Queen Bee
Do you have lofty career goals? If you do, save yourself the trouble of making a grave mistake. Unless she’s very religious, content with life and morally sound, you probably don’t want a woman as your boss.
Often with reason, female bosses have been portrayed as being overbearing, overworking their subordinates, overdoing everything, flying off the handle if things don’t go perfectly, being perfectionistic, nitpicking, backstabbing, jealous, intimidated, and emotionally unstable. If you are in this type of situation, or you have experienced it, you are not imagining things. It's called the Queen Bee Syndrome (QBS).
The "Queen Bee" is a senior alpha female who has endured the male dominated work environment, played office politics and worked harder than her male counterparts to get to and to stay where she is. Finally she has been rewarded with the perfect job title, an expense account, a fat pay check, many perks and several subordinates to work under her. However, as she was hanging on for dear life while climbing up the career/corporate ladder, the "nice girl" disappeared. Her heart hardened and became calloused, and once she got to the "top job" with the corner office, playing nicely in the sand box with other females quickly got deleted from her agenda, least of all playing nice with her female subordinates. That's somewhat to be expected because she’s still bruised and hurting from forcibly shattering the "glass ceiling" while getting her body cut up, bloodied and hurting in the process. All along, she’s had to play nice with guys at all levels to survive and to get where she’s is, so she understands that being nice to all men is a requirement that comes with the territory, but woe betide the women working under her. Remember Attorney Joan Clayton's superior, Senior Partner Sharon Upton Farley in the hit TV show, Girlfriends? She displayed some, but definitely not all of the QBS symptoms. Or better yet, the much dreaded Cruella De Vil of the movie, 101 Dalmatians.
Recently on the Today Show, they said a new study suggests women who break through the glass ceiling are more likely to help male workers rather than female workers. According to the findings, men exceeded women in receiving job-related support from female supervisors and were more optimistic about promotion chances as a result. They also stated that a lady named Lara Dillion isn't surprised. She started her career working under a woman and said she's experienced the dreaded QBS firsthand. She said, “Some of the challenges I encountered with female bosses is this lack of trust or competitiveness.”
Queen Bee
Girl say it! It has happened to me too! At least Lara is lucky because at least her's was a Caucasian woman who was probably only dealing with gender issues in the work environment. Add dealing with racism to that mix and you know what I had to deal with. Mine was an African American female boss who was dealing with many issues including subtle racism, a huge inferiority complex, anger management issues and was downright mean, while all the while telling everyone within earshot of her many "church activities" to let them know she is a Christian. Like Lauryn Hill stated in her song, Doo Wop (That Thing), "Talking out your neck sayin' you're a Christian" was this woman personified. She was a very insecure, jealous, wicked, immature, bossy, manipulative, rude and talkative female with no class and anger management skills. Civility was not her strong point, especially when she told me once not to get my panties in a knot over an issue I discussed with her. She was a real piece of work. Just to show how much she knew, she would tell peoples’ personal business she was told in confidence or got to know from Human Resources to other people. She was a real mess, but she had worked like a dog to get the position she was finally rewarded with and since that's how she got it, she had to work like a dog to keep it, so she in turn made everyone under her work like dogs, using the “other duties as assigned” clause to get away with all her unreasonable work demands that were out of her subordinate's job duties.
Most people under her worked through their lunch and took work home etc, while other departments had it much easier. Even she once told me that her own mother told her that the reason the company kept having her fulfill their crazy demands is that they knew she would almost kill herself and everyone who worked under her to get it done, while other department heads would have told them the task was impossible to complete in the allotted time. Her mother was right, had told her this and we all knew it was true, but she continued because she knows how it works, if you're of color, your job is to get the job done regardless of how you get it done or else you will lose your job. However, if you're a non-minority, it's ok. If you can't do it, you can't do it. So, the work environment has a lot to do with it.
Queen Bee
Understandably, women are redefining leadership as they move up the increasingly complex corporate ladder where only the strongest survive, let alone advance to become a top shot. The corporate work environment may have allowed women in, but it isn't designed for women. The environment is designed to be competitive, which is more like men's behavior. While women prefer nurturing environments. However, once they are in the competitive corporate world, they must adapt by taking on male traits to survive.
On the Today show, Marcie Alvaher, a career expert and Robi Ludwig, a frequent contributor had this to say from their perspective. “I think there is truth to it. When you look at the studies, many studies indicate both men and women prefer to work for men, but there are reasons for that. We were talking about it that for a lot of women in order to get to the top, they had to act like men. They had to be alpha women. In some cases, and I have had patients like this, they modeled themselves after men, and it didn't look right on a woman. We expect different things from female bosses.
“What do we expect from female bosses that we don't from men? “
I think rather than labeling something for the few women who have made it to the top -- I mean, there are plenty of male bosses and we don't have a king Snake syndrome. Like Professor Bell, we should talk about grooming women for the top and find ways on how both men and women can be better mentors.
“You say the environment in the work force creates this situation.”
“We need to work on changing the environment, yes. “
“The original thought was when social sciences were looking at this phenomenon in the work place, there was a thinking that if we had more women in the work place, women would nurture other women . They would be better bosses because they could delegate and mentor more.
“This study suggests it isn't happening.”
“When we found the opposite to be true, it was shocking. We want women to be the good mother. When women or men were having different experiences, it was doubly upsetting.
“These bosses have power over us.”
“Women are in a double bind. It’s harder to succeed, and when we do, we have to attach a bad label to it. As women, we are not helping the situation by focusing on talking about a QBS. When men succeed, we don't talk about a syndrome. We talk about success.”
“But there is a situation going on. What’s causing it? There are reports or studies that suggest women in positions of power sometimes suffer self-esteem issues and that triggers this.
Queen Bee
“In part, I think there are a few things. Number one, they are surviving. There are only a few women at the top. There aren't tons of availability for them like there are for men. So, if a woman is going to help another woman get to the top, where is she going to be? Also, if we look at it from a cultural perspective, we tell women they have no value once they are not young and attractive anymore. It sets up this competitive type of component in the work place. If we had a lot of jobs for women and a lot of possibilities and told them as they age they are still valuable like men, I think we would be seeing something different and having a different conversation.”
“If you're a woman working under a female boss, how do you deal with this?
"First, I want to say that if you are a man or a woman and you have a boss who's standing in your way, I want to give you the same advice. That’s the important thing I want people to take away. Figure out, can you work around this boss or is it time to move on? That’s the question to ask yourself. You should also step back and say, is it my boss getting in the way? Do a self-assessment and say, "Am I advocating enough for myself? That’s something men know how to do when they are coming up the pipeline."
Generally speaking, women are emotional thinkers, while men are logical thinkers. Therefore, men let bad things that occur at work or in their personal lives go much faster than women do. Also, men are more objective in the work environment because they are secure about who they are and the position they hold, even if they don’t really know what they are doing in the position and are unqualified for the job. Women on the other hand will be over qualified for a position, but will still have feelings of insecurity and over work themselves to overcompensate for their perceived inadequacies, and in the process, they will hold a grudge, be vindictive, be easily threatened and lash out at the available people around them, who are usually their female subordinates because of their perceived power of them.
The bottom line is this, the QBS doesn’t apply to all female bosses, but it applies to many female bosses. So, this is very real, but also to an extent, people should keep an open mind when looking for job opportunities. I believe my steps are divinely ordered, so although I have worked for female bosses with no problems and still do in a freelancer / independent contractor basis, where if things don't work out, we can part ways with no long lasting negative effects on my career. Having a female boss in the corporate environment for a season, which my livelihood depended on, was part of my life's plan . Although I didn't enjoy it at the time, as the saying goes, "That which doesn't kill you, makes you stronger."
The experience made me stronger in other areas of my life. I have since met several women who said working for female bosses who over worked them is what prompted to leave the company they worked for as soon as they could to start their own businesses. The benefits of working for a female boss with a QBS is that you become used to working excessively hard, so you can run a business. Secondly, you don't want another boss over you ever again, so you don't run risk of working for a QBS and have to endure a repeat performance. Thirdly, because you worked for a female boss, albeit one with the dreaded QBS, you can see yourself as the boss. So, in every negative situation, there are positives too.
However, I believe the solution is spirituality. If a woman is grounded, morally sound, truly knows God and has a personal relationship with him, then she knows her life is in God’s hands and not in the hands of man. Therefore, she won’t exhibit all these negative behaviors or have a desire to because she knows who holds her future. However, if she doesn’t have a good spiritual foundation, good luck to her female subordinates. They surely will have some stories to tell.
A word is enough for the wise…
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