Why women hate women?

   Sounds familiar or absurd? Well if you’re a woman, I’m sure it doesn’t sound all that absurd. At some point of time in life, you too must have taken that instant dislike to some fellow woman for no apparent reason. Mind you, I’m saying apparent, but deep down you might even know the reason, but choose to ignore it. May be she has a better face, better body, better job, better salary, better house OR this one’s gonna hurt, better boyfriend. By now we all know there is no such thing as a better husband.
Have you ever realized:

• How if you were to be given a choice to pick a co-worker, between one male and one female, you would, most of the times, automatically pick the male?
• How if you were to give a girl or a guy your car to drive, you would throw the keys towards the guy faster than he or she can say, "Sure I’ll drive"?
• How if your cable company sent you a female technician to fix a technical glitch, you’d be surprised and instantly express your doubts about her capabilities, in a not so subtle way by nudging your poor husband in the ribs?
• How, way back in school and college, you felt your female professors always favored the guys?
• Imagine you're having one of your small coffee breaks/ gossip sessions at the office vending machine with your gang of girls and a gorgeous woman passes by. Men are not the only ones checking her out. You and your gang of girls do it too, but only with the purpose of finding faults. Her top is too tight, her hair is messy, shoes are out of fashion and so on and so forth.

   Bottomline is we women bitch too much and worse we bitch the most about each other. In one movie that I recently saw, called "Mean Girls", one of the female teachers conducts an impromptu attitude adjustment session for the entire female population. She asks everyone to close their eyes and raise their hands if they've ever felt that their female friends have bitched about them behind their backs. Not surprisingly, all the girls open their eyes to find each hand in the auditorium raised. Then she asks them to close their eyes again and raise their hands if they have ever bitched about their female friends behind their backs. No points for guessing that once again they all open their eyes to see each and every hand raised. Says it all about female mentalities right?
   But have you ever wondered, why our brains work this way, why instead of admiring the women who’ve done better than us and empathizing with the not so lucky ones, we’re jealous of the former and gloat at the latter? I have! Many times over, but never really found any logically satisfying answer. And then one fine day when I was watching TV, I came across this movie being aired, in which a divorced women’s group met every once in a week to discuss their problems, share it, more like, exchange advice and basically do everything else that divorced women are likely to do together. Something about what one of them said hit me, hit me hard! According to her, we women are raised to perceive each other in a certain way, to hate each other since childhood. It’s engrained in our systems; we don’t even realize we are doing it. We might be staunch bra-burning, protest marching, loud thinking, screaming from the rooftops feminists, but we still hate the next girl’s guts. And the answer is simple; it’s because we're so used to seeing each other as competition. It starts right from school where the competition is for scoring better in exams, getting male attention, then for a better college, better job, better husband, better this better that.
   When will we give it a rest? Only after we rest? We women have enough issues to deal with already; female infanticide, sexism, eve-teasing, molestation, rape, dowry, the list is endless. Wouldn’t it be better if we all could always bank on each other at least for support, for comfort, for empathy? Who would understand better than another woman? That’s what girl friends and agony aunts are for right? Why don’t we start seeing each woman we meet as a potential best friend rather than competition? I know it's extremely diffcult to change deepset attitudes even if they are towards one own gender. It might be too late for some of us OR may be not.