Yahoo Finance Why 'Queen Bee' bosses are still prevalent as women battle for leadership roles
We’ve seen progress in the field of women in leadership, but ‘Queen Bee Syndrome’ is still used to describe a style of female leadership that suppresses the rise of female colleagues — “I may have broken the glass ceiling, but I’m not letting anyone else through.”
Is the picture really that one-dimensional, or are there also benefits to Queen Bee mentality?
This week on Yahoo Finance Presents: It’s a Jungle Out There, we spoke to Dr Canan Kocabasoglu Hillmer, senior lecturer and director of global women’s leadership at the Cass Business School, and Sinead Bunting, vice president of marketing in Europe, monster.co.uk, to explore the subject.
“We can all agree being called a ‘Queen Bee’ is not at all positive,” said Bunting. “The implications are that it’s a woman who doesn’t help other women, feels a bit threatened and has an army of male workers, and it’s rare that they have another female in the team.”
The Jungle podcast is a new 10-part series that unpacks productivity lessons from nature. This week’s episode looks at Queen Bees and what we learn about female bosses, the challenges they face and the cyclical toxic behaviour that may manifest.
One of the reasons why Queen Bees exist is because women work in a system where the odds are stacked against them. According to global consultancy McKinsey, only 77 women are promoted to managers for every 100 men who move up the career ladder. Women are also more likely to only take a senior position if a woman has held the position before — dubbed the “revolving door policy.”
However, Kocabasoglu Hillmer said: “We do have more women at the top than the 1980s and we do have more role models but the phenomenon of the ‘Queen Bee’ hasn’t really disappeared. It’s still quite prevalent.”
To understand how you can be a better boss, listen to the full episode above, or download it on Apple Podcasts, ACast, or Google podcasts to listen while on the go.
