Conflict Between Same Gender Employees At Workplace

In every organization, employees face multiple conflicts soon or later in their work lives. The conflict can occur between the same genders like man vs. man, woman vs. woman or between opposite genders like man vs. woman. Conflict also appears between groups of people like departmental conflict, inter departmental conflict, within a team conflict or between distinct teams’ conflict.

A number of researches have been conducted on conflict between genders out of which a notion has been created that a conflict between woman and woman is more dangerous one and have long lasting impact. In an article written by Pete Evans, which was published on CBC News, discussed a research conducted by University of British Columbia's business school stated that perceived conflict between two women coworkers is more harmful and have more irreparable damages than conflicts between men.

In another study by Sauder School of Business, it is reported that both men and women respondents assume that an office disagreement between two women have more negative impacts and are harder to repair than a disagreement between two men or a man and a woman.

The conflict may occurs in male genders as they are short tempered but it can be resolved at early stages mainly due to the fact that they understand and are intelligent in resolving conflicts. However, the conflict between two women may occur due to jealousy, competition and back biting. In a research report it was mentioned that when there are five women and two groups of two women are created, the fifth woman will take a side of counter party and it will create a great conflict, resulting in bad working environment.

In an article by Dana Sparks and Demand Media, it is stated that women are raised to become nurturers and build strong relationships but a study conducted by Workplace Bullying Institute are surprising. It claimed that when a woman bullies someone, 80 percent of the time she has a female target.  There are few reasons, which lead women to have such an unfavorable act like:

Gossips and Back biting:Females engage in gossiping and ignorantly start back biting of a person, which is, most of the time, another female member of the office. It has also been noticed that the gossips are about mere things like her dressing, her attitude, her authoritative nature, biasness or any other relevant matter subject to conflict but irrelevant to work. However, these things also impact man but most of the time male counterparts do not engage in back biting or high level of gossips. Male genders are more engaged in communication from, which they get benefit or increase their domain of knowledge.
Competition:

 Competition is the biggest threat to both male and female genders, as everyone wants to get success, promotion and high salaries. In this fight, both the genders have been influenced and it can be either positive or negative. Positive competition never causes conflicts however, negative competition that occurs due to jealousy have severe damages not only in distracting relationship between people at work place, but also in working environment that results in lower productivity.

Political Environment:

 In organization where there is grouping or certain people have politicized the environment, there are huge chances of conflicts. In the quest of sustaining their positions at higher level, most of the high level managers or authorities create chaos and situations that create problems within employees; it can be between male genders or female genders or between both. They use conflicts for themselves and to secure their position however, this disrupts the growth of employees and results in poor employees and organizational performances on the whole.

Biasness:

 The biasness or to favor some employees in an organization is one of the major reason for conflicts. In female employees, the biasness causes major distractions and ends in alarming conflicts. However, male genders do biasness but male genders can tolerate it up to certain level. Women’s tolerance rate is low in work places and most of the women leave their jobs because of this reason.

Generalization:

 Woman and man both have generalized certain aspects in their mind and they act accordingly. This generalization can be because of many reasons like sex, ethnicity, race, social class and any other major cause. This generalization also acts as the custodian of conflicts between same gender and counter gender employees in an organization.

Judgment:It is said that a woman dresses for other woman; it is mainly due to the fact that how woman is being perceived in a particular group. It is stated that women judge other women more harshly than a man. The presupposition of women as being judgmental should be resolved otherwise it may become a critical source of conflict among the fairer sex.

Organizations have to clearly set guidelines in order to mitigate the risks of conflicts. For better organization functionality, smooth operations and healthy working environment it is necessary to maintain friendly environment and it should be free from any type of discrimination whether its gender, racial, class, ethnicity or any other that may result in conflicts. Even, in organization’s policy it must be mentioned about the restrictions for the things that result in conflict. A proper conflict management techniques and procedures must be implemented so that conflict can be resolved as soon as it takes place.