Workplaces are enabling the ‘queen bee syndrome’ – and it is holding women back

“THERE is a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.” Former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright’s quip captures a widespread expectation that women who reach the top should pave the way for those behind them.

Yet, it is not uncommon for junior female employees to encounter women in senior roles who seem distant, unsupportive or even actively competitive with them.

That phenomenon has a name: queen bee syndrome (QBS). Although the term is controversial, the underlying behaviour is well documented and has real consequences for the women affected, their organisations and broader gender diversity efforts.

The question, then, is why it occurs, and what leaders and organisations can do to mitigate it.

A label that misdirects

The term “queen bee” first appeared in a 1973 study, where it was used to describe a woman who stings others to protect her throne, and who blames other women for their own failings in being unable to climb the career ladder.

The term also reinforces a double standard: competition among men is normal, even encouraged, but women who do not practise solidarity are seen as exhibiting a personal moral failing.

But research on this topic argues that QBS is not an inherent character trait. It is a coping mechanism triggered by specific conditions, such as male-dominated work environments.

Indeed, framing QBS as a personality flaw leads organisations to try and misguidedly “fix” individual women.

Understanding QBS as a response to structural conditions can compel companies to address these factors, which is where the real solution lies.

Organisational traps

QBS tends to emerge where leadership opportunities for women remain scarce, fragile and heavily gendered.

Research by Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a professor at Harvard Business School, found that when women are scarce in organisations, they are treated as “tokens” rather than individuals, subjected to heightened visibility and pressure to conform to gender roles.

Building on that foundation, later research found that women in token positions face two compounding pressures.

The first is a competitive threat: the fear that a highly qualified female candidate will be seen as more valuable, and so a rival.

The second is a collective threat: the worry that a less capable woman might reinforce negative stereotypes about all women, damaging the reputation of those already in the room.

Together, these pressures paradoxically make gatekeeping feel rational, even to women who would otherwise want to help others of their gender.

A further factor is the price of entry. Many women leaders have made significant sacrifices, professional and personal, to reach senior roles.

A research paper concluded that QBS behaviour is directed almost exclusively at junior women, not at peers who made similar sacrifices, an implicit statement saying: “I earned this the hard way, so should you.”

Such responses are better understood as a form of identity protection, shaped by organisational environments that have historically imposed high personal costs on women seeking leadership roles.

Rethinking structures, sponsors and success

Understanding these triggers is the first step. Acting on them is a shared responsibility that falls on individual leaders and their organisations alike.

The solutions can be organised around three broad imperatives.

First, change the structures that create scarcity. According to research on corporate boards, having at least three women, or around 20 per cent female representation, meaningfully shifts leadership dynamics.

At that threshold, women can form alliances, feel more secure, and actively support diversity further down the organisation; below that level, tokenism and gatekeeping among women are more likely to exist.

Redesigning promotion processes to be transparent and consistently applied helps, too, since it reduces the zero-sum logic that fuels QBS. So do family friendly policies, such as parental leave, flexible work and accessible childcare, which lower the personal-sacrifice narrative behind much of this behaviour.

Equal pay between men and women, zero tolerance for gender-based stereotyping, and leadership norms that do not reward traditionally masculine traits all signal to women that they legitimately belong in leadership.

Second, move from mentorship to sponsorship. Most companies have no shortage of mentors.

What women consistently lack, however, is active sponsorship: leaders who put their professional capital on the line to recommend women for high-visibility roles, or say their name in rooms they have not yet entered.

A mentor advises someone on how to navigate a path that already exists; a sponsor helps create a new one.

Organisations can go further by making sponsorship and talent development an explicit, measurable leadership criterion tied to promotion and pay, rather than leaving it to goodwill.

Last, challenge the assumptions that define success.

Leaders, women included, often hold unconscious biases about the commitment and ambition of junior women, shaped partly by the trade-offs they themselves had to make to reach their position.

Addressing this means moving beyond intuition and establishing clearer criteria for who gets recommended for high-visibility opportunities.

It also means interrogating their resistance itself, asking whether their hesitation to advocate for another woman reflects a genuine assessment of merit or a defensive response to scarcity.

And it means dismantling outdated corporate norms. Quality leadership in many companies is still implicitly measured by stereotypically masculine traits like emotional toughness and competitive drive.

Leaders who push back, who make clear that flexible work and communal leadership styles are not a weakness, and who challenge performance reviews that penalise women for behaviour rewarded in men, can make a tangible difference.

Change from the top

QBS is real, but once the structural conditions behind it are addressed, women often become sponsors, mentors and advocates.

The incentive to guard a scarce seat disappears once they are no longer scarce, and when women do not feel they must distance themselves from one another to succeed, most do not.

DBS CEO Tan Su Shan – who is “not an alpha female”, in her own words – provides an example of how women can back women.

In 2001, she co-founded the Financial Women’s Association of Singapore, which has grown into a huge ecosystem supporting hundreds of women across the sector.

Tan spends weekends with what she calls her “reverse mentors”, young female founders whom she mentors and sometimes invests in; they also expand her perspectives on business building.

Albright was right that women should help each other. Tan, a leader who has reached the top and chosen to keep opening doors for others behind her, is embodying that idea.

The task for organisations, and for the leaders within them, is to make that choice easier to make, and far more common.

All the contributors are from Insead. Henrike Gueth and Nicolas Bastoli are MBA students. Winnie Jiang is an assistant professor of organisational behaviour.

The commentary is based on the writers’ own observations, experiences and argument. AI tools were used for research, drafting and editing. The writers remain fully accountable for the commentary’s accuracy, arguments and final form.