Lately I’ve been thinking about how women treat other women, not in theory, but in the real spaces where leadership, sport, and community intersect.
It started when Janice Charette was named as Canada’s CUSMA negotiator. You can agree or disagree with her decisions, that’s fair. But what struck me was how quickly the commentary, especially from women, shifted to her appearance, her clothes, her age. Not her experience. Her looks.
Coupled with colleagues in sport who tell me they receive near‑weekly complaints about girls’ appearances, whether a girl “looks like” a girl, whether she is “really” who she says she is.
And then there are the professional examples, the ones many of us carry quietly. I’ve worked in more than one environment where the hardest dynamics weren’t with men, but with other women. Women who saw other women as competition. Women who undermined instead of collaborated. Women who treated another woman’s success as a threat. We talk a lot about breaking glass ceilings, but far less about the women who pull the ladder up behind them.
All of this has been sitting with me alongside something else: how lax our society has become about the way we talk about people in leadership. When public figures make comments that demean women, mock immigrants, or belittle people with disabilities, and society shrugs, we shouldn’t be surprised when that same behaviour shows up in our workplaces, our sports fields, and our online spaces. Children watch. Adults absorb. Culture shifts. Cruelty becomes normal.
Madeleine Albright once said, “There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.” It’s one of my favourite quotes and ironically, when I’ve used it to call out misogyny, I’ve had women try to “correct” me on what she meant.
But I think she meant exactly what she said.
We don’t have to agree with every woman.
We don’t have to like every woman.
We don’t have to support every decision a woman makes.
But we do have a responsibility not to participate in the systems that diminish women, not to reinforce the scrutiny, suspicion, and scarcity that have shaped our own experiences.
If we want more women in leadership, we have to stop attacking women for how they look. If we want girls to feel safe in sport, we have to stop policing their bodies. If we want workplaces where women thrive, we have to stop treating each other as threats.
Helping other women doesn’t mean blind loyalty. It means refusing to replicate the structures that have held us back.
Leadership isn’t just about what we achieve, it’s about the example we set. Every time we choose dignity over derision, solidarity over scarcity, and generosity over judgment, we make it easier for the women coming behind us to climb, too.
Stacey Hatcher
