Ten­nile Al­leyne

The Meerkat is a small mam­mal be­long­ing to the mon­goose fam­i­ly that in­hab­its the Kala­hari Desert in Botswana. Meerkats are grouped in "clans" or "gangs" where they are head­ed by a male and ma­tri­arch fe­male that would mate with each oth­er. They are seen as the au­thor­i­ty fig­ures of the gang. If an­oth­er fe­male Meerkat is im­preg­nat­ed by a fel­low male from the clan or one from an­oth­er, the ma­tri­arch would im­me­di­ate­ly ex­pel her from the gang, with the os­tracised an­i­mal bear­ing signs of hor­rif­ic vi­o­lence as a sign of her ill re­pute. No oth­er fe­male usurps the au­thor­i­ty of the ma­tri­arch. Al­though this be­hav­iour may be viewed as ex­treme, one can­not main­tain that these ac­tions are on­ly con­fined to the precincts of the an­i­mal king­dom. The age-old ques­tion sur­round­ing why fe­males are con­stant­ly threat­ened by each oth­er has been de­bat­ed ad in­fini­tum. If one thinks care­ful­ly, we can cer­tain­ly imag­ine of a sit­u­a­tion where we have faced the wrath of the fe­male species when one sus­pects com­pe­ti­tion or a down­right threat. Wom­an­Wise de­cid­ed to in­ves­ti­gate the is­sue to un­cov­er if there is any truth to this hot top­ic.

Can­dice, who re­sides in Freeport re­called one fate­ful night out. "My ex­pe­ri­ences with women have ba­si­cal­ly been about bar­ing claws. I have a friend whom I in­vit­ed out to a com­pa­ny event. From the minute she saw me, she start­ed be­ing crit­i­cal of me. Be­fore I had a chance to say hel­lo prop­er­ly, she scoped me from head to toe and picked out every­thing she didn't like on me - from my hair to my out­fit colour and my shoes. For the en­tire night I had to hear how I wore colours close to hers and if I was try­ing to copy her. When we got to the event she want­ed me to in­tro­duce her to "key" peo­ple so that she could net­work for her con­sul­tan­cy com­pa­ny. That was the first and last time I in­vit­ed her out!"

Shani, who worked in an ad­ver­tis­ing com­pa­ny re­count­ed an un­pleas­ant ex­pe­ri­ence in the work­place. "Pro­fes­sion­al­ly I once worked with a woman who paid me less than I was worth to do more work that she did. She used to cel­e­brate me when cus­tomers com­mend­ed me for my work eth­ic in her pres­ence, but be­rat­ed me be­hind their backs for no rea­son. She saw me as a threat when she re­alised that her cus­tomers were com­pli­ment­ing me so she told me that she don't know if em­ploy­ee/em­ploy­er re­la­tion­ship is work­ing out. If she was a man I doubt it very much if all of what hap­pened be­tween us would have hap­pened. Some women are in­se­cure and this is man­i­fest­ed in the way they treat each oth­er."

Re­nee, a res­i­dent of Ari­ma shared her sto­ry. "I re­cent­ly start­ed work­ing in a school in the East as an Eng­lish teacher, but I am al­so very mu­si­cal­ly in­clined. I quick­ly re­alised that the school choir had dis­solved ten years ago, so I took it up­on my­self to re-in­tro­duce the choir and en­ter the chil­dren in­to a mu­sic fes­ti­val. The Mu­sic teacher who works there used to be pleas­ant to me when I start­ed teach­ing, but turned out to be quite nasty af­ter she saw the in­roads I was mak­ing. Point blank, she saw me as a threat!" (It seems that com­pe­ti­tion in the work­place is quite com­mon among fe­males.) Le­an­dra of San Juan re­called a trau­mat­ic ex­pe­ri­ence with a close male friend that oc­curred last year.

"I was very close with a male friend at one point. He had a girl­friend but we were friends and nei­ther of us want­ed more than that. One day his girl­friend checked his phone con­tacts, saw my num­ber and called me, curs­ing me out. She ba­si­cal­ly start­ed ha­rass­ing me and I end­ed up re­port­ing her to the po­lice. She was just down­right crazy." From re­la­tion­ships with close girl­friends to work­place dy­nam­ics, it seems that any­where there are many fe­males in­ter­act­ing in close prox­im­i­ty, there will be trou­ble. Maybe our ge­neal­o­gy can be re­traced and com­pared to the in­stinc­tive re­ac­tions of those of the wild. How­ev­er, once the hu­man race con­tin­ues to ex­ist, the fe­male to fe­male dy­nam­ic must be worked out for us co-ex­ist. Maybe we change or men­tal­i­ty in­to be­liev­ing that we all have some­thing to of­fer and there is no need to bear the claws and strike. Even if we do not al­ways get it right, could it hurt to try?