November 7, 2012 • 25 mins
Queen Bee Syndrome was coined in the 1970s to describe terrible lady bosses, yet recent research challenges the notion of Queen Bee Syndrome. Listen in to learn why women should help other women - and men -- in the workplace
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never Told You from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Caroline and I'm Kristen. We Kristen and I talked about
them phobia not too long ago, and it got a
really strong response from people. Everybody had stories to share
(00:24):
of how they had maybe felt like that in the past,
they had as women, they had bad relationships with other women,
or just hated the feminine things in life. Well, so
this got the ball rolling on a slightly different topic,
but but related, and that is women hating on women
in general. But then that led to a whole other thing,
(00:46):
which is the queen Bee syndrome, which we will explain.
And it sounds ridiculous, but basically it's this idea that
women in positions of power are holding down women in
subordinate positions because they're so afraid, they're so threatened by
these young women who need help, that they're just going
to make your life a living hell. Now. The term
(01:07):
queen Bee syndrome was coined in nineteen seventy three by
a trio of researchers who were looking into the way
some women interact, particularly in the workplace, and they came
up with Queen Bee syndrome to denote the alpha female
who wants to preserve her power at all costs. Because
(01:29):
if you think about the Bee hive, there could only
be one queen. That's right, there can only be one Highlander,
miss highlander. Um. Yeah, this it also sort of encompasses
this whole idea and attitude, particularly at the time that
they coined this term. Obviously that maybe sort of across
the board, all lady bosses were the B word, you know,
(01:51):
not queen Bee. You know what I mean, Um, that
all of these women are just like clawing at each
other to get to the top and trying to sabotage
each other. I just feel like there's this pervasive idea,
and I feel like there's even some residue of that
that still hangs on today. There's absolutely residue of that,
I mean, because yeah, it makes total sense for them
to come up with this concept in ninety three when
(02:15):
women were still you know, just making those initial inroads
in the workplace. But if we're talking about from a
top down perspective, Uh, I don't have the statistics in
front of me, but in terms of CEOs of fortune companies,
what like twenty five of them are headed by women,
and every time it happens, it's this huge deal. And
(02:36):
every time you read, uh, you know, a profile about
a powerful woman in business, it's like they're looking for
Queen Bee syndrome. Like Marissa Meyer, who was recently named
CEO of Yahoo, has been dissected in so many different
ways because she is not, you know, publicly all lady
(03:01):
pro lady fist bump. You know, she doesn't want to
talk about her pregnancy, she doesn't want to take a
lot of maternity leave, she doesn't want to call herself
a feminist. She just wants to fix Yahoo and make
a b jillion dollars and live in her penthouse in
San Francisco. That's right. Um, Yeah, This whole idea is
basically that, you know, female bosses could feel more threatened
(03:21):
and less generous about sharing their positions of power as
there are fewer opportunities for them. But that that's kind
of dumb. Well, there there are studies that have found
that women working under women are more stressed out than
men working under women. And there was a study that
(03:41):
I found published in the British Journal of Social Psychology
that I wanted to call out because this is something
that we've talked about before on the podcast and something
that comes up a lot when it comes to gender
in the workplace. So it's published in September two thousand four,
and it suggested that the gender gap in stem fields
(04:02):
those science, tech, engineering, math were attributed to queen b syndrome,
and the researcher is right. Individual upward mobility i e.
Of female faculty implies distancing the self from the group stereotype,
which not only involves perceiving the self as a non
prototypical group member, but may also elicit stereotypical views of
(04:25):
other in group members. In other words, if you are
in a sea of men competing for a slot, you
don't want to you know, you want to get along
with them. You don't want to seem biased towards women,
and you might inadvertently uh not help out other women
(04:45):
in the process because it took so much elbowing to
get there. But another study shows that this whole queen
be thing is totally a myth and that women are
actually more likely to help out their their homies. This
was June study by Catalyst UH of women they found
(05:06):
who received career development support are now developing new talent
compared to fifty six of men. They also found that
seventy of the women developing new talent are developing women specifically,
compared tot of men. And so Eileen Lang, who's the
president and CEO of Catalyst, says, the notion that women
(05:27):
executives are queen bees who are unwilling to support other
women needs to be put to rest. And I agree
that the queen bee thing, if you apply it as
an across the board women are terrible bosses thing, is ridiculous.
Obviously it is. I will say that I have worked
for a queen bee, though, yeah I've I've maybe been
stung by queen bees here and there. Um. But I
(05:49):
think too though, like if we're talking about and I
feel like I'm playing a little bit of Devil's advocate
for a second. But bear with me. Um. Now, this
study is not examining the quality of how a female
executive gets along with her employees. This is specifically about
career development, and in reporting on the study, UH, the
(06:14):
Washington Post pointed out that these were mid level women.
The catalysts followed UH from two thousand and eight to
two thousand ten, so as they were, you know, working
upward in their career, whereas the most persistent queen Bee
syndrome that we hear about, at least according to other research,
happens at the senior level where the women it's really there,
(06:39):
where the women are, you know, they're the only females
with a corner office. And maybe again, like the it
happens inadvertently where they have reached that position of power
and probably coming up you know in uh times when
uh it was more it was harder for women to
(07:01):
make inroads in the workplace. So I think that maybe
it happens more, which is also why there's a notion
that maybe queen Bee syndrome is less relevant to say
you or I of a newer generation, where I think
it's pretty common career advice for women who want to
advance to find a female mentor specifically, I've been told
that before. Like you, you seek out the woman who
(07:23):
will give you a hand up. Um. But for uh,
for older women, maybe the story is a little bit different.
Maybe that's where the queen Bee syndrome happens more. Right, Yeah,
it could be. There's also the idea you know you
mentioned like higher level versus mid level there's also this
idea of just women being in roles that maybe aren't
(07:45):
traditionally for them being over women who are in more
you know, quote unquote traditionally female jobs. And so we
found this study. It's from November. Joe Williams, who's a
law professor at University of California, was talking about this.
She says, the tension between female secretaries and female lawyers
(08:06):
comes up because of this shift in dynamics. The study
was of legal secretaries who said that they preferred to
work for men. They expressed gender bias in the study,
and they point out that this could be because of
the conflict where the traditional female role of secretary versus
the non traditional role of lawyer kind of they there's
(08:28):
just conflict there. She said that all professional women find
themselves walking a tight rope between masculinity and femininity, and
when people choose different approaches to how they walk the
tight rope, that conflict often breaks out. Yeah, and there's
also gendered interpretation of uh, someone in power getting frustrated
(08:48):
or expressing discontent if you and this is something too
that I feel like. The this episode about Queen b
Syndrome ties together a lot of different things that we've
talked about before. Uh. In one of those things is
that a powerful woman or really a woman in general, uh,
in the workplace, specifically expressing anger or discontent is labeled
(09:11):
as uh, what's another word for a female dog? Whereas
and and and it's also considered a sign of weakness.
It's them showing emotion, whereas a guy doing the same thing,
he's just being a mad guy. He might be kind
of a jerk, but there's still more respect for the
jerk than for the emotional, you know what. That's right.
(09:36):
So you know, we we've discussed like, uh, is it
better to work for a man or a woman who
likes who likes working for men? Better? Apparently a lot
of people, but uh. David mom Ay in January Social
Science Research Research Research cited several studies that found basically,
men's competence as leaders is assumed. It's assumed that if
(09:58):
you're a man, you're a leader, you deserve to be there,
you're competent, just as women's incompetence is pretty much assumed.
So female supervisors and male supervisors are evaluated in our
minds as workers differently. Yeah, because until we and I
think this would I would I would like to see
this on an industry by industry basis, because if you
(10:22):
take a more pink collar industry, I wonder if those
kind of gender biases are as prevalent as if you
look at it and say, uh, let's talk about Wall Street,
you know where, Yeah, there are fewer women and especially
fewer women in positions of like the sea level power,
whether or not those ideas are more prominent, like prevalent
(10:46):
that men are inherently competent in women. If they are
in power, they've had to fight their way there. So
that's constantly you know, it's just this constant struggle. Yeah. Well,
there's also they point out our heat David or David
Mommy points out there's this conflict again because there's in congruity,
he says, between their lower status as women and their
(11:08):
higher status as leaders. So like you know, ingrains social
perceptions of your proper place and how when that's turned
on their head, it's like, oh, well, but you're a woman,
you're not supposed to be telling me what to do. Yeah.
And I also I do get frustrated with hearing that
um in the arguments for why it's better to work
for a man um you know, like men are less
(11:30):
threatened and they're less emotional and they just have more power.
Because that's only ladies, women, men, any who know every
that is that's doing everybody um a disservice. Because when
when you eliminate the queen beast syndrome and you actively
(11:52):
like mentor the women and you bring women into your organization, Uh,
it is better for It is better for everybody. And
just in case, I think the dollars can speak louder
than words, since we're talking about the workplace after all.
One thing that that Catalyst study found was that those
who took an active role, these bosses they were looking at,
(12:14):
these mid level bosses who took an active role in
developing others men or women in their organizations saw a
twenty five thousand dollar difference in additional compensation. So if
you help other people out, then you're helping yourself at
the end of the day. Now. Susannah Breslin, in a
column for Forbes way back in June, had some advice
(12:38):
for working for a female boss, and she basically says, like,
can we just go to work? Like, can we just
can we just work and not have to be BFFs
because we're female, ladies, people humans. Can we just do
our jobs well. She was also the author of the
column why I'd rather work for a man than a woman. Uh,
(13:00):
you know, and I get what she's saying, like in
terms of let her wear the pants, you know, it
doesn't it doesn't matter. Let's just do our jobs. We
don't like you said, we don't have to be bff
um and don't play to her weaknesses, though, she says
the single best way to climb up their ranks, to
get the queen bee who replaced the alpha male in
the corner office, to promote, mentor and reward you is
(13:22):
to make yourself indispensable to her. You can interchange like
whatever pronoun you want, though, if you want to do
well at work, you make yourself indispensable. It doesn't matter
who is giving you, like cutting your check. Yeah. Do
I sound angry. I feel like I sound angry. I
feel like I sound like a queen bee right now,
you sound like a podcaster who has a point. I
(13:43):
guess I just get um. I get frustrated with these
These are very real issues that I have experienced in
the workplace. I understand that they happen, but I still don't.
I don't know. It's there comes a point when just saying,
like when categorized seeing all female bosses as one thing,
(14:03):
you know, that's not what's that doing for anybody? Yeah? Well,
She also brings up sisterhood, which was a word that
came up a lot when we were reading stuff about
the fimphobia. She says, if the sisterhood and women supporting
each other is supposed to be the path to women
getting ahead, how come decades of telling women to do
it isn't working. You're a woman making less than your
(14:24):
male peer. Maybe that's because you're trying to be everybody's
friend and as a consequence, nobody sees you as a
serious competitor. Or maybe you should reinterpret your idea of
sisterhood and use that as a way to find a mentor,
a female mentor or a male mentor. It doesn't really
matter to then work your way up, because the old
(14:44):
boys club is a saying for a reason. Guys have
been going out for scotch and cigars and wheeling and
dealing after you know, nine to five hours for a
long time, so women just do it too. Well, I
don't think I don't know, maybe her perception that she
has here that maybe she's experienced in previous workplaces is that,
(15:06):
you know, girls are getting together and just giggling and
talking about the boys and stuff like that. But I
think it's a shame to totally dismiss women getting together
and helping each other, right, because I think that we
can acknowledge that there are perhaps differences in the ways
that uh, men and women tend to socialize. Like myself,
(15:28):
I'm not a very workplace social person. That's not where
my uh, that's not where I get my chuckles. But um,
you know, telling telling women that in order to succeed
you have to just be like a man only reinforces
at the end of the day, Queen Bee syndrome, does
it not. That's why I sound like I'm like pulling
(15:50):
my hair out. And not only does it seem to
feed this mythology of queen Bee syndrome, but there's also
a touch of female misogyny and femphobia and saying like
I don't want to be your bff sisterhood of the
traveling what you know, Like like well why why so?
(16:12):
Why so down on on being a gal? Yeah, yeah,
exactly this. This is so very related to our Fimphobia podcast.
And it's funny because on on TV Tropes dot Org
it's a great website, they talk about the female misogynist
character or just figure and you know, they're acting like guys. Uh,
(16:32):
some go so far as being almost considered guys. They're
portrayed as feminists, but they actually hate all things women
pretty much. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, they're like the bro girls
who you know, they're the honorary dudes because they're so
cool and they don't then they don't have female friends. Um.
(16:54):
And then on the other end of the spectrum is
the extremely conservative housewife who thinks that when men are
just simply inferior two men that should be there should
be some subservience there as well. And some people have
h have called out I don't want to get political,
but some people, such as Audrey Beardsley over the Daily Cause,
(17:15):
have cited conservative female politicians as examples of queen bees
who are not advocating for things like reproductive rights and
expanded healthcare UM and expanded benefits for single mothers and
closing the gender wage gap US because they don't they
(17:37):
don't want other women to to get ahead. Now, I
don't know that's that's a big statement to make, but um,
but but I think it's a compelling one. But yeah,
it is interesting to take the queen bee stereotype and
and look at look outside of the workplace, look at
female politicians, look at you know, just women on the
(17:58):
street or characters on a TV show, things like that,
because that the stereotypes and those viewpoints are very prevalent. Yeah.
And also, like my closing question with all of this is,
don't dudes do this too? Do what I don't like,
don't guys get on a powered trip as well? We
(18:20):
say alpha male for a reason. Well, now that that
goes back to all the stuff we were talking about
with it being more socially acceptable for a guy to
be tough instead of a woman. Yeah, and maybe one
of the reasons why we're still seeing with all these
studies reports of people preferring to work under a man
(18:41):
than a woman is because like we have all of
this stuff stirring around in our brain of like how
we're going to be perceived and you know, what we
need to do to maintain our power, and oh, but
don't be too powerful. You don't want to come off
as a queen bee, and maybe it's just mucking things
up in a way where we should just be confident
and be indispensable. Yeah, rely, I mean rely on your skills.
(19:03):
I've worked for women and men. I've worked for an
amazing uh lady supervisor who knew her stuff. You know,
she wasn't there to boss you around or anything or
make you feel bad about yourself. She just knew her
stuff and was a great supervisor. I've worked for another
woman who did abuse her power and did use it
to actually make people feel really bad about themselves. But
(19:26):
I mean, it's all just it's got a look at
the draw if you get a good boss, regardless of
that person's gender. Yeah, and I can I can definitely
understand a generational aspect of something akin to queen Bee syndrome,
of those those early female pioneers in the workplace who
(19:46):
did have to uh you know, go tooth and nail
to get where they are. And we are, as younger women,
we do enjoy some privilege from that. But I think
it's time for us to buzzle from the queen Bee
syndrome conversation and let's maybe focus on our work or
(20:06):
maybe I'm being too flip about it. I really do
want to hear from from listeners out there. Um am
I just in podcast La La Land or does it
seem like the Queen Bee syndrome it needs to die?
I think it needs to die. I think it's one
thing to have a like a terrible boss who happens
(20:26):
to be a woman. I don't think we need to
have this idea of a queen be syndrome that applies
to somehow applies to all female leaders, you know, in
positions of power. I agree, but let us know your
thoughts any women in power out there too, if we've
got some managerial level ladies out there, or or if
(20:47):
Hillary Clinton is listening, can you tell us how your
situation is going. Just text us, just text us, yeah please,
um yeah, I'm curious to know if if you're in
a managerial position as a woman, if you feel those
kinds of negative stereotypes, let us know Mom Stuff at
Discovery dot com, or you can head over to our
Facebook and leave a comment there. Now, before we head
(21:09):
into listener letters, just a quick word to let you
know that this episode of Stuff Mom Never Told You
is brought to you by Jack Threads. Jack Threads is
quickly become the online shopping destination for dudes. And I
know that there dudes out there listening. So if you
are in need of some awesome new clothing for the
(21:29):
colder months, head on over to Jack threads dot com
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(21:51):
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as Jack Threads likes to say, full prices for suckers.
Now back to our listener letters. We've got a couple
(22:14):
of emails here about our episode on INFL football watching
among women's. Uh So, I got one here from Pete
and he said, I'm a lifelong Seahawks fan and I
won't comment about the call you guys reference in your program. However,
I will say. Many of the women in my life
are NFL fans. You talked about how the NFL and
(22:36):
many men don't necessarily call women fans. They don't expect
that women understand and know the game, and they think
that women will be more interested in fashion or the snacks.
I'm interested in snacks always. The women I know would
eat these people as their game snacks. They know their stats,
they scream at the TV. They would kill referees for
bad calls. They don't buy jersey to wear it because
(22:57):
it has pink. They buy it because it's a jersey
that presents their team. I bet there are a lot
of women like the women I know. I think painting
things pink isn't necessarily the best way to reach out
to women. I love the fact that women in my
life are NFL fans. As a Seahawks fan, I wish
they weren't mostly Oakland Raiders fans. Well, you know, you
can't have it all, Pete, or maybe you can have
(23:19):
it all. That's for another podcast. This is an email
from Abbey, same topic NFL fans. She has an opinion
ladies and gentlemen. She says, while I won't touch the
pink jersey topic with a tin foot pole because flames
flames on the side of my face. I will talk
on my experience as a lady fan, she says. I'm
(23:40):
born and raised in Kansas City, Chiefs fan football every Sunday,
and yes, I have the perfect taco dip recipe that
gets passed through my family. I have tons of gear
and love wearing my jerseys around Midwest Ohio. It gets
a lot of random attention that usually boils down to oh,
you're a girl and don't know any better and a
sympathetic look. Last winter, I was sporting my favorite Chief's jacket.
(24:02):
It's down, crisp, white and arrowhead on the front and
Chiefs emblazoned on the back. I was pumping gas one evening,
minding my own business, and the man at the other
pump called out to me. He asked that the Chiefs jacket.
I responded with a big smile and confirmed that it was.
His response was, so you just like the design of
the jacket, right? You know, ladies aren't really football fans,
let alone such an odd team. The smile faded from
(24:25):
my face. It is one of those life moments where
you think to yourself, is this conversation really happening. I
told the man that I was, in fact a Rabbi
Chiefs fan and felt the need to start stat dumping
to back the position up. No one questions a man
in a Dolphins jacket in this town, but a twentysomething
woman in a Chief's jacket is just in it for
the fashion. Also, why just ask a stranger something like that?
(24:48):
So yeah, I don't know. Man, I believe you're a
football fan. You like the jacket. That guy was not
his business, So thank you Abby. Speaking of jackets, I
did think when I was a kid that started jackets,
the football starter jackets were super cool, but I never
got one. Maybe I can live a dream now A
good story. Thanks, I'll tell it again sometimes. Mom Stuff
(25:11):
at discovery dot com is where you can send your emails,
and you can also head over to Facebook. Of course,
tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast, and follow us on
tumbler Stuff Mom Never told You dot tumbler dot com,
and if you would like to get smarter during the week,
head over to our website, It's how stuff works dot
(25:31):
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Does it how stuff works dot com
Welcome to stuff Mom Never Told You from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Caroline and I'm Kristen. We Kristen and I talked about
them phobia not too long ago, and it got a
really strong response from people. Everybody had stories to share
(00:24):
of how they had maybe felt like that in the past,
they had as women, they had bad relationships with other women,
or just hated the feminine things in life. Well, so
this got the ball rolling on a slightly different topic,
but but related, and that is women hating on women
in general. But then that led to a whole other thing,
(00:46):
which is the queen Bee syndrome, which we will explain.
And it sounds ridiculous, but basically it's this idea that
women in positions of power are holding down women in
subordinate positions because they're so afraid, they're so threatened by
these young women who need help, that they're just going
to make your life a living hell. Now. The term
(01:07):
queen Bee syndrome was coined in nineteen seventy three by
a trio of researchers who were looking into the way
some women interact, particularly in the workplace, and they came
up with Queen Bee syndrome to denote the alpha female
who wants to preserve her power at all costs. Because
(01:29):
if you think about the Bee hive, there could only
be one queen. That's right, there can only be one Highlander,
miss highlander. Um. Yeah, this it also sort of encompasses
this whole idea and attitude, particularly at the time that
they coined this term. Obviously that maybe sort of across
the board, all lady bosses were the B word, you know,
(01:51):
not queen Bee. You know what I mean, Um, that
all of these women are just like clawing at each
other to get to the top and trying to sabotage
each other. I just feel like there's this pervasive idea,
and I feel like there's even some residue of that
that still hangs on today. There's absolutely residue of that,
I mean, because yeah, it makes total sense for them
to come up with this concept in ninety three when
(02:15):
women were still you know, just making those initial inroads
in the workplace. But if we're talking about from a
top down perspective, Uh, I don't have the statistics in
front of me, but in terms of CEOs of fortune companies,
what like twenty five of them are headed by women,
and every time it happens, it's this huge deal. And
(02:36):
every time you read, uh, you know, a profile about
a powerful woman in business, it's like they're looking for
Queen Bee syndrome. Like Marissa Meyer, who was recently named
CEO of Yahoo, has been dissected in so many different
ways because she is not, you know, publicly all lady
(03:01):
pro lady fist bump. You know, she doesn't want to
talk about her pregnancy, she doesn't want to take a
lot of maternity leave, she doesn't want to call herself
a feminist. She just wants to fix Yahoo and make
a b jillion dollars and live in her penthouse in
San Francisco. That's right. Um, Yeah, This whole idea is
basically that, you know, female bosses could feel more threatened
(03:21):
and less generous about sharing their positions of power as
there are fewer opportunities for them. But that that's kind
of dumb. Well, there there are studies that have found
that women working under women are more stressed out than
men working under women. And there was a study that
(03:41):
I found published in the British Journal of Social Psychology
that I wanted to call out because this is something
that we've talked about before on the podcast and something
that comes up a lot when it comes to gender
in the workplace. So it's published in September two thousand four,
and it suggested that the gender gap in stem fields
(04:02):
those science, tech, engineering, math were attributed to queen b syndrome,
and the researcher is right. Individual upward mobility i e.
Of female faculty implies distancing the self from the group stereotype,
which not only involves perceiving the self as a non
prototypical group member, but may also elicit stereotypical views of
(04:25):
other in group members. In other words, if you are
in a sea of men competing for a slot, you
don't want to you know, you want to get along
with them. You don't want to seem biased towards women,
and you might inadvertently uh not help out other women
(04:45):
in the process because it took so much elbowing to
get there. But another study shows that this whole queen
be thing is totally a myth and that women are
actually more likely to help out their their homies. This
was June study by Catalyst UH of women they found
(05:06):
who received career development support are now developing new talent
compared to fifty six of men. They also found that
seventy of the women developing new talent are developing women specifically,
compared tot of men. And so Eileen Lang, who's the
president and CEO of Catalyst, says, the notion that women
(05:27):
executives are queen bees who are unwilling to support other
women needs to be put to rest. And I agree
that the queen bee thing, if you apply it as
an across the board women are terrible bosses thing, is ridiculous.
Obviously it is. I will say that I have worked
for a queen bee, though, yeah I've I've maybe been
stung by queen bees here and there. Um. But I
(05:49):
think too though, like if we're talking about and I
feel like I'm playing a little bit of Devil's advocate
for a second. But bear with me. Um. Now, this
study is not examining the quality of how a female
executive gets along with her employees. This is specifically about
career development, and in reporting on the study, UH, the
(06:14):
Washington Post pointed out that these were mid level women.
The catalysts followed UH from two thousand and eight to
two thousand ten, so as they were, you know, working
upward in their career, whereas the most persistent queen Bee
syndrome that we hear about, at least according to other research,
happens at the senior level where the women it's really there,
(06:39):
where the women are, you know, they're the only females
with a corner office. And maybe again, like the it
happens inadvertently where they have reached that position of power
and probably coming up you know in uh times when
uh it was more it was harder for women to
(07:01):
make inroads in the workplace. So I think that maybe
it happens more, which is also why there's a notion
that maybe queen Bee syndrome is less relevant to say
you or I of a newer generation, where I think
it's pretty common career advice for women who want to
advance to find a female mentor specifically, I've been told
that before. Like you, you seek out the woman who
(07:23):
will give you a hand up. Um. But for uh,
for older women, maybe the story is a little bit different.
Maybe that's where the queen Bee syndrome happens more. Right, Yeah,
it could be. There's also the idea you know you
mentioned like higher level versus mid level there's also this
idea of just women being in roles that maybe aren't
(07:45):
traditionally for them being over women who are in more
you know, quote unquote traditionally female jobs. And so we
found this study. It's from November. Joe Williams, who's a
law professor at University of California, was talking about this.
She says, the tension between female secretaries and female lawyers
(08:06):
comes up because of this shift in dynamics. The study
was of legal secretaries who said that they preferred to
work for men. They expressed gender bias in the study,
and they point out that this could be because of
the conflict where the traditional female role of secretary versus
the non traditional role of lawyer kind of they there's
(08:28):
just conflict there. She said that all professional women find
themselves walking a tight rope between masculinity and femininity, and
when people choose different approaches to how they walk the
tight rope, that conflict often breaks out. Yeah, and there's
also gendered interpretation of uh, someone in power getting frustrated
(08:48):
or expressing discontent if you and this is something too
that I feel like. The this episode about Queen b
Syndrome ties together a lot of different things that we've
talked about before. Uh. In one of those things is
that a powerful woman or really a woman in general, uh,
in the workplace, specifically expressing anger or discontent is labeled
(09:11):
as uh, what's another word for a female dog? Whereas
and and and it's also considered a sign of weakness.
It's them showing emotion, whereas a guy doing the same thing,
he's just being a mad guy. He might be kind
of a jerk, but there's still more respect for the
jerk than for the emotional, you know what. That's right.
(09:36):
So you know, we we've discussed like, uh, is it
better to work for a man or a woman who
likes who likes working for men? Better? Apparently a lot
of people, but uh. David mom Ay in January Social
Science Research Research Research cited several studies that found basically,
men's competence as leaders is assumed. It's assumed that if
(09:58):
you're a man, you're a leader, you deserve to be there,
you're competent, just as women's incompetence is pretty much assumed.
So female supervisors and male supervisors are evaluated in our
minds as workers differently. Yeah, because until we and I
think this would I would I would like to see
this on an industry by industry basis, because if you
(10:22):
take a more pink collar industry, I wonder if those
kind of gender biases are as prevalent as if you
look at it and say, uh, let's talk about Wall Street,
you know where, Yeah, there are fewer women and especially
fewer women in positions of like the sea level power,
whether or not those ideas are more prominent, like prevalent
(10:46):
that men are inherently competent in women. If they are
in power, they've had to fight their way there. So
that's constantly you know, it's just this constant struggle. Yeah. Well,
there's also they point out our heat David or David
Mommy points out there's this conflict again because there's in congruity,
he says, between their lower status as women and their
(11:08):
higher status as leaders. So like you know, ingrains social
perceptions of your proper place and how when that's turned
on their head, it's like, oh, well, but you're a woman,
you're not supposed to be telling me what to do. Yeah.
And I also I do get frustrated with hearing that
um in the arguments for why it's better to work
for a man um you know, like men are less
(11:30):
threatened and they're less emotional and they just have more power.
Because that's only ladies, women, men, any who know every
that is that's doing everybody um a disservice. Because when
when you eliminate the queen beast syndrome and you actively
(11:52):
like mentor the women and you bring women into your organization, Uh,
it is better for It is better for everybody. And
just in case, I think the dollars can speak louder
than words, since we're talking about the workplace after all.
One thing that that Catalyst study found was that those
who took an active role, these bosses they were looking at,
(12:14):
these mid level bosses who took an active role in
developing others men or women in their organizations saw a
twenty five thousand dollar difference in additional compensation. So if
you help other people out, then you're helping yourself at
the end of the day. Now. Susannah Breslin, in a
column for Forbes way back in June, had some advice
(12:38):
for working for a female boss, and she basically says, like,
can we just go to work? Like, can we just
can we just work and not have to be BFFs
because we're female, ladies, people humans. Can we just do
our jobs well. She was also the author of the
column why I'd rather work for a man than a woman. Uh,
(13:00):
you know, and I get what she's saying, like in
terms of let her wear the pants, you know, it
doesn't it doesn't matter. Let's just do our jobs. We
don't like you said, we don't have to be bff
um and don't play to her weaknesses, though, she says
the single best way to climb up their ranks, to
get the queen bee who replaced the alpha male in
the corner office, to promote, mentor and reward you is
(13:22):
to make yourself indispensable to her. You can interchange like
whatever pronoun you want, though, if you want to do
well at work, you make yourself indispensable. It doesn't matter
who is giving you, like cutting your check. Yeah. Do
I sound angry. I feel like I sound angry. I
feel like I sound like a queen bee right now,
you sound like a podcaster who has a point. I
(13:43):
guess I just get um. I get frustrated with these
These are very real issues that I have experienced in
the workplace. I understand that they happen, but I still don't.
I don't know. It's there comes a point when just saying,
like when categorized seeing all female bosses as one thing,
(14:03):
you know, that's not what's that doing for anybody? Yeah? Well,
She also brings up sisterhood, which was a word that
came up a lot when we were reading stuff about
the fimphobia. She says, if the sisterhood and women supporting
each other is supposed to be the path to women
getting ahead, how come decades of telling women to do
it isn't working. You're a woman making less than your
(14:24):
male peer. Maybe that's because you're trying to be everybody's
friend and as a consequence, nobody sees you as a
serious competitor. Or maybe you should reinterpret your idea of
sisterhood and use that as a way to find a mentor,
a female mentor or a male mentor. It doesn't really
matter to then work your way up, because the old
(14:44):
boys club is a saying for a reason. Guys have
been going out for scotch and cigars and wheeling and
dealing after you know, nine to five hours for a
long time, so women just do it too. Well, I
don't think I don't know, maybe her perception that she
has here that maybe she's experienced in previous workplaces is that,
(15:06):
you know, girls are getting together and just giggling and
talking about the boys and stuff like that. But I
think it's a shame to totally dismiss women getting together
and helping each other, right, because I think that we
can acknowledge that there are perhaps differences in the ways
that uh, men and women tend to socialize. Like myself,
(15:28):
I'm not a very workplace social person. That's not where
my uh, that's not where I get my chuckles. But um,
you know, telling telling women that in order to succeed
you have to just be like a man only reinforces
at the end of the day, Queen Bee syndrome, does
it not. That's why I sound like I'm like pulling
(15:50):
my hair out. And not only does it seem to
feed this mythology of queen Bee syndrome, but there's also
a touch of female misogyny and femphobia and saying like
I don't want to be your bff sisterhood of the
traveling what you know, Like like well why why so?
(16:12):
Why so down on on being a gal? Yeah, yeah,
exactly this. This is so very related to our Fimphobia podcast.
And it's funny because on on TV Tropes dot Org
it's a great website, they talk about the female misogynist
character or just figure and you know, they're acting like guys. Uh,
(16:32):
some go so far as being almost considered guys. They're
portrayed as feminists, but they actually hate all things women
pretty much. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, they're like the bro girls
who you know, they're the honorary dudes because they're so
cool and they don't then they don't have female friends. Um.
(16:54):
And then on the other end of the spectrum is
the extremely conservative housewife who thinks that when men are
just simply inferior two men that should be there should
be some subservience there as well. And some people have
h have called out I don't want to get political,
but some people, such as Audrey Beardsley over the Daily Cause,
(17:15):
have cited conservative female politicians as examples of queen bees
who are not advocating for things like reproductive rights and
expanded healthcare UM and expanded benefits for single mothers and
closing the gender wage gap US because they don't they
(17:37):
don't want other women to to get ahead. Now, I
don't know that's that's a big statement to make, but um,
but but I think it's a compelling one. But yeah,
it is interesting to take the queen bee stereotype and
and look at look outside of the workplace, look at
female politicians, look at you know, just women on the
(17:58):
street or characters on a TV show, things like that,
because that the stereotypes and those viewpoints are very prevalent. Yeah.
And also, like my closing question with all of this is,
don't dudes do this too? Do what I don't like,
don't guys get on a powered trip as well? We
(18:20):
say alpha male for a reason. Well, now that that
goes back to all the stuff we were talking about
with it being more socially acceptable for a guy to
be tough instead of a woman. Yeah, and maybe one
of the reasons why we're still seeing with all these
studies reports of people preferring to work under a man
(18:41):
than a woman is because like we have all of
this stuff stirring around in our brain of like how
we're going to be perceived and you know, what we
need to do to maintain our power, and oh, but
don't be too powerful. You don't want to come off
as a queen bee, and maybe it's just mucking things
up in a way where we should just be confident
and be indispensable. Yeah, rely, I mean rely on your skills.
(19:03):
I've worked for women and men. I've worked for an
amazing uh lady supervisor who knew her stuff. You know,
she wasn't there to boss you around or anything or
make you feel bad about yourself. She just knew her
stuff and was a great supervisor. I've worked for another
woman who did abuse her power and did use it
to actually make people feel really bad about themselves. But
(19:26):
I mean, it's all just it's got a look at
the draw if you get a good boss, regardless of
that person's gender. Yeah, and I can I can definitely
understand a generational aspect of something akin to queen Bee syndrome,
of those those early female pioneers in the workplace who
(19:46):
did have to uh you know, go tooth and nail
to get where they are. And we are, as younger women,
we do enjoy some privilege from that. But I think
it's time for us to buzzle from the queen Bee
syndrome conversation and let's maybe focus on our work or
(20:06):
maybe I'm being too flip about it. I really do
want to hear from from listeners out there. Um am
I just in podcast La La Land or does it
seem like the Queen Bee syndrome it needs to die?
I think it needs to die. I think it's one
thing to have a like a terrible boss who happens
(20:26):
to be a woman. I don't think we need to
have this idea of a queen be syndrome that applies
to somehow applies to all female leaders, you know, in
positions of power. I agree, but let us know your
thoughts any women in power out there too, if we've
got some managerial level ladies out there, or or if
(20:47):
Hillary Clinton is listening, can you tell us how your
situation is going. Just text us, just text us, yeah please,
um yeah, I'm curious to know if if you're in
a managerial position as a woman, if you feel those
kinds of negative stereotypes, let us know Mom Stuff at
Discovery dot com, or you can head over to our
Facebook and leave a comment there. Now, before we head
(21:09):
into listener letters, just a quick word to let you
know that this episode of Stuff Mom Never Told You
is brought to you by Jack Threads. Jack Threads is
quickly become the online shopping destination for dudes. And I
know that there dudes out there listening. So if you
are in need of some awesome new clothing for the
(21:29):
colder months, head on over to Jack threads dot com
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as Jack Threads likes to say, full prices for suckers.
Now back to our listener letters. We've got a couple
(22:14):
of emails here about our episode on INFL football watching
among women's. Uh So, I got one here from Pete
and he said, I'm a lifelong Seahawks fan and I
won't comment about the call you guys reference in your program. However,
I will say. Many of the women in my life
are NFL fans. You talked about how the NFL and
(22:36):
many men don't necessarily call women fans. They don't expect
that women understand and know the game, and they think
that women will be more interested in fashion or the snacks.
I'm interested in snacks always. The women I know would
eat these people as their game snacks. They know their stats,
they scream at the TV. They would kill referees for
bad calls. They don't buy jersey to wear it because
(22:57):
it has pink. They buy it because it's a jersey
that presents their team. I bet there are a lot
of women like the women I know. I think painting
things pink isn't necessarily the best way to reach out
to women. I love the fact that women in my
life are NFL fans. As a Seahawks fan, I wish
they weren't mostly Oakland Raiders fans. Well, you know, you
can't have it all, Pete, or maybe you can have
(23:19):
it all. That's for another podcast. This is an email
from Abbey, same topic NFL fans. She has an opinion
ladies and gentlemen. She says, while I won't touch the
pink jersey topic with a tin foot pole because flames
flames on the side of my face. I will talk
on my experience as a lady fan, she says. I'm
(23:40):
born and raised in Kansas City, Chiefs fan football every Sunday,
and yes, I have the perfect taco dip recipe that
gets passed through my family. I have tons of gear
and love wearing my jerseys around Midwest Ohio. It gets
a lot of random attention that usually boils down to oh,
you're a girl and don't know any better and a
sympathetic look. Last winter, I was sporting my favorite Chief's jacket.
(24:02):
It's down, crisp, white and arrowhead on the front and
Chiefs emblazoned on the back. I was pumping gas one evening,
minding my own business, and the man at the other
pump called out to me. He asked that the Chiefs jacket.
I responded with a big smile and confirmed that it was.
His response was, so you just like the design of
the jacket, right? You know, ladies aren't really football fans,
let alone such an odd team. The smile faded from
(24:25):
my face. It is one of those life moments where
you think to yourself, is this conversation really happening. I
told the man that I was, in fact a Rabbi
Chiefs fan and felt the need to start stat dumping
to back the position up. No one questions a man
in a Dolphins jacket in this town, but a twentysomething
woman in a Chief's jacket is just in it for
the fashion. Also, why just ask a stranger something like that?
(24:48):
So yeah, I don't know. Man, I believe you're a
football fan. You like the jacket. That guy was not
his business, So thank you Abby. Speaking of jackets, I
did think when I was a kid that started jackets,
the football starter jackets were super cool, but I never
got one. Maybe I can live a dream now A
good story. Thanks, I'll tell it again sometimes. Mom Stuff
(25:11):
at discovery dot com is where you can send your emails,
and you can also head over to Facebook. Of course,
tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast, and follow us on
tumbler Stuff Mom Never told You dot tumbler dot com,
and if you would like to get smarter during the week,
head over to our website, It's how stuff works dot
(25:31):
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Does it how stuff works dot com
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