. Such women have high ego-strength, are relatively
autonomous and decisive, and have a strong sense of responsibility. 1
am not referring to compensatory and aggressive manipulation by
those who are not mature, not ego-integrated, not self-actualized.
The main question to be examined in this paper is, why are women
who are personally powerful likely to be attacked by those who are
not? The second question is. under what conditions is attack likely To
take place?
is. what are the forms of the attack?
last what are the likely responses of the personally powerful woman

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to those less powerful women who attack her? We may note that there
is likely to be considerable overlap because those with personal power
are also likely to occupy positions of role or skill power; those who lad
personal power are less likely to occupy legitimized power positions
The individual’s internal dynamics and real life situation tend to com
bine, with the result that a person tends to develop toward one
extreme or the other.
Women who are personally powerful, self-actualized, and high in our
reasons and
and autonomy are simulfaneously objects for emulation and
conditions for
hatred
by
other women. The self-actualized woman is certainly the
attack on
very
ideal
of
what a woman should want to be; thus it is easy to under
powerful women
stand why she is a model. But why is she also an object of hatred’ A
reasonable hypothesis is as follows: Powerless women, being jealous
become uncomfortable in the presence of a self-actualized woman
Such a person makes it difficult for those without potency to attribute
their powerlessness to external forces over which they had no control
the nature of the threat lies in the fact that the stronger womanhas
prevailed over the same external forces. Thus, denial mechanisms a
the' powerless, which absolve them of responsibility for their our
development, are threatened by the reality of the other woman. The
personality, the very being of the stronger woman is the threat to the
weaker.
Insofar as the threat is experienced at the personal level and the
needs of the powerless are at the personal rather than at the role or
j skill level, then those who are weaker wall feel that they need emotional
support and affirmatioin from the stronger woman. This is intrinsically
an ambivalent situation The needier women experience and
acknowledge their feelings of dependence, their lack of secure self­
esteem, their resentment of this emotional infantilism, and their
pleasure in the personal affirmation that they receive from the
stronger woman. There seems to be something especially threatening
when power is the result of psychological integration rather than role
or skill dominance—much less aggressive manipulation.
An additional reason for the resentment experienced by the weaker
women might be in their concept of power. They seem to see power as
being limited. Either one has it or not; and if one person has it. then
another cannot. They experience the stronger woman as having a
quantity of power and therefore blocking the possibility of their getting
- power and assuming leadership. Thus they can say. “You are taking
. my power away." Those who are personally powerful do not think of
interpersonal relationships in terms of power. Most women are uncoml fortable thinking of themselves as powerful. It also holds true that per' sonally powerful women seldom experience the lack of power or helplessness. It is therefore difficult for powerful women to perceive them­

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some notes about power

relationships between women

selves as either having power or withholding it from others. If this is
true, then those with personal power are likely to be insensitive to_
power needs of others, since such needs are not a salient issue for
them in most personal situations. In addition, powerful women are very
likely to withhold the possibility of leadership power from the weak be»
cause the strong generally lead, without meaning to. by dint of per­
sonality. Thus, weaker women appropriately perceive more potent
women as models to emulate and objects to fear.
Women who experience themselves as weak or impotent will
( 4 ) naturally feel weak and vulnerable in relation to those who are strong.
“ Confronted with the strong woman, those with fragile self-images are
greatly threatened, and their anxiety becomes more poignant as they
- experience the gulf between their real self and their fantasied sèlf. It is
\ less likely that the weaker will be able to express the resentment.
directly because, in~geheral, it takes a strong ego to confront a strong
ego. it is much more probable that the weaker woman will express an
exaggerated admiration, a pathologically exaggerated idealization, a
kind of ingratiation that says. ’’Like me. Like me better than anyone.’’
Especially among women we may observe the play of weakness that
Says, *'I need your help. Help me.”
1 suggest that if we were to compare a male or mixed group with a
female group, we would be more likely to see females acting overtly out
of high dependence needs and a form of covert aggression involving de­
pendence relations. This would occur because emotional dependence
is more congruent with the stereotypic female than the male character.
Acknowledgment of emotional dependence is therefore much easier for
women than for men. Women tend to be more skilled in using others to
promote their own emotional needs.
Under what conditions would we expect either a personal attack by
the weaker women upon the stronger or the playing out of the dynamics
of the emotional neediness by the weaker? While there is always the
possibility of these dynamics occurring, they are more likely when it is
easier to personalize the situation. That is. when the situation is not
structured as it normally is in work or in organizations', where there
are no assigned tasks, roles, or leadership specifications, when
responsibilities are not specified, then the dynamics of the people in­
volved are more likely to become personalized. Among women, the
acting out of emotional dependency and passive-aggressive behavior
also becomes more probable.
Imagine an organization where there are subordinates and a person
in charge, and each has a specific job to do. In this case, if one of the
group members feels anxious, aggressive, or resentful towards
another member, he or she might attribute this feeling to how the group
is organized. To relieve it, the person, may try to alter the structure of
the organization. This becomes a threat from and an attack upon a
relatively impersonal organizational structure. But suppose the set-up

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sex-rule stereotypes

of the organization is not clear or the situation is ambiguous and lead­
ers have emerged on the basis of personality or skill rather than role.
Then power is not directly related to the role and anxiety, aggression,
or resentment can be experienced personally. in this instance,
attempts to make changes must be directed toward other persons.
Here, interactions are more totally personal. The encounter group, or
T-group. is a deliberately contrived situation where power is dis­
tributed as evenly as possible among participants and there is a maxi­
mum of emotional response. The encounter laboratory is an extreme
situation in which one is most likely to be able to observe these dynam­
ics in an unmodified form.
When someone’s personal style makes her emerge as a leader, but
that position is not voted on or acknowledged by group consensus ur
task criterion, when her leadership cannot be perceived as the result
of an objective role position or some particular relevant expertise, then
leading and following are done on the basis of personality. Very simply,
when people become dominant and make decisions without there being
a specific and consensually understood role, then followers see these
leaders as powerful individuals. This is entirely different from the type
of authority that derives from a specific job that has limitations. When
an individual dominates, for example, not because she is chairperson,
but because she is forceful, then leadership is personalized. in the am­
biguity of this situation, those who are led are more likely to feel
anxious and thus personally used if not abused. As a result, chances
' are good that those who emerge in dominant positions will be attacked
for taking on the leader role. (This is especially true for those whose
personal style is more direct and assertive and may be less true for
those whose personal style is softer and more traditionally feminine.)
What difference does the role make? When power attaches to a role,
it is relatively impersonal; and there is the crucial stipulation that any­
one who takes on the role assumes specific decision-making respunsibilities and works within the role's limitations. That is. roles provide
specified, limited power and responsibility and they spell out the lead-"
, er's responsibility to those led.
When the role is less clear, or does not specify limitations and obligations, then the powerless“become anxious. This occurs because
they are vulnerable to the potentially unlimited manipulations of the
stronger. When someone is in a role which basically has no bargaining
position, that is. no power, then that individual has recourse only to
personal power. Sometimes the relatively powerless are protected by
custom or by the law. Such situations include that of pupil and teacher
where the law limits the teacher’s ability to punish, or the relationship
of employee and employer, where the law protects the employee within
the working situation. But in more personal relationships, especially
now when roles are changing and areas of obligations and respon­

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some notes about power

relationships between women

sibility are no longer traditional, then the role no longer has built-in
constraints and the less personally powerful individual is dependent
upon the beneficence of the more powerful. Such relationships would
include that of child and parent. wife and husband, lover and lover.
This means that when role definitions are more ambiguous, either be­
cause of the nature of the role or because the definition of that role is
'changing, then The less powerful lose the protection that comes from ~
role constraints and they are indeed in greater danger of being
engulfed by those who are more personally powerful~

forms of the
Those who are easily manipulated by others who have more powerful
Attack and
roles or especially by others with stronger personalities are not likely
responses of
to use directon or overt forms of aggression. They are more likely to be
the personally
overly fawning or ingratiating but covertly and subtly aggressive.This personally woman
attack makes it more difficult to label their intent as aggressive
powerful women
and to hold them responsible for their aggression. The ingratiating behavior both secures an emotional affirmation from the stronger woman
,
and induces guilt in her because sheis responding to the acknowledged
needs of the weaker. Thus the more powerful woman is likely to act
. supportively rather than assertively and the weaker has inhibited the
stronger. While this is an ego trip for the personally powerful woman it
will probably result in the muting of her leadership, for she will tend to
withhold direct contradictory opinion or chastisement. Since the
emotional acting out is a plea for support by someone who shows her
needs overtly, the needs are acknowledged but the aggressive manip­
ulation is not and is. in fact, very difficult to see. After all. how many
people are aware of the fact that when someone says, I need you."
they may also be saying. "I hate you.” Not many.
If the group is without leadership, roles, or tasks and especially if it'—
is set up to create as many emotional interactions as possible, it be­
comes quite possible for the emotionally demanding weaker womenTo
dominate what occurs and thereby become the strongest members of
the group. If the group does not confront these issues, then emotional
needs instead of coping skills become the focus. Emotional dependence thus becomes a reinforced behavior and the tyranny of the weak is
evident,_ ,
•
Those who are characteristically without power, either because
they lack personal power or because their role does not call for the
exercise of power, seem to be prone to perceive relationships and
situations in terms of power. Their lack of decision-making respon­
sibility and mature personality means that they are always a potential
victim when others intrude into their real life or their psychological
space. In the Catch-22 of their lives, when the stronger speaks only in
neutral or positive ways, then it becomes appropriate for the powerless person to be hypersensitive to the possibility of negative feelings.

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awareness of
sex-role stereotypes

.
'

scanning constantly for the subtlest of cues—“Her smile doesn’t look
so genuine today. She really doesn’t like me.” The powerless person
suffers from a paranoia; she goes through life with antennae extended
to sense even the most subtle acts, attempts, or thoughts of coercion or
intrusion into her own lifespace.
This preoccupation with power by the powerless contrasts abruptly
with the perceptions of the powerful woman. She seems relatively
oblivious of power issues and indeed of her own power. Not being vul­
nerable to other's power, she is less sensitive. Power is still not a part
of the idealized female character and even personally powerful women
seem resistant to perceiving themselves as such: having power means
having more responsibilities.
It seems that in some crucial ways the experience of power of the
haves and the have-nots is fundamentally~different When they tall
about power they mean different things. The powerless seem to
imagine that having power is the opposite of being without it. They de­
fine it primarily in personal terms because it is in the personal sense
that they are fundamentally vulnerable. They seem to imagine that
having power means to be coercive, potent, and free; and for them, be­
cause they feel themselves to be coerced, impotent, and trapped, that
is an understandable perception. Thus, in the many situations where
power is a salient issue for the powerless, power is understood in per­
sonal terms and having power means not being vulnerable, not being
impotent.
Those with personal power are much less likely to conceive of powe
in personal terms and are far more likely to think of p
tionship to tasks or roles. These people can take for granted the fact
that others cannot intrude into their space—they have boundaries,
they have some control over their vulnerability and certainly over their
intimacy, which the powerless do not have. Those who do have power
and who characteristically lead, talk about the power to make de­
cisions and be responsible for the outcomes, to lead people and be responsible to them, to make policies, to influence, to guid
cumstance the result of having power is to increase the number or the
breadth of responsibilities.
Those without power fantasize that having power means being freed
from incursions into the self. They imagine that having power, some
quantity of.it. would protect them from coercion. Since the concepts
and the experiences of the powerful and the powerless are fundamentally different, it is understandable why communication betwcen
them may totally_break down. We can imagine abasic difference in be­
havior as well: to the extent that the powerful woman experiences the
ambivalent feelings directed toward her and to the extent that she
must decide whether she is willing to take on more responsibilities, she
may well hesitate before acting as a leader. The powerless, unable to

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some notes about power
relationships between women

imagine the negative aspects of having power and eager to be power f
is likely to find the indecisiveness of the powerful woman stressful.
Confronted by overt aggression, one would expect the powerf
woman to respond the same way. That did not- happen in the la
perhaps for the following reason. Along with the overt aggressic.
there was an expression of acute emotional dependence similar to the
manipulation of a mother by her child. Some of the succorance did tai
the form of holding, cuddling, and protecting,’arousing in the mo:
powerful woman responses that seemed to be maternal. It is hard to
the "bad mother." It arouses guilt. It seemed that the tradition
feminine attributes, the habit of helping others, and the determination
not to impose personal pain on people who are weak was operating.
nurture and help are not simply aspects of the feminine stereotyp
they are also internalized values which are a central part of a woman
idealized self-image.-It is-also possible that women who are sei
actualized have integrated this nurturing aspect of themselves mo:
than those who are weaker because the weaker may experience em
tional giving as depleting their own resources. Simultaneously, powe
ful women are not likely to be comfortable with their own power ar.
may find it far more comfortable to act within the more congruent roll
of supportive mother.
The weaker group members act out their emotional dependence an.
arouse anxiety in the stronger about not imposing personal pain. Where
this happens they cause the stronger woman to withhold her asser
tiveness and leadership, and the dynamics of the group become par
ticularly feminine. The phenomenon called the "Queen Bee Syndrom,
may occur not only because women in leadership roles want to prote
their position from competitors. In addition, the followers may keep the
leader from acting on her strength because it is potentially destructive •
to them. In this case the leader must distance herself from the weake
first because they cause her to blunt her behaviors, and second b
cause the leader does not want to identify herself with weakness.

There is a good deal of discussion within the Women's Movement about
implications
role models. Somehow the focus has been on the positive to the neglect
for role mod­
of
the'threatening aspect. Surely those who are already somewhat cor.
els and the
fident
but just a little timorous can respond to those who have achieve,
women's libera­
personal integration positively—but even here I begin to suspect an ur.
tion movement acknowledged ambivalence. I discussed with a former Ph.D student c
mine the nature of our relationship. We agreed that I was a combiné
tion of mentor, friend, sister, and mother. Perhaps the fact that th
relationship was more than a mentor/apprentice one is partially be
cause it was between two women, and women characteristicall
operate on affective personal levels even when there is an objective
task to accomplish. Also. I suspect, it is because in the stress of the

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awareness of
sex-role stereotypes

task situation the female mentor responds to the support needs of the
younger woman. Emotional support is a necessary condition
for competitive risk taking for many women, at least in the beginning of
a career while the psychodynamics of men may be similar, it seems
that emotional needs are far less likely to be expressed by either man
nor responded to by the mentor, since the stereotype of male ego­
strength has characteristically precluded expressing anxiety and de­
pendence. But if we take the model of this feminine mentor as including
(objective) mentor, (peer) friend, (intimate) sister, and—(ambivalent)
mother, then the relationship is operating on both a task-related ob­
jective level and a quite personalized, intimate, emotional one. It is
then very likely that even when the younger woman is basically strong,
she will necessarily respond to the older, stronger woman with many of
the same affects she experiences with her own mother. And as in her
relationship with her own mother she will have to introduce some leyel
of distancing, some amount of ambivalence, some quantity of rejection
of the more powerful figure, before she can experience herself as her
own person. Of course, exactly the same dynamics can operate with
men, but since they are more likely to avoid the overt expression of this
more personal and emotional interaction, this kind of intimate rela­
tionship is more characteristic of women.
Who would be experienced as the strongest of the strong? Who is the
greatest model and therefore the greatest threat? I suggest that it will
be the woman who has personal power, who is confident, able to be
assertive, who is likely to achieve, and who simultaneously conveys
empathy, warmth, and caring. When might the threatening qualities of
such a woman be lessened? Only when roles are specified, therefore,
limiting power, and when all members of the group have a known task
which contributes toward the group goal will the threat subside. Under
which circumstances could the individuals in a group work witho
known roles and a given hierarchy of responsibilities? Perhaps when
members of a group are peers in some sense relevant to the group goal
or when the members have previously established trusting rela
tionships with each other then, we will be able to work without role
definement. When these conditions are not fulfilled when trust has not
been previously established, or when role For responsibilities are not
acknowledged, the probability. is that power dynamics in the personal
sense will dominate the group.
The organization of women’s groups and especially the hidden hier. archy of leadership is an important issue in the Women's Movement
because one of the objectives of the movement is to break down the
traditional organizational pyramid which assigns leadership and
power responsibilities only to the few who rise to the top.
The traditional values of women, in which the welfare of the people
with whom they interact and for whom they have responsibility, might

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some notes about power
relationships between women

be able to modify the norm of organizational structure and the fairly
unidirectional flow of power. In the literature of the Women’s Move­
ment there seems to be a naive and extreme point of view which is an
emotional reaction to the coercion and manipulation of the traditional
organizational pyramid. The solution proposed is the predictable re­
verse of the rigid role structure of the traditional organization. That is.
the solution is to have no organization, to have no leadership, and to
have no specified roles because specification is constraining. Leader­
ship means hierarchy. When it exists, some people will exert the lev­
erage of power over others. Since women have traditionally been the
victim-recipients of that manipulation, the ethos is that women will or
should not join in creating new organizations which perpetuate the
same old destructive dynamics. Individuals are protected in roles
where limitations on power are specified. There is too high a
probability of anxiety and anger in the ambiguity of a real but un­
acknowledged differential in power or leadership. So the solution
might be not to give up roles or leadership or organization even if they
are heirarchal. but to modify those structures so that constraints on
power are specified and the breadth of shared decision making is
greatly increased.