What is this article about?

In the last decades, women’s participation in the workforce has increased and women have started to outperform men in higher education. However, women are still underrepresented at higher organizational levels. Gender quotas have been put in place as a solution to this problem, and the underlying idea of this quota is that promoting a small number of women into senior positions in male-dominated organizations will improve opportunities for junior women. Specifically, it is thought that senior women will mentor and promote other women and that women leaders will add a ‘ feminine’ perspective to leadership and serve as inspirational role models for their junior counterparts.

This article describes a different view and will talk about the ‘queen bee phenomenon’, which refers to the idea that women leaders in organizations in which most executive positions are held by men, will assimilate to the male-dominated organizations and adjust their self-presentation and leadership style to fit this masculine culture. Furthermore, instead of helping other, junior women, they might distance themselves from them in order to reduce the association between themselves and the less successful group of women. Totally contrasting the underlying belief related to the gender quota, based on this queen bee phenomenon, it could be expected that organizations with queen bees (senior women) at the managerial level may offer fewer opportunities to junior women than organizations in which there are no queen bees. It is described how this would work, by describing the underlying psychological mechanisms.

What is the queen bee phenomenon exactly?

The term ‘queen bee’ is given to women who are successful in male-dominated work settings, thus in organizations in which men hold most executive positions. They adapt to the masculine culture and distance themselves from other women in three ways:

1. By presenting themselves more like men;
2. By physically and psychologically distancing themselves from other women;
3. By endorsing and legitimizing the current gender hierarchy.

Presenting themselves more like men (masculine self-presentation)

It seems that, rather than adding a ‘feminine perspective’ to leadership, senior women try to present themselves more like men. For instance, different studies showed that senior women described themselves as equally or even more masculine (assertive, competitive, risk-taking) than their male peers. This was not the case for junior women. In sum, senior women often describe themselves as more masculine and ambitious than junior women, and comparably masculine and ambitious as male peers. The degree to which women leaders present themselves with stereotypically masculine characteristics was positively related to the number of subordinates they had.

Distancing from other women (underlining dissimilarities)

Studies show that some women leaders report that they are much more ambitious and committed to their career than female subordinates. They tend to describe themselves as very different from other women: they present themselves as stereotypically masculine, and also as much more masculine compared to other women. It should be noted that senior women tend to distance themselves from junior women, and not from women who are in leader positions: it is thus not a general distancing from women, it is only about distancing themselves from women who are not as successful as they are.

Legitimizing gender hierarchy

Queen bees can legitimize the status quo in different ways, for example by agreeing with negative stereotypes about women, by denying the fact that there are lower outcomes for women, and by not supporting or even opposing action to address gender inequality. By being critical of junior women and seeing them as less ambitious and less committed than junior men, the queen bees legitimize current gender differences. For instance, in different studies it was found that senior women denied that gender discrimination was still an issue in their organization, and reported low willingness to mentor junior women. It was also found that women at non-managerial level were much more in favor of gender equality policies than men, and women at the managerial level were just as unsupportive of these measures as men were. More nuanced, it was found that senior women oppose quota policies that would benefit the career of junior women or that would benefit themselves. They did however support policies that were designed to support senior women at their organizational rank.

How can the queen bee phenomenon be explained?

The queen bee phenomenon is a not related to women’s personalities or inherent competitiveness toward other women. Instead, it is triggered in work settings in which women feel threatened. This argument is based on social identity theory, which states that individuals base their identity partly on their gender. When members of disadvantaged groups are in a minority position, they are likely to perceive that their group’s typical characteristics are not valued or considered important. When women are at work and they experience a low number of women in management, their identity is threatened. They can then use different strategies to manage this threatened identity. There are coping strategies at the collective and at the individual level. Collective-level strategies reduce the threat by improving the position of the group as a whole, for instance by re-evaluating existing group characteristics (e.g., ‘social creativity) or by working to improve group-level outcomes (e.g., ‘social change’). Individual level-strategies are aimed at benefiting individual outcomes by distancing the self from the disadvantaged group and by seeking acceptance into a group with higher status (e.g., ‘individual mobility’). These individual-level strategies are thus part of the queen bee phenomenon, and they might help the individual, but harm other women.

Each of these strategies thus has its own costs and benefits. Based on this social identity theory, the queen bee phenomenon is thus seen as an individual coping mechanism by which women aim to improve their personal opportunities in work settings in which the career options for women are restricted. Women who experience these threats to gender identity at work thus face a dilemma of promoting their personal opportunities or promoting those of women more generally. An important factor that determines how this dilemma is solved, is whether women perceive the boundaries to higher positions in the organization as permeable. It is also very difficult to determine whether differences in outcomes between men and women are due to gender discrimination or due to other factors, as most of the barriers that women may encounter are invisible. Therefore, diverging career outcomes of men and women are most times attributed to individual differences in abilities, ambitions, or life choices they make. Therefore, highly competent women often aim for individual mobility, instead of social change.

Experimental research has also shown that female team members were least likely to select a female candidate when they were the only women in a team. This was due to two types of threat: first, when female leaders had to choose between highly qualified male and female candidates, they decided against choosing the female candidate, because of the competition she would pose (‘competition threat’). Second, when the choice was between a moderately qualified male and female candidate, the female leaders also decided against choosing the female candidate, worrying that her performance might reflect negatively on them (‘collective threat’). In addition, some women do not really identify with women in general. These ‘low identifiers’ might feel threatened when others categorize themselves as members of the group of ‘women’. They might then distance themselves from the group to try to cope with the threat the gender categorization poses to their social identity. It can thus be expected that the queen bee phenomenon responses would be found in:

1. Settings that threatened the social identity of women;
2. Among women who did not indicate being strongly identified with other women at work.

Studies have shown that the queen bee phenomenon is not a standard response of women in higher positions. Instead, it is triggered in work settings in which women experience social identity threat due to gender discrimination and negative stereotypes. These settings may motivate some women (women who identify strongly with their gender at work) to support gender equality and stimulate the career of junior women, and some women (those who identify less with being women) may promote their individual opportunities through queen bee behaviour. These studies also suggest that the queen bee phenomenon can be reduced by reducing threats to women’s social identity, for example through interventions that reduce negative gender stereotypes in organizations, or interventions that allow weakly gender-identified women to cope with the threats in alternative ways (e.g., self-affirmation).

What else is known about the queen bee phenomenon?

There is also an indirect route through which women can become dissociated from other women. For instance, work shows that the conditions of work under which women are expected to perform are less favorable than for men. For instance, women are expected to take primary responsibility for their family, but achieving career success requires that they prioritize work over other life domains. Therefore it is no surprise that many women in leader positions are more likely than men to be single or childless. Senior women may thus feel as if they have made substantial sacrifices in their personal life, such as in relationships with their partner and friends and in their decision to have children. This may also be a reason for why senior women do not identify with junior women. In other words, it seems that senior women do distance themselves from junior women but do support senior women, because they feel the junior women have not made substantial sacrifices yet to survive in male-dominated organizations.

It has also been found that the queen bee phenomenon is not specific to women. Instead, members of other negatively stereotyped groups also show queen bee responses. When members of negatively stereotyped groups pursue upward mobility in fields that are traditionally dominated by members of the higher status outgroup, some of these members may show self-group distancing. This is a strategic activity in which individuals dissociate themselves from the negative aspects of their group’s stereotype. It may involve downplaying aspects of the devalued identity in their communications. It can thus be expected that self-group distancing occurs in particular when members of stigmatized groups find themselves in threatening outgroup settings, in which they feel that their identity as a member of a negatively stereotyped group is valued less than that of the majority or high status group, but in which they perceive some opportunity for individual mobility. It can also be expected that self-group distancing is more likely to occur among those who are less identified with the negatively stereotyped group: those who identify more strongly with their group are likely to be more loyal to the group and will promote group-level claims to equality rather than showing self-group distancing.

What are consequences of the queen bee phenomenon?

For female leaders

Men in higher organizational positions may experience threats to their social identity, because of the idea that in the future, women may achieve higher statuses than men. Selecting a queen bee into an influential position may help to relieve this threat in two ways. First, if organizations select women in a higher position, this may signal to others that the organizational hierarchy is permeable and this will alleviate internal or external pressure to improve the opportunities for women. Second, selecting a queen bee that explicitly legitimizes the current gender hierarchy (e.g., by denying that gender discrimination exists) serves to protect the status quo in which most of the power positions are held by men. In addition, on the long run, queen bee responses might lead to substantial costs for the support that women leaders receive. The main source of support for queen bees are other senior women, but often there are not that many senior women in organizations. Second, women leaders more often elicit stronger resistance responses than men in leadership positions when their behavior is incongruent with their gender role, regardless of queen bee behaviour. In addition, senior women who show queen bee behaviour are less likely to receive support from their female subordinates. They thus do not benefit from the supportive psychological effects that identification with other women may provide.

For junior women

Queen bee behavior is detrimental to the careers of junior women and may limit their opportunities. In addition, junior women are in need of female role models and senior women who show queen bee behaviour are rated as poor role models. Lastly, comparison with successful senior women can threaten the self-esteem of junior women, unless they identify with and see their success as attainable. When senior, queen bee female leaders thus distance themselves from these junior women, junior women may perceive upward mobility as unattainable and even undesirable.

For organizations

Queen bees can diminish outcomes for organizations by limiting their opportunities to benefit from the diversity that women can offer. When women feel like they need to adjust themselves to the masculine culture, they are unlikely to add a such a diverse perspective. Some companies might even discontinue equality policies because of the queen bee phenomenon, by concluding that: “senior women who, based on their femininity, would bring other values, insights and qualities to the company are actually very alike the men who were already there”.

For the gender hierarchy

The queen bee phenomenon is thus also a source that legitimizes current gender inequality because it allows people to conclude that women are themselves to blame for their lower outcomes. In the media, evidence is presented as if the rivalry between women causes senior women to limit the career opportunities of their junior counterparts. The queen bee phenomenon fits this gender stereotype of women as hostile toward each other, and distract from the actual problem, which is the reduced opportunities and difficult circumstances under which women achieve.

How can we combat the queen bee phenomenon?

The queen bee phenomenon can be combated by different means: reducing social identity threat and reducing beliefs in system legitimacy. Reducing social identity threat can be achieved through interventions such as self-affirmation. It may also be reduced by making women more aware of how implicit gender bias and collective disadvantage affect the outcomes of women as a group, and how they may personally be affected by gender discrimination (reducing beliefs in system legitimacy).

What can be concluded?

An explanation for why some women show queen bee behaviour has been offered. It has been shown that some organizational dynamics trigger queen bee responses, due to underlying social identity processes. In addition, it has been described that the queen bee response is not specific to women, and can occur in other disadvantaged groups.