Queen Bee Syndrome at the Work place

Imagine you are having a hard time at work; you are being bullied. Do you think you are more likely to be bullied by a male or female superior? It is hard to imagine that such childlike and juvenile behavior would occur in the workplace among adults and the leaders of today – sadly however it does. Women are commonly heard making complaints about their fellow female coworkers behaving in a hostile manner towards them; but how about men? Do they also receive harsh backlash from other male coworkers? Researcher Allison S. Gabriel along with her team devised an experiment to test this theory.

More specifically, the primary objectives that researchers wanted to test were the extent to which women experience higher rates of female- versus male-instigated incivility as well as what factors might exacerbate this uncivil treatment. Thus, Gabriel et al conducted a series of 3 experiments to determine which of the genders have a greater tendency to behave "uncivily" in the work environment.

For the first experiment, 422 students who were working part-time were recruited from Indian University. To qualify, participants had to be at least 18 years of age and working in a service job for at least six months. Participants worked in a variety of service occupations including retail, cashiers/tellers, food service, and administration. Gender was coded such that 0 male and 1 female and incivility was assessed with the Workplace Incivility Scale (WIS; Cortina et al., 2001). Participants indicated how frequently (1 never; 5 always) they experienced each behavior at work over the past month. There were three (3) controlled variables that researchers also paid attention to which were as follows: race (minority or white), occupational tenure (how long they worked) and also dispositional negative affectivity (people who are likely to perceive behavior as uncivil)

The second study focused on the role of agency and communion. This study was conducted under the understanding and hypothesis that women are more likely to compete with each other for limited resources as opposed to competing with their male counterparts thus resulting in hostile behavior towards each other. 693 participants were required to work full time (at least 32 hours a week) in various fields such as financial services, legal, retail, government/military, telecommunications, health care, and accounting. They were then required to take a survey much like the one in the first experiment.

Finally, the 3^rd study the same method as in the two (2) previous studies were employed among 690 participants who worked full time at business companies. They were also required to take surveys about how they were treated in the workplace

Surprisingly enough, the results were consistent amongst the female participants - they all stated that their fellow female co-workers in an authoritative were the culprits. Although, results show that men also engaged in unprofessional behavior, there were higher levels of such behavior stemming from females targeting other females. Basically, women were meaner to each other than they were to their male counterparts. This is called the "Queen-Bee Syndrome"; a term coined by in 1973. It describes a woman in a position of authority who views or treats subordinates more critically if they are female.

Combined evidence from all three studies have shown that companies are at risk of losing their female employees who fall victim to "female-instigated incivility". This is because they do not feel comfortable working in hostile environments and are thus more inclined to quit their jobs. Companies should now view these new findings as an opportunity to address the issue and resolve it before it gets out of hand. We spend most of our weekdays at our workplaces trying to earn an honest living to provide for our families- so why must the work environment be anything less than a comfortable, positive and healthy environment? If we must work together, we might as well do so in harmony. Let's do better and let's be better!

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