Catfight: Women and Competition

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Author: Leora Tanenbaum

Number of Pages: 288

In Catfight, Leora Tanenbaum explores the roots of destructive competitiveness among women. Catfights thrive, she says, because women are conditioned to regard each other as adversaries rather than allies. In virtually every walk of life, women compete with their ‘sisters’ in a tacit contest over who is the ‘better’ woman. From diets to dating, from the boardroom to the delivery room – the author describes how women compare their looks, bodies, men, career achievements and competence as mothers. Drawing on dozens of interviews and a library of feminist writings, Tanenbaum explores the ways in which women impede, and sometimes sabotage, each other’s success and happiness. In revealing the state of play in the US, Catfight also sheds light on an underexamined issue in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere: how things really work between women. These revelations will surprise men, and will have women nodding their heads in recognition. Competitiveness is a point of concern and possible anguish for many women of varying ages, making this book an important contribution to a discussion of this corrosive interpersonal force.