Systemic displaced aggression: a conceptual framework for understanding intra-gender conflict in academia

Academia is often idealized as a space of intellectual freedom and meritocracy. Yet behind the prestige of faculty positions lies a highly competitive and hierarchical environment, shaped by entrenched gender dynamics. For women, particularly in male-dominated disciplines such as business schools, navigating academia is not only about producing research and teaching effectively; it also involves contending with systemic biases, professional gatekeeping, and power struggles that extend beyond gender binaries or solidarity.

Although feminist ideals emphasize mutual support and collective empowerment (Sweetman, 2013; Varma and Shaban, 2024), institutional conditions often make such solidarity difficult to sustain (Jones and Palmer, 2011). These tensions are particularly visible in disciplines where women remain underrepresented, and where institutional cultures reward hyper-individualism and performance metrics (Hughes and Donnelly, 2024; Prothero, 2024).

One of the more troubling dynamics within this environment is that exclusion and sabotage are not always enacted by men. While feminist research has richly documented the structural effects of male dominance in academia (e.g. Fotaki, 2013; Prothero, 2024), less attention has been paid to the ways in which women themselves may engage in exclusionary or undermining behaviors toward other women. Organizational norms, professional competition, internalized misogyny, and institutional scarcity can pit women against one another, disrupting feminist expectations of mutual support. Senior women faculty may, under pressure, replicate systems that once marginalized them, exercising power not to elevate other women, but to contain them. These intra-gender dynamics are often overlooked, yet they are crucial to understanding how gendered inequality is reproduced within academic institutions.

This paper introduces and develops the concept of systemic displaced aggression to explain how institutional conditions may lead women in academia to redirect professional frustration and competition toward one another, rather than toward the patriarchal structures that constrain them. While informed by the author's personal experience in a U.S. business school, the paper's primary contribution is conceptual: extending the psychological concept of displaced aggression into organizational analysis, with attention to gendered power and institutional design. Drawing on insights from feminist organization studies, ethics of care, academic housework, and performative expectations, this paper theorizes how systemic conditions can constrain women and distort intra-gender relationships in ways that sustain inequality.

Illustrative reflections are provided as situated examples that motivate and clarify the theoretical framework. The aim is not to individualize blame, but to surface the structural and cultural mechanisms, such as scarcity logics, masculinist ideals of success, and internalized competition, that make solidarity difficult and intra-gender conflict more likely. The paper concludes by calling for structural and cultural interventions that can challenge these institutional logics with the goal of fostering more supportive academic cultures.

Understanding tensions among women in academia requires engaging with theories that explain how structural inequalities and institutional logics can shape intra-gender dynamics. Building on the psychological construct of displaced aggression (e.g. Marcus-Newhall et al., 2000), this paper introduces the concept of systemic displaced aggression. Displaced aggression is a psychological concept, an interpersonal process whereby a person directs frustration or hostility at an unattainable or powerful source toward a more accessible or less threatening target (Denson et al., 2006; Miller et al., 2003). In systemic displaced aggression, people who face systemic barriers to success direct their frustration toward targets other than the authors or beneficiaries of these barriers. Systemic displaced aggression is situated within the organizational logics of neoliberal individualism and institutional masculinity, and through its structural constraints produce relational conflict among women in academia.

The organizational barriers women face may include outcomes such as unequal recognition, exclusion from mentoring networks, or the devaluation of care work. Scarcity, competition, role expectations, and masculine-coded hierarchies characterize institutional systems. The resulting displaced aggression does not represent evidence of an individual pathology, but instead a structurally induced response to systemic power asymmetries. In describing these dynamics, this paper bridges psychological understandings of aggression with feminist organizational theory, demonstrating how institutional logics shape emotional life and relational behavior in the academy.

The gendered culture of academia generally, and business schools in particular, cannot be separated from its broader neoliberal and masculine institutional logics. Neoliberal individualism privileges autonomy and competitiveness; these are values that align closely with what Hearn (2004) and Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) describe as “institutionalized masculinity,” a system that rewards independence and dominance. According to these logics, academic success is defined through quantifiable metrics such as publication counts, grants awarded, citation indexes, and the ranking of publication outlets. These institutional measures valorize individual achievement while devaluing the caring responsibilities, such as mentorship, collegial support, and departmental service, which women disproportionately shoulder (Guarino and Borden, 2017). The resulting culture equates productivity with worth and positions interdependence or relational labor as weakness.

At the same time, women scholars who do not perform care and collegiality may be punished in ways men are not, as behavior overlooked or even valorized in men will be condemned in women (Lozano et al., 2023). Thus women face a double bind: If they demonstrate the hyper-competitive behaviors that institutional norms tend to valorize, they are considered disagreeable; if they do not, they are considered unproductive. This contradiction reinforces scarcity, making collaboration and solidarity among women more difficult to sustain (e.g. Fotaki, 2013). As a result, competition becomes internalized; it exists as both a professional expectation and as a necessity for legitimacy and survival.

Structural scarcity in the academy, which includes limited tenure-track positions and unequal distribution of resources, fosters a scarcity mindset: the belief that opportunities for women are inherently limited (Derks et al., 2011; Kanter, 1977, 2008). This belief is grounded in reality, as women often experience tokenism in male-dominated fields (Kanter, 2008). When women are positioned as exceptions, they may compete for symbolic or actual access to power, reinforcing exclusionary dynamics (Derks et al., 2011). Professional success becomes zero-sum, and women may perceive other women as threats rather than allies. Senior women faculty, often isolated and overburdened, may lack the time or capacity to mentor junior women (Gheaus, 2015).

While the scarcity mindset is often framed as a psychological orientation which is characterized by zero-sum thinking and perceived competition, it is important to recognize that such mindsets are often not imagined or irrational. Rather, they are grounded in material and structural conditions that shape academic life. The limited number of tenure-track positions, unequal distribution of institutional support, and persistent gendered gatekeeping are real constraints that disproportionately affect women in academia (Howe-Walsh and Turnbull, 2016). In this context, the psychological experience of scarcity becomes a rational response to actual systemic limitations. The blurring of psychological and structural scarcity plays a central role in systemic displaced aggression: when institutions create environments of chronic scarcity but offer limited avenues for addressing structural inequality, interpersonal dynamics may become distorted. This blurring of perceived and actual scarcity intensifies the likelihood that frustration will be redirected laterally toward other women rather than upward toward structural sources.

Internalized bias may further hinder mentorship, as some women unconsciously replicate patriarchal norms, believing that those who receive support are less deserving (Garcia, 2021; Gilligan and Snider, 2018). At the same time, Tall Poppy Syndrome, where those who stand out through achievement are resented or undermined by peers, can lead to the undermining of junior women who shine (Boucher, 1997; Feather, 1994). In contrast, male faculty often engage in informal sponsorship networks that boost junior men's careers (O'Connor et al., 2020; Van den Brink and Benschop, 2014), reinforcing gender disparities.

Organizational cultures that prioritize individualism and masculinized leadership disincentivize solidarity among women (O'Neil and Hopkins, 2015). In such settings, some women may feel pressure to undermine others to maintain standing (Ren et al., 2024). Directing frustration at the existing structural injustices is often unthinkable. As a result, displaced aggression emerges as a psychological and sociocultural mechanism through which structural frustrations manifest as interpersonal exclusion and conflict.

At the individual level, women navigate institutionalized sexism and exclusion in complex ways. Some respond by adopting masculinized leadership traits (e.g. assertiveness, competitiveness, emotional restraint) to gain legitimacy in male-dominated contexts (Eagly and Johannesen-Schmidt, 2001; Sczesny et al., 2004). Others may exhibit behaviors associated with Queen Bee Syndrome (Derks et al., 2011; Derks et al., 2016; Ellemers et al., 2004; Staines et al., 1974), distancing themselves from other women, treating female subordinates worse than male subordinates, and undermining other women in order to protect their hard-won status. The theoretical lens of systemic displaced aggression situates the Queen Bee as a symptom of a system that channels women's frustration laterally rather than upward, fostering rivalry. Ultimately, these patterns often reflect individual responses to internalized structural pressures rather than inherent antagonism.

This research further incorporates the lens of performative feminism (Banet-Weiser, 2018). Performative feminism refers to symbolic alignment with feminist ideals without substantive dismantling of gender hierarchy. Unlike Butler's (1990) notion of performativity, which refers to how gender is constituted through linguistic repetition, performative feminism represents surface-level signaling, consisting of statements of solidarity that mask exclusionary practices. Such performances give institutions and individuals the appearance of being progressive. For example, Bendl and Schmidt (2012) describe “feminist activism at managerial universities,” where public support for gender equity does not necessarily lead to structural transformation. Systemic displaced aggression essentially operates as a moral defense mechanism, redirecting dissatisfaction with systemic inequities toward other women who embody the same vulnerabilities one has sought to overcome.

While structural scarcity shapes the dynamics of competition and exclusion, the undervaluation of care and relational labor sustains them. The ethics of care (Held, 2005; Johansson and Edwards, 2021) and the concept of academic housework (Macfarlane and Burg, 2019) demonstrate how women's contributions to emotional and institutional maintenance, which often includes the activities of mentoring, committee work, student and faculty recruitment, and student support, are simultaneously expected and devalued. These forms of invisible labor, while crucial to academic life, rarely translate into formal recognition or advancement.

When considered together, the ethics of care and academic housework frameworks highlight how the institutional devaluation of care work further contributes to intra-gender tensions. Acts of support and mentorship can result in a sense of strain, as women navigate competing demands to be caring colleagues while also protecting their own professional survival. Within the neoliberal academic environment, where productivity and prestige are prioritized, relational care becomes a potential liability. These dynamics help explain why some women may distance themselves from care work or from other women altogether, reproducing exclusionary practices even while espousing feminist values.

This contradiction deepens the potential for systemic displaced aggression: when care work is demanded but unrewarded, the person providing the care work becomes frustrated. Women who feel overextended by relational obligations may withdraw from or even resent the expectation of support. Acts of care, rather than fostering solidarity, become a personal negotiation between empathy and self-preservation.

By conceptualizing intra-gender tension through displaced aggression, this research connects structural inequities with emotional and behavioral responses. The study's integrated perspective reveals how neoliberalism and institutional masculinity cultivate scarcity; how care work and emotional labor are devalued; and how individual responses such as performative feminism (Banet-Weiser, 2018) and Queen Bee Syndrome (Derks et al., 2011; Staines et al., 1974) reflect adaptive but self-defeating strategies. This framework thus moves beyond surface-level accounts of rivalry to reveal a deeper systemic pattern: women's aggression toward other women as a displaced expression of frustration within patriarchal institutions that constrain and fragment solidarity.

This paper presents a conceptual framework of systemic displaced aggression to explain how institutional structures in academia can distort intra-gender relationships among women. This framework is grounded in situated reflection on personal experience as a woman faculty member in a U.S. business school, an institutional context marked by competition, masculinized leadership norms, and gendered power asymmetries.

The concept emerged through iterative, reflective engagement with real academic encounters over several years. While the paper includes narrative illustrations drawn from these experiences, their purpose is not to serve as empirical findings, but rather to clarify and motivate the theoretical development. These reflections were shaped through journaling, professional correspondence, memory work, and informal conversations, all of which helped identify recurring patterns of conflict, exclusion, and emotional labor. These moments were not treated as data to be analyzed inductively but as situated prompts for theory-building.

This framework seeks to extend and refine existing feminist organizational theories by accounting for a specific dynamic that is often observed but under-theorized: why women sometimes undermine or fail to support one another in professional contexts, despite shared experiences of marginalization. Concepts such as Queen Bee Syndrome (Derks et al., 2011), internalized misogyny, and scarcity mindset (Fotaki, 2013) have provided important insights into intra-gender conflict. However, these concepts often locate the problem at the level of individual pathology or socialization, framing exclusionary behavior as a failure of feminist solidarity or as a coping strategy rooted in personal insecurity.

What these accounts often underemphasize is the institutional function of such behavior: how competitive, patriarchal structures may incentivize and normalize relational harm among women, thereby redirecting systemic pressures into interpersonal conflict. Systemic displaced aggression reframes these dynamics not as betrayals of solidarity, but instead as organizationally patterned redirections of frustration—a mechanism by which institutions sustain inequity while displacing its emotional burdens onto individuals. This framework shifts the explanatory focus from “what's wrong with women who undermine other women” to “what kinds of systems make such behaviors rational or even necessary?”

The development of this framework draws on multiple strands of feminist theory and organizational analysis (including scarcity, ethics of care, academic housework, and performative feminism) as well as psychological literature on displaced aggression. In integrating these perspectives, the paper offers a new way to conceptualize how institutions direct emotional strain into interpersonal channels, particularly among women. See Figure 1 for the conceptual model.

This approach is rooted in feminist epistemology, which recognizes knowledge as embodied, situated, and relational (Haraway, 2013; Harding, 1991). My position as a white, tenured faculty member in a male-dominated business school informs how I interpret the encounters described. I do not present myself as an objective observer, but rather as a reflective participant whose insights are shaped by my own identity and institutional embeddedness.

Although this paper does not involve human subjects research or require IRB review, ethical care guided the presentation of all illustrative material. The data has been anonymized to protect privacy. The goal is to surface institutional patterns that may resonate broadly rather than expose individual actors. Following feminist methodological traditions (Gilmore et al., 2019; Pullen and Rhodes, 2015), I treat these reflections as part of a dialogic and relational ethics, where personal insight is used to interrogate systemic forces, not assign personal blame.

The following vignettes serve to illustrate how systemic displaced aggression operates in everyday academic life. Each reflection shows how institutional norms—particularly those tied to scarcity, competitiveness, and gendered expectations—can shape and distort women's relationships with one another. The following vignettes are not presented as findings but as theoretically informed examples that illustrate fundamental dynamics of systemic displaced aggression.

During my first year as a tenure-track faculty member, I endured months of sexual harassment from a male colleague. The man's persistent comments and physical boundary crossings left me anxious and uncertain about how to respond. When I finally confided in a female colleague, I expected understanding. Instead, she minimized the experience by saying our colleague was “just joking.”

At the time, I was stunned by her dismissal. Looking back, I see how her reaction reflected a deeper institutional conditioning: survival through normalization. Having navigated similar gendered behaviors in her own career, she may have internalized that silence and tolerance were necessary strategies for professional longevity. This rationalization, which is what feminist scholars call gendered minimization (Brown, 2013; Brown and Smith, 2012), protects the institution more than the individuals within it. My colleague's response was likely about protecting her own stability in an environment that punishes those who make conflict visible. Over time, I came to understand this interaction as a form of systemic displaced aggression, where frustration toward systemic sexism was redirected into denial. Through dismissing my suffering, my colleague preserved the illusion that the institution was “progressive enough.” In so doing she protected herself from repercussions.

When a female colleague took medical leave, I stepped in to support her students and sustain her lab's progress. Rather than expressing gratitude, she accused me of “stealing her students.” Later, I learned she had spread damaging rumors about me across departments. Initially, I felt betrayed and defensive; later, I began to see how scarcity and institutional competition had shaped her exclusionary behavior.

This colleague's accusations were less about me personally and more about what my presence symbolized, which was a potential threat in a system where prestige and student loyalty are often viewed as scarce resources. As business schools operate under neoliberal metrics of individual performance, even supportive acts can appear as encroachments. Her hostility represented a specific form of displaced aggression (e.g. Marcus-Newhall et al., 2000). She likely held anger at a system that devalues collaboration that she redirected. As a woman, I was proximate and not powerful. Reflecting on this experience, I recognize how structural scarcity perceptions (e.g. Derks et al., 2011) can shape relationships in academic work, ultimately distorting what could be solidarity into suspicion.

Collaboration is often idealized in academia, but it can be laden with unspoken hierarchies. When I mentored a female PhD student on her job market paper, she interpreted my rigorous feedback, which was offered with care and based on my knowledge of reviewer expectations, as cruelty. She sought validation from a senior female professor, who said I had been “too harsh.”

Initially, I felt indignant. I had seen male colleagues deliver far more severe feedback without censure. Over time, I realized that these reactions were embedded in gendered expectations of emotional labor. Both the student and senior colleague were operating within a culture that equates care with comfort. My failure to perform that comfort violated the institution's unspoken gendered script of what “female mentorship” should look like. The incident revealed how structural gender norms shape relational expectations: women are rewarded for empathy, not rigor.

My frustration translated into displaced aggression in response to the displaced aggression I had received. Feeling that these women expected emotional support but not intellectual challenge, I withdrew from other mentorship relationships to protect myself emotionally.

In multiple collaborations, senior women invited me to join projects and then later diminished or erased my role. In one instance, I was listed last on a paper I had substantially advanced; in another, I discovered post-publication that I had been replaced by a male PhD student.

Academic authorship (i.e. our currency of value) was wielded to reinforce pecking orders rather than recognize contribution. This is Queen Bee behavior reconfigured through the language of “professional norms” and “student development,” but it is no less exclusionary. Listing me last on a paper for which I had done considerable work and removing me from a paper to which I might have contributed significant expertise were not merely interpersonal slights; they were gendered performances of hierarchy and control. My female colleagues had become gatekeepers of opportunity, not in defiance of patriarchy, but in mimicry of it.

At the time, I experienced these acts as personal betrayals. But as I revisited these moments through reflection, I began to see them as expressions of institutionalized power dynamics. My female coauthors, having fought for limited legitimacy in a masculinized hierarchy, may have viewed control over authorship as a way to protect themselves from being punished within that hierarchy. They were attempting to secure their own authority within an unstable structure. Authorship became a proxy for safety instead of continuing collaboration. My exclusion, then, was not necessarily based in interpersonal malice. It likely represented an enactment of the patriarchal norms the institution rewards. These experiences also revealed my own evolving response: I moved from hurt and disbelief toward an understanding of how displacement, redirecting frustration with systemic inequities toward those nearest, becomes a survival strategy in academia's competitive ecosystem.

On one occasion I raised concerns about gender discrimination I had witnessed. A senior female colleague responded, “You think this is bad? You should have seen what I went through.” Her words, though likely meant to build perspective, felt invalidating. It was as if my suffering had to compete with hers for legitimacy.

I later understood this as another coping mechanism under scarcity: a way to maintain dignity in a system that had never fully recognized her struggles. By comparing traumas, she reaffirmed her own endurance as a badge of survival in a structure that venerates resilience over any future repair. This hierarchy of suffering transforms shared pain into competition, reinforcing scarcity at an emotional level. It is a textbook example of displaced aggression: frustration with systemic inequity converted into self-protection and interpersonal invalidation.

Within my own department I faced a void of mentorship. The women around me, often overburdened by service and survival, seemed unwilling or unable to extend sustained guidance. At first, I interpreted this as indifference. In time, I came to see it as exhaustion. Many were performing invisible academic housework such as committee work, advising, and emotional labor (Macfarlane and Burg, 2019), without institutional reward. Under such strain, offering mentorship risked further depletion.

My own response evolved from resentment to empathy. I realized that institutional structures make generosity costly. The lack of mentorship likely represents a structural outcome of a system that valorizes productivity and penalizes care. The cumulative result is a recursive cycle: women who have been unsupported find themselves with little capacity to support others, reproducing exclusion.

In addition to overt exclusionary behaviors, performative feminism—where feminist language or gestures are used to project progressiveness without enacting meaningful support for other women—can contribute to environments where solidarity is more rhetorical than real (Banet-Weiser, 2018). Such performances maintain institutional norms while deflecting critique. For example, I have observed women who engage in professional sabotage toward other women actively advertise to others how “supportive” and “feminist” they are. They may, for example, advocate to hire a woman faculty member and overtly emphasize their role in the hiring process, but then not support her career once she is hired.

Each of these examples reveals how systemic conditions, rather than individual malice, can produce exclusionary behaviors. The dynamics described here are shaped by institutional scarcity, reward systems that valorize individualism, and gendered expectations of care and collegiality. What might appear on the surface as interpersonal conflict is often better understood as a structural redirection of institutional strain.

I also observed a senior woman faculty member exercise evaluative power in ways that harmed other women, even when no direct interpersonal conflict was present. In one instance, she authored a third-year review letter for a junior woman colleague that was strikingly dismissive in tone, minimizing substantial grant activity and using language that framed the candidate as underperforming rather than developing. In another case, she voted against a different woman's third-year review, despite occupying a position that could have enabled mentorship and guidance at a critical career stage.

These actions functioned as forms of exclusion enacted through institutional mechanisms, even though there were no acts of overt interpersonal hostility. Third-year review processes are explicitly designed to be developmental, particularly for faculty navigating opaque expectations and gendered evaluation standards. The choice to withhold mentorship and instead deploy evaluative authority punitively reflects a broader pattern in which institutional scarcity and insecurity are managed through gatekeeping rather than care.

Viewed through the lens of systemic displaced aggression, these behaviors can be understood as efforts to preserve status and legitimacy within a masculinized hierarchy that rewards differentiation and exceptionalism. Rather than challenging the evaluative norms that disproportionately disadvantage women, the senior faculty member enacted those norms, redirecting structural pressure downward. This resulted in harm toward these individual women and their careers, in addition to reinforcing of a system in which care is withheld, solidarity is fractured, and institutional power is exercised laterally rather than upward.

Taken together, these illustrative reflections demonstrate how institutional pressures are repeatedly redirected into women's relationships with one another, setting the stage for a broader synthesis of systemic displaced aggression as an organizational dynamic rather than isolated problematic interactions. Under the masculine and neoliberal logics of academia (i.e. where success is equated with individual output and care is undervalued), acts of hostility, withdrawal, or invalidation become systemic symptoms of emotional survival. These behaviors reflect broader organizational pressures that pit colleagues against one another.

The concept of systemic displaced aggression reframes such interactions as outcomes of institutional design rather than character flaws or individual pathology. Within this framework, emotional burdens generated by systemic inequality are redistributed among women themselves, transforming potential solidarities into dynamics of competition or withdrawal. Recognizing these patterns is essential to reimagining academic culture. This is important for calling for better behavior among women, in addition to working toward dismantling the institutional conditions that distort their relationships in the first place. Recognizing these patterns as outcomes of the framework presented in Figure 1 is essential to reimagining academic culture and dismantling the institutional conditions that generate intra-gender conflict.

This conceptual paper highlights a deeply entrenched system of gendered power dynamics in academia, particularly in male-dominated fields like business schools. While structural barriers imposed by patriarchal institutions undoubtedly shape the experiences of women in academia, the fact is that some women become handmaidens to patriarchy, participating in exclusionary practices that hinder the professional growth of their female colleagues. This uncomfortable truth raises critical questions about the institutional and psychological factors that drive such behaviors.

This paper advances feminist organizational theory by critically examining intra-gender dynamics as a function of structural inequality rather than individual deficiency. While much feminist scholarship has focused on the marginalization of women by men (e.g. Fotaki, 2013; Prothero, 2024), fewer studies have interrogated how institutional structures shape exclusion among women themselves. By theorizing intra-gender interactions in a highly competitive business school context, this study suggests that intra-gender exclusion can be understood as a systemic phenomenon shaped by institutional structures and dynamics (e.g. neoliberal individualism, institutional masculinity, academic housework, and ethics of care) which perpetuate a scarcity mindset. As such, it reframes the tension between feminist solidarity and professional competition as a structural, not personal, dilemma.

A second major contribution lies in extending the psychological concept of displaced aggression (e.g. Marcus-Newhall et al., 2000) to the domain of organizational analysis to introduce the concept of systemic displaced aggression. Traditionally, displaced aggression has been understood as a tendency to redirect hostility from a threatening source toward a safer or more accessible target (Denson et al., 2006; Miller et al., 2003). This paper adapts the concept to theorize how institutional and cultural structures in academia—which restrict women's advancement and recognition—can redirect frustration laterally, producing exclusionary behaviors among women rather than resistance upward, toward the system itself. By situating Queen Bee behavior, performative feminism, Tall Poppy Syndrome, academic housework, and scarcity mindset within a single theoretical lens of systemic displaced aggression, this framework offers a cohesive explanation for how structural inequities generate intra-gender conflict and reproduce patriarchal norms.

While this paper is conceptual in nature, it demonstrates how autoethnographic reflection can serve as a generative resource for theory-building in feminist organizational research. Rather than functioning as empirical evidence, the illustrative reflections included here help surface affective and relational dynamics—such as emotional strain, care obligations, and institutional silence—that are often marginalized in abstract organizational theory. In this way, lived experience is mobilized to clarify and animate the conceptual framework of systemic displaced aggression, without positioning these reflections as inductively producing the theory itself.

Finally, by expanding the concept of displaced aggression beyond individual pathology, this work bridges feminist organizational theory and psychology. It illustrates that aggression need not stem from personal hostility or temperament but can be structurally induced by environments that constrain agency, reward competition, foster scarcity, and punish care. This interdisciplinary integration underscores how organizational systems themselves can become catalysts for interpersonal aggression and exclusion, revealing the deep entanglement between institutional settings and emotional responses. Moreover, while this framework is developed in the context of academia, it has broader relevance for understanding intra-group conflict in other male-dominated professional settings, such as STEM, law, medicine, sports broadcasting, or law enforcement, where similar structures of competition, scarcity, and masculinized norms shape relational dynamics and reproduce inequality.

One of the most significant contributors to systemic displaced aggression is the scarcity mindset, which reflects the perception that there are only a few spots available for women in academia, forcing them to compete rather than collaborate (Derks et al., 2011; Mazak, 2022; Mullainathan and Shafir, 2013). In many business schools, including my own, there are very few tenured women faculty; women occupy only a handful of senior positions relative to the number of male full professors. This stark underrepresentation amplifies the sense that the success of one woman comes at the expense of opportunities for others.

Tenure and promotion processes further institutionalize this scarcity by emphasizing hyper-individualistic metrics of success, such as solo-authored or first-authored top-tier journal publications and personal reputational capital in the field, rather than collaborative achievements or contributions to collective academic life such as university service. The tenure system often rewards those who distinguish themselves as exceptional individuals, rather than those who build supportive networks. This hyper-competitive framework implicitly encourages a zero-sum mentality: women are incentivized to prioritize their own advancement. The system does not recognize or reward collaborative labor.

Academia expects women to be both highly competent and emotionally nurturing, which is a double standard that puts women in a constant state of negotiation between rigor and likability. Women who challenge other women's work intellectually risk being seen as too harsh or unsupportive. Those who refuse to provide excessive emotional labor (e.g. unquestioning mentorship, handling student crises) may be criticized as cold or selfish. Men, by contrast, are rarely judged by these emotional standards. The fact that I was criticized for being “too mean” in my manuscript guidance, while male faculty are rarely scrutinized for similar feedback, highlights this gendered double standard.

The exclusionary behaviors outlined in the illustrative examples discussed above have far-reaching consequences for women's career progression and overall well-being in academia. These include reduced retention of women in academia. A lack of mentorship and support contributes to burnout, imposter syndrome, and attrition, particularly among early-career female scholars. These dynamics also result in a reinforcement of patriarchal structures. When women engage in exclusionary practices, they unintentionally perpetuate the very barriers they have fought to overcome, rather than dismantling them. There are many missed opportunities for collective advocacy. In contrast to fields where strong female networks exist, the lack of solidarity in male-dominated disciplines weakens efforts to push for systemic changes, such as better parental leave policies, equitable hiring, and tenure practices. This self-defeating cycle ultimately serves the interests of the dominant (i.e. male) power structure by keeping women divided rather than united.

As a conceptual contribution, this paper has several limitations that also point toward important avenues for future research. First, the framework of systemic displaced aggression is developed from a situated and positioned perspective, informed by reflection on academic experiences within a U.S.-based business school. While this positioning enables theoretically grounded insight into gendered organizational dynamics, it also means that the framework reflects particular institutional, disciplinary, and cultural conditions. The patterns described here may manifest differently across national contexts, institutional types, or disciplines with distinct gender compositions and reward structures.

Second, the illustrative reflections included in this paper are not intended as systematic empirical analysis. They do not constitute a comprehensive dataset, nor are they presented as inductively generating theory. Rather, they serve to clarify and animate the conceptual framework. As such, the paper does not make claims about prevalence, causality, or generalizability. Future research is therefore needed to examine how systemic displaced aggression operates across broader populations and organizational settings.

Finally, this framework invites empirical testing and extension. Future studies could examine systemic displaced aggression through qualitative interviews with women faculty at different career stages, survey-based research assessing perceptions of scarcity, competition, and intra-gender conflict, or more sustained and methodologically rigorous autoethnographic or collaborative ethnographic work. Comparative research across institutional contexts could further refine the framework and identify conditions under which systemic displaced aggression is intensified or mitigated. Such work would strengthen understanding of how organizational structures shape intra-gender dynamics and inform interventions aimed at fostering more equitable and supportive academic environments.

The stories shared in this conceptual paper reveal the deeply entrenched institutional and cultural forces that shape women's power dynamics in academia. While academia is undoubtedly patriarchal, women's exclusion of other women is not merely an individual failing; it represents a specific form of displaced aggression toward a flawed system that fosters competition over collaboration. Further, while these systemic and psychological barriers are deeply ingrained, change is possible through intentional efforts to reframe academic culture and institutionalize support for women faculty. The only way to break the cycle will be to institute structural and cultural changes. Institutional reforms, similar to those discussed next, should be considered and implemented when possible.

Mentorship and building networks of support can be of great help to junior women who may be navigating difficult relationships with other faculty members. Formalized mentorship and sponsorship programs can be very helpful. For example, I received a lot of helpful and supportive advice in a women's faculty writing group I joined in my first semester on campus. Universities can establish structured mentorship programs in which senior women faculty actively mentor junior women. One potential model is to develop peer mentoring circles, where women across different career stages can exchange advice and resources. Women's faculty groups and affinity networks that serve as platforms for collaboration and professional development can be established. Informal networking events where women faculty can share experiences and opportunities in a non-competitive setting can similarly be organized.

Departments can also encourage mentoring. Universities and colleges could incentivize mentorship in tenure and promotion criteria to reward collaboration. Specifically, tenure and promotion criteria could be revised to incentivize mentorship, collaboration, and diversity efforts, rather than solely individual research output. Institutions could create more transparent research collaboration policies to prevent exclusion. Team-based research models that foster collaboration rather than individual competition could be encouraged and rewarded.

There are also leadership development and equity initiatives that institutions could undertake to help alleviate competition among women faculty members. Leadership training specifically for women faculty can be provided, ensuring that they have the tools and confidence to advocate for change. Equity audits to assess whether women faculty are receiving equal access to research funds, teaching opportunities, and leadership positions could be promoted across campus.

Cultural shifts are also necessary to help women thrive in the academy. Collaborative, supportive cultures help challenge the scarcity mindset by reframing success as collective rather than individual. Organizational cultural norms can also encourage women to recognize and reject internalized bias that reinforces patriarchal structures. Fostering networks of mutual support where women advocate for one another rather than compete is another cultural shift that can help empower women faculty members. Gender discrimination should be able to be addressed with senior administrators confidentially and without fear of gaslighting or backlash. Implicit bias and gender equity training should be offered to help women recognize and counteract unconscious biases against their female colleagues. Administrators should create safe spaces for women to discuss workplace challenges, fostering dialog rather than competition.

Women faculty need to actively challenge the scarcity mindset. One way to reframe academic success as abundant rather than scarce is by emphasizing that multiple women can succeed without diminishing one another's achievements. Senior women faculty should be encouraged to view mentorship as legacy building, ensuring that future generations of women thrive. To combat this scarcity mindset and its effects, women in academia can employ several strategies. First, they can engage in network building by seeking out mentors, sponsors, and professional associations to create supportive networks. Second, they can work on visibility enhancement by publishing in respected journals, presenting at conferences, and volunteering for high-visibility roles to showcase expertise. Third, women need to be mentored in resilience development by focusing on strategies for self-care and how to practice assertiveness in addressing bias or discrimination. Fourth, women should actively engage in ally leveraging by partnering with colleagues who can amplify their voice and work toward systemic change. Ultimately, shifting from a scarcity mindset to an opportunity mindset is crucial. This involves recognizing that prevailing beliefs in academia can be self-limiting and actively working to change them. By doing so, women in academia can move from competing for limited resources to collaboratively creating more inclusive and equitable academic environments. See Table 1 for a summary of these recommendations.

This conceptual paper has explored the systemic displaced aggression of women in academia, particularly in male-dominated fields like business schools. By sharing personal illustrations of this phenomenon, I have highlighted experiences of exclusion, competition, and internalized sexism while conceptually connecting these patterns to broader institutional and cultural factors.

Future research could explore intersectional perspectives, examining how race, class, and other identity factors shape these dynamics. Additionally, longitudinal studies could assess the effectiveness of institutional interventions in fostering a more inclusive academic culture.

Such studies will further our understanding of how, by addressing the root causes of female competition, including institutionalized scarcity and hierarchical pressures, academia can move toward a more inclusive and supportive environment for women faculty. While systemic change takes time, intentional efforts to reframe academic culture, foster mentorship, and strengthen solidarity can create a path toward gender equity. There is an onus on women in academia, as well: If they can recognize that supporting one another is not a liability, but a revolutionary act, then they can collectively challenge the structures that have historically kept them divided and ultimately build a more equitable academic future. This will benefit not only women in academia themselves but our students and those who benefit from our research as we are more able to do our jobs well.