“There's a special place in hell for women who don't help other women,” writes Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg.

The mean girls of Australian lunch rooms would be wise to take note. A 2010 survey by the Workplace Bullying Institute found that, while only 38 percent of bullies were female, female bullies targeted other women 80 percent of the time.

In contrast, males tended to target both genders evenly.

Women also face significantly higher levels of workplace bullying than men, according to the Australian Workplace Barometer 2012.

To paraphrase Julia Gillard, Australia’s first female Prime Minister, “gender doesn’t explain everything” about bullying, “but it doesn’t explain nothing.”

Women as victims

One explanation for the high rate of women being bullied, according to the Workplace Bullying Institute, is that women are perceived to be less likely to fight back.

The Workplace Barometer found women tend to hold positions with less control over their work, less income and less decision-making freedom than men. Ninety percent of part-time workers are female, a group with far less job security than full-time employees.

This translates into less power in the workplace, making women more vulnerable to attack.

The bullying of women has consequences for how women engage with their work.

The Workplace Bullying Institute suggests that female targets are more likely to have their input in meetings discounted, be mistreated while vulnerable or be given insufficient training. These tactics aim to disempower women from participating in working life.

Female workers are more likely to experience depression than males, and more likely to take sick leave, according to a SafeWork Victoria report on depression and wellbeing.

Meanwhile, according to Dr Doron Samuell from Corporate Health Services, women are more likely to take stress leave or file a workers compensation claim for psychological injury in response to bullying.

By causing disruption to women’s careers, bullying is likely to further decrease the power of women in the workforce.

Women as bullies

Female bullies, while in the minority, tend to target other women almost exclusively. This may occur because women are reluctant to provoke someone who is physically intimidating.

Female bullies may also be experiencing a form of value threat, according to Michelle Duguid, author of Female Tokens in High-prestige Work Groups: Catalysts or Inhibitors of Group Diversification? She argues that, as women in high-profile positions remain rare, they may perceive up-and-coming women as their direct competition.

Alternatively, they may pick on women who reinforce negative stereotypes to drive them out of the organisation.

According to Duguid, women who are bullied on the way up the ladder learn to view other women in the workplace as a threat rather than a support system. They then bully others to protect their own position.

Indeed, the Workplace Barometer identifies that women are more likely than men to identify jealousy-related issues as a reason for targeting someone, such as their competence or popularity among others.

Subtle, under-the-radar forms of bullying are the female bully’s weapon of choice, according to the Workplace Barometer. Women were more likely than men to “ice out” targets by ignoring their input or manipulating others against them.

The perception of bullying

Most studies of bullying are based on self-reporting. Given the complex and subjective nature of bullying, personal biases can heavily colour the results.

Dr Salin, a Swedish researcher, argues that women tend to view bullies as tyrannical aggressors seeking a scapegoat. Too many women, bullying is an intentional form of competition – “he’s trying to take me down.”

Most men, on the other hand, believe that bullying occurs because the target is “weak” or “incompetent”, according to Dr Salin. They see bullying as an unintended consequence of stress – “he got so mad he just couldn’t control himself”.

As such, women may be more inclined to report being bullied than men, as less shame is attached to being a victim. On the flipside, men may be less likely to see poor behaviour as bullying, dismissing it as an involuntary flare-up rather than a malicious tactic.

Women in positions of power may also be under more scrutiny than men, particularly in male dominated industries.

Societal expectations continue to see women cast as “nurturers”, “carers” and “peacemakers”. When a woman prioritises her own needs or creates conflict, she may be labelled a bully for violating expected gender norms.

However, Dr Samuell counsels against reducing bullying to gender issues.

“There is a social problem that there is a lot of conflict in the workplace but to reduce this down to women is just nonsensical,” Samuell said.

In his view, women are more likely to submit bullying claims because more women work in highly-institutionalised, bureaucratic industries such as healthcare, teaching or public service. These industries tend to foster interpersonal conflict and dissatisfaction.

Ultimately, gender is only one aspect of a much larger issue: preventing bullying from negatively impacting on people at work. Gender can tell us more about who is being bullied by whom. However, to prevent bullying, it’s important to look beyond the people involved to the culture that shaped them.