Word.ws English Dictionary

queen bee syndrome

queen bee syndrome noun: a social phenomenon whereby women in positions of authority treat subordinate women worse than they treat men.

Noun

queen bee syndrome (uncountable)

  1. A social phenomenon whereby women in positions of authority treat subordinate women worse than they treat men.

Origin of queen bee syndrome

Coined in 1973 by researchers Graham Staines, Carol Tavris, and Toby E. Jayaratne.

Questions about queen bee syndrome

What does queen bee syndrome mean?
Queen bee syndrome means a social phenomenon whereby women in positions of authority treat subordinate women worse than they treat men.
What part of speech is queen bee syndrome?
Queen bee syndrome is a noun.

Words near queen bee syndrome in the dictionary

  1. Queen Anne's thimbles
  2. queen apple
  3. queen apples
  4. queen bee
  5. queen bee acid
  6. queen bee syndrome
  7. queen bees
  8. Queen Bess
  9. queen cake
  10. queen cakes
  11. Queen Camel

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: queen bee syndrome (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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