I always liked to believe that Miranda Priestly, the cold, devilish boss from The Devil Wears Prada, needn’t necessarily be a woman. So, imagine my surprise when I came across the queen bee syndrome. This phenomenon was first defined in 1973.
‘Queen bee’ is a term applied to women who have achieved success in traditionally male-dominated fields; it implies that such women often take on ‘masculine’ traits and distance themselves from other women in the workplace to succeed. A queen bee is likely to treat a female subordinate more critically. They tend to mistreat them and hinder their professional advancement, contributing to gender inequality in the workplace.
In fact, queen bees may often refuse to help other women rise up the ladder as a form of self-preservation. The queen bee phenomenon has already been documented in the global press. For example, Margaret Thatcher, the first female prime minister of the United Kingdom (UK), was labelled as the queen bee for not promoting the careers of other women in her cabinet.
Are Gender Stereotypes to Be Blamed?
According to one study, the queen bee syndrome may partly stem from long-standing gender stereotypes where women are considered to be lacking self-assertion and decisiveness—traditional leadership skills are often seen as synonymous with masculinity. This builds pressure on professional women to adopt these qualities perceived to be masculine, especially in work environments where men form the majority.
High-achieving women then subconsciously develop the queen bee syndrome due to the lack of opportunities for women in the professional sector. With few top spots available to women, those who are already on top of the ladder feel the need to safeguard their position by exhibiting ‘masculine’ traits as a form of self-group distancing.
As Klea Faniko and her collaborators noted, ‘… [the] survival of women in male-dominated work environment entails a form of individual mobility, in the sense that they have to prove to themselves and to others that they are unlike other women in order to be successful.’
In fact, it was noticed that such women described themselves in more masculine terms, hoping to make themselves perceived more leader-like. This makes so much sense to me now. When I was a little girl, I wanted to be perceived as the smartest girl in the class. In order to do so, I subconsciously chose to stay away from frills or anything pink— basically anything and everything quintessentially feminine. Somehow, as a little girl, I thought of these qualities as being mutually exclusive. I didn’t realize that a girl perceived as pretty could also be considered intelligent, and vice versa. Why did I assume these two qualities to be mutually exclusive as a child?
Of course, I had not read these studies; I was barely 12 and running away from the stereotypes that I had put together based on my surroundings! While growing up, I could only associate with two categories of girls— girls who played with dolls and girls who read books. I was running away from feminine associations in an effort to seem more intelligent, adopting authoritative colours like grey and black, which I saw men and boys wearing often. To stay away from being typecasted as a ‘typical woman’, I was unknowingly picking up masculine preferences.
When I switched to media from medicine, entering the unapologetic world of fashion and beauty, I was worried again. I was worried that I would be perceived as this pretty but dumb girl on screen who loved heels and make-up. To allay my worries, I would often emphasize to people that I was a medical graduate, almost as a quick way to plug in that I had super-neurons but that I voluntarily chose the not-so-brainy glamour route. I even insisted that I write my own script. Looking back, it seems that this must have been an added effort on my part to sound and look intelligent.
When I think about it now, I doubt if these actions would have affected the perception of my persona as long as I did the work that I was supposed to do. I realize now, I had been fighting stereotypes all along. Another study suggests that 70 per cent of female executives feel they have been bullied by a female boss in their office, which has led to their professional growth being stunted. Treating female colleagues in a demoralizing manner, either by undermining them or using their social stature to manipulate others into thinking less of them, is a toxic trait for leaders to possess. This behaviour can be a significant barrier to women advancing in the workplace.
I raise this issue so that every woman recognizes the syndrome when it occurs and brings it to her leader’s attention to stop it from harming her career. Queen bee syndrome can manifest in ways that may have a lasting negative impact on individual careers or even the entire organization. They often obstruct other talented and ambitious women from growing in the workplace.
According to another study, 33 per cent of bullies in the workplace are women, and about 65 per cent of the time, women bullies choose women targets.
Why did a woman come up with the idea for this research, which is creating suspicions about the intention of the fellow gender? Cecilia Harvey, the principal researcher on this project, shares that she was motivated to conduct the research after experiencing this form of workplace bullying herself. She described the women she encountered in the workplace as ‘adult versions of the mean girls from school’ who were more calculating than their teenage counterparts.
Clearly, this adds a new layer of complexity to the earlier idea that only sexist men keep women from growing professionally. In a business environment, a queen bee usually sees younger women as competitors and refuses to help them advance within a company, preferring to mentor a male over a female employee. Some queen bees may actively take steps to hinder another woman’s advancement as they are seen as direct competitors. This study isn’t the only one claiming that queen bees hold women back at work. Another study claims that the queen bee syndrome may be the reason that women find it more stressful to work for women managers, while no difference was found in the stress levels of those working under male managers.
Of course, this isn’t to say that all women feel threatened and become queen bees. Women leaders exist but not all of them are toxic to the women around. Women leaders, like Sheryl Sandberg, the former COO of Meta (formerly Facebook), believe that women aren’t any meaner to women than men are to one another.
We are fighting a stereotype here, she adds—the stereotype that women are expected to be soft, fragile and nice. In 2016, she shared that ‘Women are just expected to be nicer. We stereotype men as aggressive and women as kind. When women violate these stereotypes, we judge them harshly.’16 On the other hand, if a male boss is being warm, we are quickly impressed because we don’t expect a male boss to be warm in the first place.
This excerpt from Dr Shamoly Khera’s ‘Letters to Daughters of Tomorrow: Breaking Stereotypes to Unleash Her Potential’ has been published with permission from Rupa Publications.