摘要：Women continue to struggle to reach parity in the workplace, constantly hitting their heads on the glass ceiling. The inability to break through this barrier may lead women to develop covert actions to create an advantage over their competition. The existi ng literature on the relationships of women and men in the w orkplace provides some insight to the struggles that occur when one gender could be considered a professional minority. In addition, some researchers have studied the working relationships of women in the business environment, but there is a deficiency in the literature of the working relationships among women in academic organizations. The purpose of our study was to explore the challenges of female relationships in the community college workplace, as w omen continue to do minate these institutions as both employees and students. A psychodynamic perspective w as used as the theoretical framework for the study. We sought to assess the perceptions of femal e professional staff in public co mmunity colleges of how women supported the career adv ancement of their female peers, as w ell as how their supervisors and departments supported the professional development of potential female leaders. The results of the mixed method study identified two areas of limitations for women within community colleg e environments: interpersonal and institutional cultural. The results of the quantitative analysis identified that a majority of females felt their peers were supportive of the career advancement of their female colleagues. The qualitative results of the study painted a different picture, indicating that women may use covert actions to co mpete with and hold back their female colleagues
关键词：women; community colleges; interpersonal relationships; career advancement
