ArticleThe British journal of social psychology2021
The Queen Bee phenomenon in Academia 15 years after: Does it still exist, and if so, why?
Article in The British journal of social psychology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Women Physicians in Leadership Roles in Critical Care Medicine or Academic Medicine-A Systematic Literature Review.Critical care explorations · 2025Pooled it
- Don't rock the boat! Do men prefer women leaders who support the status quo?The British journal of social psychology · 2026Article
- Female-to-female aggression in the workplace.Pediatric radiology · 2025Article
- Advancing gender equity in gynecology and obstetrics: perspectives from the German workforce.Archives of gynecology and obstetrics · 2025Article
- Cultural Barriers to Women's Progression in Academic Careers: A France-Brazil Comparison Through the Lens of the Queen Bee Phenomena.Scandinavian journal of psychology · 2025Article
- The role of perspective-taking in attenuating self-group distancing in women managers.The British journal of social psychology · 2025Article
- Do not blame 'queen bees' for gender inequality in academia.Nature human behaviour · 2025Article
- Recognizing and mitigating female-to-female aggression in professional settings.Pediatric radiology · 2024Article
- The queen bee phenomenon in Canadian surgical subspecialties: An evaluation of gender biases in the resident training environment.PloS one · 2024Article
- Gender differences in animal cognition science.Animal cognition · 2023Article
- Equal Representation Does Not Mean Equal Opportunity: Women Academics Perceive a Thicker Glass Ceiling in Social and Behavioral Fields Than in the Natural Sciences and Economics.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Queen Bees: How Is Female Managers' Happiness Determined?Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Implicit gender-career bias in postgraduate medical training still exists, mainly in residents and in females.BMC medical education · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
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Abstract
Fifteen years ago, the British Journal of Social Psychology published a set of studies on male and female academics, documenting that female faculty members were more likely than male faculty members to express stereotyped views of women at the beginning of their academic careers (PhD candidates; Ellemers et al., 2004, Br. J. Soc. Psychol., 43, 3). At the same time, the self-descriptions of female faculty members were just as masculine as those of their male colleagues. Ellemers and colleagues (2004, Br. J. Soc. Psychol., 43, 3) referred to this combination of results as indicating the existence of a 'Queen Bee (QB) phenomenon' in academia. The present contribution investigates whether the QB phenomenon is also found among current generations of academics, investigating this in two recent samples of academic professionals (N = 462; N = 339). Our findings demonstrate that the phenomenon first documented in 2004 still exists: Advanced career female academics are more likely than their male counterparts to underestimate the career commitment of women at the beginning of their academic careers. At the same time, both male and female academics at advanced career stages describe themselves in more masculine terms than those at early career stages. We argue this indicates a response pattern in which successful women emulate the masculinity of the work environment. To indicate this, the term 'self-group distancing' might be more appropriate than 'Queen Bee effect'.
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