This issue of the Virtuous Cycles newsletter is something very special. It is the first that is a collaborative effort! I was very happy to have my friend Olivia Fehlberg as co-author for this important topic.
“Hazing mentality” is a term I coined to describe a way in which people can perpetuate negative cycles of discrimination even when they themselves have been subjected to that discrimination. It is a very heavy but important topic, and one that I was happy to tackle with Olivia as a team.
As women, Olivia and I framed our discussion on this topic around discrimination against women because we can use our direct personal experiences to inform the discussion. However, I believe the concept is probably more broadly applicable.
When we hear the word hazing, we picture rowdy fraternities or overzealous sports teams. It conjures images that range from childish initiation rituals to the outright dangerous. As a social practice, hazing can be surprisingly difficult to quash. One reason? Our innate sense of fairness: “I had to go through this to join the club—it wouldn’t be fair if you got to join without it.”
The problem with that logic is that it places blame on the wrong shoulders. It’s the system that is unfair, not the person who is spared by interrupting the cycle. This misdirected sense of justice—what we refer to here as hazing mentality—doesn’t correct the inequity. Instead, it reinforces it, maintaining the unfair system and ensuring that harmful norms are passed down rather than questioned.
We don’t normally associate hazing with a professional work environment, but it is one of the mechanisms by which sexism and inequality persist, even in organizations that pride themselves on meritocracy. These behaviors are far subtler than frat-house rituals, but the underlying logic is often the same: “This is what I went through so you have to go through it too.”
Despite meaningful progress toward workplace equity, sexism is still a measurable reality in the modern workplace. Women are still paid less1,2, must work harder for the same recognition3, and remain significantly underrepresented in leadership roles2. One of the reasons these patterns are so difficult to disrupt is that sexism is a self-reinforcing system—one that people of all genders can unknowingly perpetuate.
Author E. J. R. David refers to this as “horizontal hostility,” where oppressed individuals redirect their frustration and prejudice toward members of their own group4. And yes, that means women can reinforce misogynist norms4,5,6,7, something referred to as “internalized misogyny.” As the authors of “Nepotism and Sexism in Peer-Review” noted: “both women and men rate the quality of men’s work higher than that of women when they are aware of the sex of the person to be evaluated, but not when the same person’s gender is unknown.”
As uncomfortable as that idea may be, it reflects how deeply cultural norms can shape behaviors, even of the people who are harmed by them.
The Barbie movie (2023) captured this with surprising clarity:
Barbie: I love women. I want to help women.
Sasha: Oh, come off it. Everyone hates women. Women hate women and men hate women. It’s the one thing we can all agree on.
Barbie: Is that true?
Gloria: It’s complicated. Hate is a strong word.
It is complicated, and hate is a strong word. The reality is that most people don’t make a conscious choice to put women down, nor do they think they themselves are acting unfairly. We merely tend to behave in ways that are consistent with our upbringings and the cultural messaging we’ve absorbed.
From a young age, we’re taught which traits are valued and which are not. “Like a girl” is an insult. One of the favored American English slang terms for a woman’s genitalia is synonymous with cowardice and weakness. When we picture a doctor, a soldier, or a scientist in our head, do we instinctively picture men in those roles? When we talk about the gender of the person who cleans up after others, do we use feminine language? “I’m not your mother. Wash your own dishes!” These associations are learned early and reinforced constantly. Yet, none of these patterns require active hostility to persist, which is part of what makes them difficult to notice and even harder to unlearn.
A hard look in the mirror
The goal of this newsletter is to focus on specific ways hazing mentality can lead women to perpetuate sexism against other women in professional environments. As women writing this, it is not our intent to finger-point, shame, or blame. Quite the opposite. We want to support our female peers and help build each other up. The purpose of addressing sexist woman-on-woman hazing mentality in the workplace is to hold up a mirror to reveal an uncomfortable truth. Like exercise or eating our vegetables, self-reflection isn’t always pleasant—but it is good for us. Recognizing internalized misogyny can be outright painful, but it can also be freeing, opening us up to new ways to advocate for ourselves and one another.
So, how does hazing mentality emerge among women in the modern workplace? To illustrate, let us tell you a story. It is a fictionalized, amalgamated version of real events—events we have both witnessed or experienced ourselves.
A tale of two scientists
Imagine that Ling is an early-career scientist at a prestigious national laboratory. She has been there for several years and has built an excellent track record, but she is struggling to get the resources she needs, both in terms of lab space and funding. Each time she has asked for support, there were very reasonable explanations for why she should be patient or why things aren’t available: budgets are tight, space is limited, or the timing just isn’t right. Then, a new scientist joins the department. He’s male and junior to Ling. But suddenly, he’s being freely granted all the resources Ling has been striving for.
Frustrated, Ling seeks advice from Joan, a senior female scientist in her department. What does Joan tell her? “Why are you complaining? You should be grateful for what you have. You are already so much further along in your career than I was at your age.”
Ouch. Ouch. OUCH.
That reaction stings, but lashing out at Joan will not ultimately solve the problem. Joan’s words tell us that she has been a victim of the system, the same way Ling is right now. Probably even more so, since Joan went through an earlier, nastier version of it. She’s probably had to fight tooth and nail for everything she has in her career. The fact that she’s a senior woman in this department at this prestigious laboratory shows grit and determination in the face of discrimination. She almost certainly had to work harder than her male peers to get to where she is today. And she’s angry about that. Rightly so.
But she’s also angry at Ling. From Joan’s perspective, conditions have improved. Joan sees that Ling hasn’t had to endure the same level of resistance and feels that is deeply unfair. Why should Ling get things so much easier than she did? That is hazing mentality.
The psychology of fairness
People frequently do illogical things in the face of unfairness. For example, a psychology study on the subject of fairness used pairs of people and money to study the effect. Researchers gave one person $10. This person was instructed to offer a portion of the money to the second person. If the second person accepted the offer, both people got to keep the money as agreed. If the second person rejected the offer, neither person got any money. Logically, the second person should accept any offer, as some money is better than no money. However, the study showed that when the offer was perceived as unfair, the second person would (illogically) reject the offer. They would rather receive no money than an unfair deal8.
Joan’s response to Ling follows the same pattern. Her reaction isn’t based in cruelty or desire to harm Ling’s career. And it’s not hard to understand how Joan would feel unhappy about seeing Ling get things more easily than Joan did, especially when she probably had to put in so much blood, sweat, and tears for every bit of ground she gained. Her response is driven by a powerful, deeply human response to perceived unfairness, a hazing mentality that says, “I suffered to get here, so why should you get it easier than I did?” It’s simpler and more immediate to punish Ling than it is to try to dismantle the system itself. But this is a short-sighted kind of justice.
Self-reflection and true justice
Many of us have been Ling at some point, watching opportunities go to others while being told to wait patiently. And many of us, if we’re honest, have also had moments of being Joan. Moments when we compared someone else’s experience to our own, when we noticed that things seemed easier for them, and felt a flash of resentment or dismissal. That reaction doesn’t make us bad people; it makes us human. The question isn’t whether these reactions exist but whether we notice them and how we choose to handle them.
To that end, here is another fictionalized, amalgamated story from the other side of the equation. Imagine that you have a new direct report, Ana. But it’s an unusual situation because you went to school—through the very same educational program at the very same time—with Ana. Only, she went on to acquire additional degrees, whereas you went into the workforce directly after graduation. You have been at the company for 8 years, and Ana just arrived. She was awarded a job level grading upon entry that took you 4 years to achieve. This makes you feel, understandably, jealous that she got something so easily that you had to work for years to achieve. As a result, in retrospect, you didn’t support her as fully as you could have. Your jealousy flavored how you treated her, even if you weren’t outright unfair to her.
In another illustration of this principle, imagine that an older female colleague tells you that she was not a good mentor to her younger female peers earlier in her career. When she examined why this was, she asked herself whether it was because she didn’t have bandwidth (it wasn’t this) or didn’t know how (also not the root cause), and ultimately recognized that it was because their presence threatened her “special-ness.” She had liked the feeling of being the special one, the only female in that male-dominated department or company. The addition of junior women threatened that identity and made her feel less special. In reality, that’s of course not the case. She came to understand that she didn’t offer those women mentorship or support because of a sense of resentment. Now, having recognized this in herself and wanting to make a change, she’s making a conscious effort to support all the younger and junior women in her field.
Breaking the cycle
Fortunately, many senior women do not fall into this negative self-reinforcing cycle. For those who do, condemnation is not the answer. Reviling them only reinforces the very system we are trying to dismantle. Systems that thrive on unfairness also thrive on division. And this applies to all forms of entrenched discrimination, not just misogyny.
Meaningful change begins instead with self-examination and mutual support. Holding up a mirror to recognize hazing mentality within ourselves is uncomfortable, but it creates space for growth. It matters to practice compassion when we see hazing mentality in others. They did not invent the system that shaped them; they survived it. Developing an awareness of hazing mentality allows us to interrupt it in ourselves and respond to it in others with clarity, compassion, and care.
First published in the Virtuous Cycles Newsletter on 22.02.2026
by Olivia Fehlberg & Christina C. C. Willis
References
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2024). Highlights of women’s earnings in 2023 (Report 1111). https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/womens-earnings/2023/
- World Economic Forum. (2025). Global gender gap report 2025. https://www.weforum.org/publications/global-gender-gap-report-2025/
- Wennerås, C., & Wold, A. (1997). Nepotism and sexism in peer-review. Nature, 387, 341–343. https://doi.org/10.1038/387341a0 (publicly accessible link if you don’t have paid access to Nature: https://icmab.es/images/gender/2025/nepotism%20and%20sexism%20in%20peer-review.pdf)
- Jost, J. T., Banaji, M. R., & Nosek, B. A. (2004). A decade of system justification theory: Accumulated evidence of conscious and unconscious bolstering of the status quo. Political Psychology, 25(6), 881–919. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2004.00402.x
- Wahyudi, A., & Kartikawati, D. (2025). The patriarchy trap: The role of internalized misogyny in predicting communicative undermining among women. SERUNAI, 5(2), 63–75. https://jurnal.idfos.or.id/index.php/serunai/article/view/98
- David, E. J. R. (Ed.). (2014). Internalized oppression: The psychology of marginalized groups. Springer Publishing Company.
- Moss-Racusin, C. A., Dovidio, J. F., Brescoll, V. L., Graham, M. J., & Handelsman, J. (2012). Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 109(41), 16474–16479. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1211286109
- Güth, W., Schmittberger, R., & Schwarze, B. (1982). An experimental analysis of ultimatum bargaining. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 3(4), 367–388. https://doi.org/10.1016/0167-2681(82)90011-7
Sustainable Networking 