Leadership

The Myth of the Office Bitch

By Pam Kruger

Updated on: April 14, 2011 / 6:11 PM EDT / MoneyWatch

Throughout my career, I've worked for lots of women. A few colleagues were not so great at their jobs. A couple were incompetent. And some were wonderful and became great mentors and then friends.

What about the male bosses I've had? Some were not so great at their jobs. A couple were incompetent. And, yes, you guessed it, some were wonderful.

So I am always mystified when I read these articles about "Queen Bees" (the latest term for "bitch") who are supposedly reigning unchallenged in offices, causing anguish and mayhem in their wake.

The latest story was published on MSNBC, "Bad female boss? She may have the Queen Bee syndrome." And then the subhed warned, ominously, "she's the alpha female who tries to preserve power at all costs."

What is the evidence for this terrifying trend?

Three quarters of men said they would much rather work for a man than a woman. A quarter of woman polled found their female bosses to be backstabbing and to have poor personal boundaries when it came to sharing their personal lives at the office. Another study found that female bosses were easily threatened, emotionally unpredictable or irritable. Other negative descriptors for the female boss included, "moody," "sharp tongued," "too cliquey" and "vain."
And the last nail in the coffin? According to the American Management Association, 95 percent of women felt undermined at some point in their career by other women.

A little google search, and I find that this data appears to have been plucked from a Daily Mail article, which itself relied on an online survey from a site called UKJobs. And that AMA survey? Couldn't even find that one, though I saw an oblique mention in a book published in 2003.

Okay, but forget how recent the data is. People are saying this stuff, right? So it must be true, right?

Well, yes, but the converse--that women are better managers--is also the conclusion of other studies. A 2010 BusinessWeek article reports:

Hay Group recently completed in partnership with one of the top 20 organizations in the BusinessWeek/Hay Group study. In that study, the company's female executives were significantly more likely than their male counterparts to coach and develop others and to create more committed, collaborative, inclusive--and ultimately more effective--teams. The study also found that while women tended to foster genuine collaboration, male executives were far more likely to view negotiations and other business transactions as zero-sum games.

McKinsey also conducted a comprehensive study, first in 2007, and found a "link between the presence of women in executive committees and better financial performance." In fact, the study found that women bosses were more likely than male counterparts to exhibit five behaviors linked with successful leadership: people development skills, role modelling, expectations and rewards, role model, inspiration and participatory decision-making.

In a new book called Man Down: Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt That Women Are Better Cops, Drivers, Gamblers, Spies, World Leaders, Beer Tasters, Hedge Fund Managers, and Just About Everything Else, Dan Abrams, the former ABC legal analyst, goes even further, arguing that women are better at almost everything.

So, which is it? Are women gifted at managing people...or are they Queen Bees intoxicated with their own power?

My guess is a bit of both. Some women are great at managing people. Others are nasty and selfish. Just like men.

If someone argued that one minority group made the worst bosses, that person rightly would be called out as a nut or racist. So why do we accept the gross hyperbole when it comes to women?

Isn't it time to retire the myth of the office bitch?

What do you think?

Pam Kruger is a senior editor at BNET, who writes frequently about women's and workplace issues. You can follow her on Twitter.
image courtesy of flickr user, Alaskan Dude