The Queen Bee

Competitions over power or status are common in an organization. Sometimes they get more intense when gender becomes a factor. I remember a number of iconic scenes in “The Devil Wears Prada.” Miranda was ridiculously harsh to Andy — requesting an unpublished Harry Potter manuscript be delivered to Miranda’s daughters before its official release. And such ruthlessness spilled over to how the experienced Emily navigated rookie Andy through her onboarding period. In a bee hive, only one dominating female bee, the queen bee, is allowed. Research data supports a hypothesis that women in power seem to only pick on their powerless alike.

Queen bee syndrome is defined as a powerful woman alienating other women from moving up the hierarchy in an organization [1]. There is a belief that the queen bee has crawled through many difficulties, so she makes same-sex followers experience struggles similar to what she has faced. In line with this argument, research found that females tend to use a same-sex colleague as the referent to judge whether they were treated fairly or not. Compared to a male counterpart, females were less satisfied with a job if a female counterpart was treated better [2].

Further research has found similar results in that female workers were more likely to be ignored and interrupted, made fun of and/or treated in a disrespectful manner by her female colleagues than by male colleagues [3]. Furthermore, research also found that, when leading female subordinates, female leaders were more authoritarian [4] and maintained poorer leader-subordinate relationships [5] than male leaders did. Scientific findings support the argument that females tend to target on their in-group members.

However, some other people, for example, Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg, argue that female leaders are no meaner or colder than male leaders. It is social norms that impose too many expectations toward female leaders being holistically extraordinary— warm, caring, competent and assertive — like a fairy godmother!

This may also be true because research has also found that a leader’s gender is not correlated with his/her mentoring behaviors. Nonetheless, this study has shown that subordinates sometimes feel more benefit when a different-sex leader provided career guidance [6]. This means that even though female leaders and male leaders establish similar behavior, female subordinates think a male leader’s career advice is more valuable than that of a female leader. We females may not be valuing our in-groups’ wisdom enough.

Being a female working professional is tough: This includes being targeted by your in-group when you are powerless and feeling overwhelmed by social norms when you are powerful. Please don’t be discouraged. Research further suggests that emotional support provided by a same-sex leader is more helpful in terms of long-term career resilience than by a different-sex leader [6]. Let’s keep the support, but be kinder and more considerate to our powerless in-groups. Being like a queen bee is not the only way to advance.

References

[1] Staines, G., Tavris, C., & Jayaratne, T. E. (1974). The Queen Bee syndrome. Psychology Today, 7, 55– 60.

[2] Buchanan, T. (2008). The same-sex-referent-work satisfaction relationship: Assessing the mediating role of distributive justice perceptions. Sociological Focus, 41, 177–196.

[3] Gabriel, A. S., Butts, M. M., Yuan, Z., Rosen, R. L., & Sliter, M. T. (2017). Further understanding incivility in the workplace: The effects of gender, agency, and communion. Journal of Applied Psychology, 103, 362-382.

[4] Wang, A. C., Chiang, J. T. J., Tsai, C. Y., Lin, T. T., & Cheng, B. S. (2013). Gender makes the difference: The moderating role of leader gender on the relationship between leadership styles and subordinate performance. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 122(2), 101-113.

[5] Adebayo, D. O., & Udegbe, I. B. (2004). Gender in the boss–subordinate relationship: A Nigerian study. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 25(4), 515-525.

[6] Kao, K. Y., Rogers, A., Spitzmueller, C., Lin, M. T., & Lin, C. H. (2014). Who should serve as my mentor? The effects of mentor's gender and supervisory status on resilience in mentoring relationships. Journal of Vocational Beh