Queen bee syndrome debunked: Women aren’t kicking the ladder out after all - Women's Agenda

Queen bee syndrome debunked: Women aren’t kicking the ladder out after all

The familiar myth that corporate women who make it to the top actively try and keep other women down – ‘queen bee’ syndrome – has been debunked by a team of researchers at the Columbia Business School

The idea that women in positions of leadership use their authority to keep other women – whom they see as competitors – out of the top spots is one that has been popular since a 1973 study showing female leaders are more critical of female subordinates than male subordinates.

Something about this notion of ‘queen bee syndrome’ managed to catch public attention – it quickly started showing up frequently in movies and television. This happened sometimes in the context of corporate life – think Devil Wears Prada – and sometimes in a social setting – think Mean Girls.

The ‘women are their own worst enemies’ story has been so highly popularised that many now speak of it as if it a conclusive fact – but new research shows this is not the case.

Colombia Business School researchers surveyed management teams in 1,500 companies over a 20 year stretch and they found that not only were women not actively pushing other women back down the corporate ladder, they were helping them climb up it.

The study found that when a company appointed a woman as its CEO, women became considerably more likely to be appointed to senior management or leadership roles. On the other hand, when a woman was promoted to the top eschalons but not to the CEO role, other women became 50% less likely to be given the opportunity to follow her to the senior ranks.

So on the one hand, the study found that women in the top role are actually more likely to actively seek out and promote other women. On the other hand, it found that companies with male CEOs stop promoting women once they have one woman in the senior ranks.

The researchers described the latter as an “implicit quota”.

“Women face and implicit quota, whereby firms seek to maintain a small number of women on their top management team, usually only one,” they said.

“While firms gain legitimacy from having women in top management, the value of this legitimacy declines with each woman.”

This implies that it is not women who hold other women back. In fact, women do quite the opposite. It is the male-dominated leadership teams and male CEOs who are limiting the opportunity to get ahead to only one woman at a time.

Helen Fraser, CEO of GDST, said this research should put an end to the story about women freezing out their female competitors in corporate life in order to get ahead.

“It used to be believed that women were less likely to help others with career advancement because of fear of professional rivalry or of being undermined,” she said.

“This new research indicates that the notion female senior executives are ‘queen bees’ who are unwilling to support other women needs to be put to rest.”

We all know the famous Madeleine Albright quote – recently repeated by Hillary Clinton at a women’s tech conference – “there is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women”. But what if those women are a myth? 

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