The Fear of Leadership of Competent Women

Men's deep-seated existential fear is often the reason why women are systematically undermined, spin endless loops in women’s promotion programs, and are regularly not nominated for higher tasks.

Devaluing women, considering them not good enough, making demands with messages they cannot fulfill like “Become active” or “You have to wait your turn with us!” or pushing mothers into uninteresting jobs, are indications of a high need for security of the leadership for their own survival in the system.

Promoting women in a company ultimately means for men to give up some of their power—which means attacking the right to exist of male superiors and colleagues at the psychological level. Career-ambitious women may thus be seen as a permanent threat in everyday work. The fear of job and power loss triggers communication strategies that are basically manipulation strategies. Losing to a woman or having to be led by her can be seen as a great disgrace by some men, triggering feelings of shame. Therefore, it must be prevented.

When women are asked about their experiences of subtle violence in companies, they tend to intellectualize and trivialize descriptions of everyday aggressions in the office. Their own justified aggression as a response to violent behaviors is suppressed. Their experiences and observations are assigned to usual categories: “business as usual” or “that’s just the way it is”. This means many women may be denying and suppressing their feelings and adapting to the prevailing language and opinion habitus.

I see in this behaviour another indication that the tabooing of a subliminally frightening topic is taking place at the inner psychological level.

Those who cannot clearly perceive what is actually effective in the corporate system, and suppress feelings, cannot activate their strategies for resistance and distancing or demarcation. If aggression is not perceived as aggression, no adequate behavior can develop as a consequence. In psychology, we speak of bound energy. Far too many women remain at the assigned level instead of actively taking care of their careers due to this binding.

This very mechanism of standing still, which works in many women, is career killer No. 1: Women deny their feelings. They persist (for too long) in violent, blocking structures. They systematically work in and on the system, with the consequence of being less and less sure of their own self-esteem and ego strength. The fact that they no longer see themselves as suitable for leadership tasks over time can be a fatal result of this degradation process. The male-dominated system wants to achieve exactly this. However, I do not consider this intention to be a basic malevolence, but an existentially important safeguarding mechanism triggered by hidden fears and feelings of threat.