The Sisterhood Myth Project exists alongside my forthcoming book, ‘The Sisterhood Myth’, coming in March ‘27.
Through this project I aim to start a wide-reaching, honest conversation that I’m yet to hear honestly or openly had anywhere, but which my own life experiences and the many interactions and interviews I’ve had in recent years with other women tell me is MUCH needed:
a conversation about the destructive way that women can behave towards other women - from childhood into old age - with a view to debunking the myth that women all feel part of a warm, loving and caring ‘Sisterhood’, always there to support them.
While female friendships are, of course, some of the deepest and most supportive we ever have, this idea of an all-embracing, supportive and #bekind ‘Sisterhood’ where women all look out for each other is not the experience of many women; women from all walks of life, of all ages and in many everyday situations.
It can cause enormous problems in a woman’s life, harm her career, social and family life, finances, health and wellbeing, and it can even take lives.
Yet, we often feel unable, ashamed or even fearful to speak about our experiences of women treating us badly, in case we are socially ostracised or further attacked by our ‘fellow women’. This can further isolate and cause genuine trauma, when someone feels set-upon or ‘outside the girl gang’ they’re persuaded from an early age that hey should be a part of.
We often don’t even know what to call this type of behaviour. ‘Internalised misogyny’ has become a buzz-phrase, and there is almost certainly some of that. But I think that’s passing the buck, absolving ourselves of our own culpability and it’s quite simply often not the case: little girls do it in nursery; all-girls schools have always been rife with it, from what I’ve been told. To say women are unkind to other women due to learned misogynistic behaviour from men is to remove what agency and power we have over our own actions. Which, ironically, merely makes us weaker.
Instead, I call it Female Misogyny, and I believe that in order to reduce it we first need to identify and acknowledge it, then own it, admit when we do it, call it out in other and change it.
From witch hunting to poison pen letters, playground bitching and village gossip, ‘The Sisterhood’, while undoubtedly a place of deep, lifelong and wonderful female friendship, has always also had a vicious, brutal and deeply harmful side.
Especially now, with social media and online gossip sites providing an immediate, global platform for anonymous abuse of women towards each other, there has never been a more urgent and widespread need for female misogyny, and the hushed, ice-cold shoulder of the ‘Sisterhood’, to be brought into the open.
Through this collection of personal accounts I hope to create a societally important, never-before recorded catalogue of real stories and experiences of everyday female misogyny;
not to ‘add to’ the misogyny of men, which we already (rightly) hear a lot about, but to expose, share safely and try to understand the age-old practice of female misogyny, in order to change and improve the way women treat other women, and how girls are encouraged to treat other girls.
If you would like to contribute an account, it will go towards creating this catalogue - and to making positive change.
It can be as little as a few lines, a screenshot or transcript of some online trolling, a childhood memory, something that happened to you professionally, socially, in passing in a cafe; whatever it might be.
It might be your own story or a friend’s, your sister’s, your mum’s, something you just witnessed at a bus stop. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you live, what you believe in, look like or wear. If you have experienced female misogyny, please share your story so together we can show how widespread it really is, and stop the pervasive and unhelpful myth that ‘The Sisterhood’ is something that exists always to support us, and in which we all feel welcomed.
You can follow me on Instagram, @lizfraser1 and also @the-sisterhood-myth on IG, and @sisterhoodmyth on X, where some of these account may be shared.
PLEASE NOTE: Please do not include full names or identifying details of private individuals. Entries may be quoted (anonymously) in newspaper and magazine articles or in other publications, including possible future media projects
