Queen Bee Syndrome

I'm sure all you girls have seen this hilarious classic, "The Devil Wears Prada," and even you boys have probably seen your sisters and mothers watching is and stayed to watch for a while because it's so good. This clip is showing Andy Sachs, or Anne Hathaway, at her first day on the job as the assistant to the editor of a fashion magazine. Her coworkers are trying to show their ideas of clothing lines to her boss Miranda Priestly, or Meryl Streep, but Miranda is making rude remarks back and is proving to be extremely hard to impress. Andy let's out a giggle on accident at the ridiculous spectacle her new boss is putting on and suddenly Miranda sharply turns towards her and just rips her apart. Miranda criticizes her fashion sense and even her her competence in the workplace. 

Modern female bosses are almost always portrayed in this light as the terrible "queen bee" of the office who demands an excessive amount of work from her assistants, is rude to everyone in the workplace and works at the expense of anyone around her to succeed. There are countless examples of the queen bee of the workplace in the media, including in popular movies like Margaret Tate from The Proposal. Can you think of a movie where the female boss is a nice, caring young woman who does wonders for the workplace? I certainly can't.

One article even gives a name to this stereotype of the female boss in the workplace, calling it the "Queen Bee Syndrome," and defining it as, "The alpha female who tries to preserve her power at all costs," and instead of supporting her younger coworkers, "she feels threatened by them and ends up obstructing their attempts to climb the corporate ladder."  

The words "threatened" and "obstructing" both have very negative connotations as they refer to someone who lives in constant fear that the people around them intend to do them harm, which is almost never the case in our modern day workplace, and she has the intention of "obstructing" or making the lives of her colleagues more difficult instead of working collaboratively with them. 

American media is perpetuating this stereotype of the "queen bee syndrome" and affecting the way all female bosses are viewed, even to their own gender. As you can see from this previous post on female bosses in the workplace, we need to increase the numbers of women in high professional positions and stereotypes like this one can only hurt the chances. As a woman myself striving to one day have a future in the business world we need to open our eyes and realize what kind of effect things in the media like this have on our American society. 

What other stereotypes do you see being perpetuated in American media? 

Feel free to comment your thoughts! 

How many woman CEOs do you know?

The recent best seller on Amazon in the Business Management and Leadership section addressed this issue and it is "Lean in," by the successful COO of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg. It discusses how women are are underrepresented in the top positions of their careers and Sandberg encourages woman to do their best top break through the barriers that they put up or may just be naturally there in society holding them back from reaching their full potential.

Her book has been very successful, however, it has received a lot of criticism because of the fact that she comes from a positions of power and money and may not be representing all woman in America and also because she "puts the burden on women to change," instead of, "challenging the institutional and cultural factors that present extra challenges for women."
One example the cultural factors that cause extra challenges for women is the fact that there is not a reliable form of day care set up for women in the work place. This can hold them back because you cannot be as productive as you would like to be if you are constantly worrying if your child is receiving the proper amount of care. This also sheds some light on how much our American culture values child care, because some other countries around the world, for example some in Europe, have a much more reliable system of day care in place for working mothers.

 Just like how Sandberg talks about how women are underrepresented in management of their professions, right now on the 2013 Fortune 1000 list of companies only 4.5% of the CEO positions are held by woman. For American women like me striving to have a future in the business world this number could use some major improvement.

I think that she is right about putting some burden on women to change because there are some social barriers that we woman put up ourselves like not going into fields that men usually dominate or not striving for the highest position in our field because of the fact that men have normally held them in the past. However, the burden cannot fall only on women to make a change, it also has to fall on those "institutional and cultural factors" that the article above mentions.
These extra challenges that women face are the fine print in women's rights that need to be scrutinized under a magnifying glass and corrected if women are going to have complete equal opportunity as men in American society.

What is one extra challenge you can think of that women face in American society today?

Feel free to leave your thoughts :)