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ISSUE 071 · DEEP DIVE · MYTHS & MISINFORMATION

The clip that keeps resurfacing comes from a 2015 Australian television segment featuring Lucy Brogden, an executive coach and the founder of the Sydney Women's Fund. As it is usually described, the figure came from her own coaching work: about four in five of the women she coached said they would rather report to a man.

That is one coach's informal tally of her own clients, and it has been passing as a statistic ever since. The research, though, suggests she was onto something.

Gallup has asked Americans since 1953 whether, taking a new job, they would rather work for a man or a woman. Since 1982 one pattern has held: women are more likely than men to say they want a man.

In 2011, 39 per cent of women preferred a male boss and 27 per cent a female one. Among women aged 50 and over, it was 44 per cent to 18. Most men, by contrast, simply didn't care.

A survey of more than 60,000 people, published the same year by the researchers Kim Elsesser and Janet Lever, found the same tilt. Just over half had no preference. Among those who did, a male boss beat a female boss by more than two to one. In Britain, an online survey of 800 working women in 2012 found 35 per cent preferring a male boss and just 6 per cent a female one.

In 2012 researchers at Yale sent 127 science professors at American research universities an application for a lab manager's job. Every professor got the same application. The only difference was the name at the top: John or Jennifer.

Jennifer was rated less competent and less hireable. She was offered less mentoring. Her suggested starting salary averaged $26,508; John's was $30,238. And the bias did not come only from men. Female professors rated Jennifer's competence 3.32 out of 7 against John's 4.1 — almost exactly the same gap as their male colleagues. In the paper's words: “faculty gender did not affect bias.”

The term “queen bee syndrome” was coined in 1974 to describe senior women who keep younger women down. Researchers have since found it in the lab and in the field.

In Dutch universities in the early 2000s, female professors were more likely than male professors to hold stereotyped views of their female PhD students. Fifteen years later, a study of around 800 academics by Klea Faniko, Naomi Ellemers and Belle Derks found it was still there: senior women saw junior women as less dedicated to their careers than junior men. Senior men saw no difference.

A 2011 experiment with 63 senior Dutch policewomen showed when it switches on. Women who identified only weakly with other women, and were first asked to recall a time their gender had held them back, responded like queen bees: they described a more masculine leadership style, distanced themselves from other women and denied that gender bias was a problem. Women who identified strongly with other women did the opposite — they wanted to mentor them.

There is a properly surveyed 80 per cent in this story — just not the viral one. In 2010 the Workplace Bullying Institute polled more than 4,000 American adults. Women who bullied picked another woman 80 per cent of the time. Men who bullied picked a woman 46 per cent of the time. By the institute's 2017 survey, the figure for women had fallen to just over two-thirds.

Working under a woman shows up in women's health, too. A University of Toronto study of a 2005 national survey of American workers found that women with a lone female supervisor reported more psychological distress and more physical symptoms, such as headaches and fatigue, than women with a male supervisor. For men, the boss's sex made no difference.

Part of the reputation is in the eye of the beholder. In a 2013 study, people read about an identical workplace argument between two managers, changing only their names. When both were women, readers judged the chance of the pair repairing their relationship to be roughly 15 per cent lower. Female readers were just as likely as male readers to see it that way.

The research also points to a cause rather than a character trait. Queen bee behaviour turns up most among women who rose through male-dominated organisations and met discrimination on the way — women who, as Derks put it, “will choose themselves.” Where women are more common at the top, the picture changes. A large 2018 study from Brazil found that in towns where a woman narrowly won the mayoral election, more women were promoted into top and middle management in public bodies. And in Gallup's most recent result, from 2017, women had drawn level: 27 per cent preferred a male boss, 28 per cent a female one.

The viral 80 per cent is one coach's impression, not a measurement. The thing it describes is real. For most of the last half-century, women have been more likely than men to want a male boss. Female scientists penalised a woman's application as much as men did. Women who bully mostly choose women. But the pattern is strongest among women who fought their way up in places built by and for men — and it fades as those places change.

The 2015 Australian television segment featuring Lucy Brogden, founder of the Sydney Women's Fund, as circulated online.

Gallup boss-preference surveys, August 2011 (1,008 US adults) and November 2017; Elsesser, K. M. and Lever, J., “Does gender bias against female leaders persist? Quantitative and qualitative data from a large-scale survey,” Human Relations 64 (2011); HR Magazine on the October 2012 UK online survey of 800 female employees.

Moss-Racusin, C. A. et al., “Science faculty's subtle gender biases favor male students,” PNAS 109 (2012).

Staines, G., Tavris, C. and Jayaratne, T. E., “The Queen Bee Syndrome,” Psychology Today (1974); Faniko, K., Ellemers, N. and Derks, B., “The Queen Bee phenomenon in Academia 15 years after: Does it still exist, and if so, why?” British Journal of Social Psychology (2020); Derks, B. et al., “Gender-bias primes elicit queen-bee responses among senior policewomen,” Psychological Science 22 (2011).

Workplace Bullying Institute, 2010 and 2017 US Workplace Bullying Surveys (Zogby); Schieman, S. and McMullen, T., “Relational Demography in the Workplace and Health,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 49 (2008).

Sheppard, L. D. and Aquino, K., “Much Ado About Nothing? Observers' Problematization of Women's Same-Sex Conflict at Work,” Academy of Management Perspectives 27 (2013); Arvate, P. R., Galilea, G. W. and Todescat, I., “The queen bee: A myth?” The Leadership Quarterly 29 (2018).

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