While celebrating women’s achievements during the month of March is a laudable idea to be sure, I can’t help but think maybe this 2025 is the year we women should address the elephant in the room, that one glass ceiling we just can’t manage to even crack — respect for each other and a desire to lift each other up in encouragement without an ulterior motive or a knife in the back.

I think we can all admit we have either been party to or victimized by another woman’s jealousy and resultant catty behavior. Maybe even both.

Tammy Wynette had it right when she sang “Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman.”

Though she was wrong in that it isn’t because of men — it’s fellow women that make being a woman so challenging.

As a woman, you are pulled in so many different directions and in every one of those directions you are being judged or compared to somebody else — usually by a “friend,” or worse, by ourselves.

And don’t let a man or a job promotion enter the picture because then it is competition overdrive — watch out for those claws!

It is a universally accepted truth women usually cannot work cohesively together and often businesses will incorporate a gender mix of employees or a male supervisor to balance the inevitable distraction of in-fighting that is often resultant of a mostly female based workforce.

This catty behavior among women starts early — you know it does!

I recall watching girls in elementary school displaying the same behaviors as their older high school counterparts when I was young. I don’t think much has changed in the intervening years.

It truly makes me sad to see women strive so hard to be the best they can in every arena of life, always wanting to be better than men- except in the one area where it would matter the most.

Men aren’t always looking for an opportunity to tear their best friend down or try to take something the other one has. I’m not saying they don’t do it, just not on the daily basis most women do.

It may have once been a man’s world, but that has never been a good excuse for why women can’t get along with each other. A convenient one, yes, but not an honest one.

This womanly strife dates all the way back to Biblical times; we see it in the relationships of Sarah and Hagar and in Leah and Rachel.

Women, I think we should make 2025 the year we take a hammer to that unreachable glass ceiling by building each other up. Start looking for ways to encourage fellow women instead of how to be in competition with them. We could accomplish so many more achievements if we weren’t always weighing ourselves down with counterproductive comparisons of each other.

Let’s go out and truly be the ideal, uplifting woman from all the memes, songs, poems, and tee shirt taglines. Come on ladies, 2025 is our year!