Academic women: A study on the queen bee phenomenon

Abstract

Purpose: In masculine and extremely competitive organizational contexts, women who succeed in their careers exhibit behaviors that hinder, rather than help, other women to develop professionally. This phenomenon is called queen bee. In this article, we aim to identify whether the queen bee phenomenon is present in higher education institutions (HEI) in Brazil. Originality/value: Although the queen bee phenomenon as a gender inequality metaphor is not a recent topic in scientific literature, its analysis in Brazilian HEI reveals the original character of the study. Design/methodology/approach: The quantitative study has a sample of 495 women who work in HEI. The MANOVAs test was used to verify the hypotheses. Findings: The results show that the knowledge domain impacts more on the queen bee phenomenon than the variables of the organizational context. In addition, women in leadership positions are more engaged at work, have more masculine traits, identify themselves with women at the top of the hierarchy, deny gender discrimination and tend to be more adept at meritocratic discourse than women who are not in leadership positions, confirming that women who hold leadership positions in Brazilian HEI present queen bee traits.