Members in the Media
From: U.S. News and World Report

The Myth of the Queen Bee

U.S. News & World Report:

Female bosses sometimes have a reputation for not being very nice. Some display what’s called “queen bee” behavior, distancing themselves from other women and refusing to help other women as they rise through the ranks. Now, a  new study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, concludes that it’s wrong to blame the woman for this behavior; instead, blame the sexist environment.

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Belle Derks of Leiden University in the Netherlands has done a lot of research on how people respond to sexism. From her own observations of women in the workplace, she thinks that women are often held to a different standard than men; behavior that would be seen positively in men, such as competitiveness, is seen negatively when women do it. Derks co-wrote the study with Colette van Laar, Naomi Ellemers, and Kim De Groot.

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