The Queen Bee Problem

There's another media frenzy going on about just how awful women can be to each other as leaders, and sometimes as subordinates, in the workplace. The problematization and pathologizing of women's relationships at work is nothing new.

No doubt Queen Bees do exist: There are women who pull the ladder up behind them after promotion, who undermine other women they see as competitors or threats, and who fail to meet our expectations for women to be warm, nurturing mentors who support and promote other women sister-style.

There is also no doubt that Kings-of-the-Hill exist: Men who push other men down when they get near the top, men who prefer sycophants to independent minds, and men who bully their subordinates. These men conform to our expectations of "bad but bold" male behavior, however, and they are viewed as strategic, rather than as suffering from a gender-based pathology.

The good thing about recognizing the existence of Queen Bees is that it reminds us that having a woman leader isn't necessarily a good thing for women in general. A leader's values are more important than a leader's gender in predicting how they treat others and whether they will help or hinder the cause of equal opportunity for men and women in the workplace.

The bad thing about focusing on Queen Bees is that it directs our attention to the symptom rather than to the cause of their behavior. Being a Queen Bee is a strategy for succeeding in a male-dominated world that devalues women, not a defective gene women are born with or a dynamic inherent in female relationships. As long as women continue to be devalued and marginalized, there will be Queen Bees who distance themselves from this devalued identity and marginalized group in order to be "one of the boys," and who will see other women as competition for the token spots given to women at work. Thus, the focus on the Queen Bee is a Red Herring.