This contribution reviews work on the queen bee phenomenon whereby women leaders assimilate into male-dominated organizations (i.e., organizations in which most executive positions are held by men) by distancing themselves from junior women and legitimizing gender inequality in their organization. We propose that rather than being a source of gender inequality, the queen bee phenomenon is itself a consequence of the gender discrimination that women experience at work. We substantiate this argument with research showing that (1) queen bee behavior is a response to the discrimination and social identity threat that women may experience in male-dominated organizations, and (2) queen bee behavior is not a typically feminine response but part of a general self-group distancing response that is also found in other marginalized groups. We discuss consequences of the queen bee phenomenon for women leaders, junior women, organizations and society more generally, and propose ways to combat this phenomenon.

The theory has been misconstrued in four primary ways, which are often expressed as the claims of psychological reductionism, conceptual redundancy, biological reductionism, and hierarchy justification. This paper addresses these claims and suggests how social dominance theory builds on and moves beyond social identity theory and system justification theory.

Data for this longitudinal study were collected from over 2000 White, Asian, Latino, and African American college students. Results indicated that students who exhibited more ingroup bias and intergroup anxiety at the end of their first year of college had fewer outgroup friends and more ingroup friends during their second and third years of college, controlling for pre-college friendships and other background variables. In addition, beyond these effects of prior ethnic attitudes and orientations on friendship choices, those with more outgroup friendships and fewer ingroup friendships during their second and third years of college showed less ingroup bias and intergroup anxiety at the end of college, controlling for the prior attitudes, pre-college friendships, and background variables. Results are discussed in terms of the contact hypothesis.

We address the role of racial antagonism in whites' opposition to racially-targeted policies. The data come from four surveys selected for their unusually rich measurement of both policy preferences and other racial attitudes: the 1986 and 1992 National Election Studies, the 1994 General Social Survey, and the 1995 Los Angeles County Social Survey. They indicate that such opposition is more strongly rooted in racial antagonism than in non-racial conservatism, that whites tend to respond to quite different racial policies in similar fashion, that racial attitudes affect evaluations of black and ethnocentric white presidential candidates, and that their effects are just as strong among college graduates as among those with no college education. Second, we present evidence that symbolic racism is consistently more powerful than older forms of racial antagonism, and its greater strength does not diminish with controls on non-racial ideology, partisanship, and values. The origins of symbolic racism lie partly in both anti-black antagonism and non-racial conservative attitudes and values, and so mediates their effects on policy preferences, but it explains substantial additional variance by itself, suggesting that it does represent a new form of racism independent of older racial and political attitudes. The findings are each replicated several times with different measures, in different surveys conducted at different times. We also provide new evidence in response to earlier critiques of research on symbolic racism.Race relations in the United States have had a long history, but one that is marked by significant discontinuities over time. The period of slavery was followed by the brief but radically 3 different window of the Reconstruction. The Jim Crow system that developed over the following century legalized racial segregation and discrimination, especially but not exclusively in the South.The civil rights revolution effectively ended that two-caste system of race relations, replacing it with a universal system of formal legal equality. Nevertheless, considerable racial inequality remains in many areas of the society, such as in income, wealth, educational attainment, health, vulnerability to crime, and so forth.The demise of Jim Crow was accompanied by a sharp decline in the prevalence of its supporting belief system, sometimes described as "old-fashioned racism," incorporating both a biologically-based theory of African racial inferiority and support for racial segregation and formal racial discrimination (McConahay, 1986). This theory of white racial superiority has now largely been replaced by general support for the abstract principle of racial equality (Schuman, Steeh, & Bobo, 1985;Sears & Kinder, 1971). However, there is much evidence that whites do not fully support the implications of these general principles of equality. They have often strongly opposed policies implementing that general principle, such as busing or affirmative action, leading to what Schuman, et al. (1985) have called the "princ...

'Queen Bees' are senior women in masculine organizational cultures who have fulfilled their career aspirations by dissociating themselves from their gender while simultaneously contributing to the gender stereotyping of other women. It is often assumed that this phenomenon contributes to gender discrimination in organizations, and is inherent to the personalities of successful career women. We argue for a social identity explanation and examine organizational conditions that foster the Queen Bee phenomenon. Participants were 94 women holding senior positions in diverse companies in The Netherlands who participated in an on-line survey. In line with predictions, indicators of the Queen Bee phenomenon (increased gender stereotyping and masculine self-descriptions) were found mostly among women who indicated they had started their career with low gender identification and who had subsequently experienced a high degree of gender discrimination on their way up. By contrast, the experience of gender discrimination was unrelated to signs of the Queen Bee phenomenon among women who indicated to be highly identified when they started their career. Results are discussed in light of social identity theory, interpreting the Queen Bee phenomenon as an individual mobility response of low gender identified women to the gender discrimination they encounter in their work.