SEX AND SOCIETY: SEX DIFFERENCES
There is a commonly held notion that women are tougher on other women than men are. The evidence supporting this assertion is only fragmentary. In general, women and men have been shown to share the identical sex stereotypes, to have the same differential standards for men and women, and to be equally sex-biased in their behavior. However, there is a style among professional women that gives rise to and perpetuates such ideas.
The “queen bee” syndrome (Staines, Tavris, Jayarante) is that in which successful women who could assist the careers of other women prefer not to do so. Queen bees choose not to be mentors and to teach new women “the ropes” and, despite the power to help women advance, they do not support them. There are a number of reasons for this behavior.
First, being a member of a minority often causes people to identify with those in power and to dissociate themselves from those in their own social category. In this way, there is the possibility of being hailed as an exception and being accepted into the ranks of those with power. Second, these women may enjoy their uniqueness. They may relish their positions in male-dominated fields and be unwilling to open the door to additional women who not only will lessen their unique status but also might make them compete for it. Third, these women often have made their ways up the career ladder with great hardship and sacrifice, and they may resent what they perceive to be the “special treatment” and “premature advancement” of younger women who are seen as capitalizing not only on their own talents but on the pressures of the women’s movement.
There might well be resistance by established women to the advancement of new young women. But there is no evidence that similar prejudices are harbored by the younger or less established women who usually are the participants in research studies. On the contrary, the overall degree of sex bias evidenced by men and women, whether in the experimental laboratory or in the field, has not been shown to differ dramatically or consistently.
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