And now we have the “Vulnerable Female Narcissist”

There’s a new pop-psychology term doing the rounds online, and women everywhere are expected to swallow it whole: the “vulnerable female narcissist.” According to a Mamamia feature, this is the softer, sneakier cousin of grandiose narcissism—think less Don Draper swagger, more subtle manipulation and insecurity. It’s presented as science, as if women have been hiding this personality profile in plain sight. But beneath the polished quotes and tidy definitions lies something more insidious: the steady creep of language that pathologises women’s pain and calls it progress.

The dominant narrative in this piece is simple: men get the obvious, overt, almost cinematic version of narcissism—grandiose, loud, dominant. Women, on the other hand, are framed as covert operators, working in whispers and guilt trips. Society, we are told, conditions women to be warm, nurturing, emotionally switched on, and when narcissism pops up in them it often comes cloaked in shyness, insecurity, or passive aggression. It’s positioned as a personality profile we’ve somehow missed until now, even though the descriptions read suspiciously like survival tactics in a world that punishes women for being direct. The article leans on a psychologist’s authority to draw a gendered line between grandiose and vulnerable narcissism, claiming the latter is more prevalent among women because of social expectations. It goes so far as to frame apologising as “strategic impression management” and emotional withdrawal as a calculated power move, rather than the instinctive retreat of someone protecting themselves.

Through the CWA lens, this is where the rot sets in. Vulnerability is not narcissism, and to equate the two is to fundamentally misunderstand how women navigate unsafe social and personal terrain. What’s being described as manipulative is often just self-protection. Strategic silence is not the same as stonewalling; it’s a shield. Refusing to apologise when you are not at fault is not a pathology; it’s an act of self-respect. The only line in the article that comes close to truth is buried deep, when the psychologist admits this so-called vulnerable narcissism may be “the brittle shell or defence” formed to protect against intolerable insecurity or anxiety. That’s not a diagnosis—that’s a human coping mechanism. But instead of stopping there, the piece keeps pushing the label, turning women’s defensive reflexes into proof of a disorder, and dressing it up as compassion.

In reality, the label does more harm than good. It hands abusers, toxic workplaces, and dismissive peers a new vocabulary to discredit women. Instead of asking why women develop these defences, it frames them as personality flaws that need fixing. The reframe is simple: women’s so-called vulnerable narcissism is not a hidden form of manipulation, it’s an adaptation to living in systems that demand emotional labour without offering emotional safety. The silent treatment might just be the only safe option left when speaking up means punishment. Guilt-tripping might be the only way to make someone see the weight they’ve placed on your shoulders when they’ve been ignoring you for years. These aren’t the signs of a personality disorder; they’re signs of a person pushed to the edge of their capacity to care for everyone but themselves.

This isn’t just opinion—research shows the problem is structural. A Frontiers in Psychology study found clinicians were more likely to diagnose women showing “vulnerable narcissism” traits with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) rather than Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), despite identical symptoms in male patients . A City, University of London study confirmed the diagnostic framework itself is skewed: the DSM-5 over-emphasises grandiose traits, meaning vulnerable presentations—more common in women—are often missed or mislabelled . In other words, the system itself bakes in bias, then feeds it back to us as “insight.”

This is why the vulnerable female narcissist label is so dangerous—it cloaks judgment in the language of understanding. It ignores the context of power and survival. It assumes malice where there may only be exhaustion. And it gives pop-psychology another shiny term to package and circulate until it becomes shorthand for “difficult woman.” There’s nothing groundbreaking about this; it’s the same play we’ve seen with labels like bossy, unlikable, hysterical—just with a pseudo-clinical twist. Instead of dismantling the double standards that force women into constrained, reactive roles, the label reinforces them by declaring the reaction itself a problem.

The conclusion here isn’t complicated. Narcissism is real and destructive, but it is not the same as a survival instinct. Women who have endured years of eroded confidence, boundary violations, and emotional overextension are not covert manipulators simply because they no longer bend on command. Articles like this one don’t increase understanding—they muddy it. They replace systemic critique with armchair diagnosis. And they keep women on the defensive, trying to prove they’re not what the label says they are. The truth is that women don’t need another label; they need a culture that stops pathologising their survival. Until then, calling a coping mechanism narcissism is nothing more than another form of gaslighting.