Laurie Bernstein well remembers starting at a small Southern law firm and getting distinctly icy treatment from the only other woman lawyer on the staff. When Bernstein was given one of her female colleague's cases to handle, resentment turned to spite: Bernstein discovered that she was not getting the court documents, letters and other important papers she needed to handle the case. Late one evening she and a senior partner found the missing material hidden in the woman's mailbox. Ms. Sabotage was severely reprimanded. "I felt terrible," recalls Bernstein, 30. "I had expected a camaraderie to emerge between the two of us as the only female lawyers at the firm. But quite the opposite occurred."
Now, hold on a minute. This is not the way it was supposed to be. All of that demonstrating and pamphleteering in the early '70s was supposed to have & helped women move into professional and managerial jobs without resorting to destructive behavior. But as more women rise in the corporate power structure, they are discovering, much to their dismay, that they are not always sisters under the skin after all. In fact, many of them are acting suspiciously like . . . well . . . men. "Now women are encouraged to be as aggressive as men on the job," write Psychotherapists Luise Eichenbaum and Susie Orbach, co- authors of the just published book Between Women: Love, Envy, and Competition in Women's Friendships (Viking; $17.95).
The authors, who like many feminists have spent years trying to open corporate doors, are trying to comprehend the world they have entered. Female bonds are being broken, they say, as women discover that "the feelings of competition and envy, the scurry for approval, the wish to be acknowledged and noticed by other women are now a part of their daily work lives." Nor do some younger women seem to care much about feminist ideals. "I see a lot less concern among younger women about sticking together," declares Nancy Ferree- Clark, associate minister at Duke University. "They don't feel the allegiance to the women's movement that older women do. They say, 'Gee, that's passe. I can make it on my own.' "
Things can get pretty nasty behind the Escada suits and the hint of Giorgio perfume, if Author Judith Briles is to be believed. In her recently published book, Woman to Woman: From Sabotage to Support (New Horizon Press; $18.95), she sets down nearly 300 pages of testimonials supporting the hypothesis that women are attacking women in the workplace with carefully veiled venom and viciousness. "If women are going to sabotage someone, it's more likely to be another woman than a man," declares Briles, 42, a former Palo Alto, Calif., stockbroker.
Many women scoff at this portrait of the female barracuda maneuvering her way around corporate reefs. "I have found a tremendous amount of helping and generosity among the women in my industry," says Mary McCarthy, 42, a senior vice president at MGM/UA Communications in Beverly Hills. Lawyers Renee Berliner Rush, 31, and Julie Anne Banon, 32, say they became best friends while working for a Manhattan executive-search firm. "From the day we began working together, we believed that the way to succeed was to work with and help each other, not to work against each other," says Rush. The two women now run their own headhunting firm for lawyers.