I've been screaming in bars all week…

and thinking about why we don't do it for each other.

A friend told me recently that some of the biggest obstacles in her career came from other women. OTHER WOMEN!!

Maybe you've had this experience too. I certainly have. I’ve had a woman actively try to sabotage my career and make everything harder than it needs to be. So I understand, viscerally, that this happens.

And now, after 2 weeks of watching World Cup soccer/football games in Vancouver, I have thoughts. I know these two things sound unrelated, but here me out. I've been losing my mind over teams I learned about as the first game whistle blew and somewhere in there it hit me:

We are SO good at this.

The loud, feral, no-shame cheering.

So why are we not pointing it more directly and loudly at each other? (instead of just at the footy?)

Here's the thing about my friend, and about my own sabotage situation. We love to talk about men and the ways they hold women back, and fair. But women carry the same biases about who gets to lead and how women should “behave.” We drank from the same water supply.

It has a name you’ve probably heard before…

The queen bee syndrome 🐝

The queen bee is the woman who makes it in a man's world and then pulls the ladder up behind her. She keeps her distance from other women. She leans into the traits the system rewards (assertive, competitive, tough) and makes it clear she's not like the rest of us. She's the exception. The one who got in.

It became shorthand. The successful woman who won't help other women.

The research frames the queen bee as a survival move. She's responding to an environment that told her, again and again, that there was exactly one seat for a woman at that table. When you're made to fight for the only spot, keeping your distance from your own group feels like a legit strategy.

Which is why I can't really be mad at the women who came before me. They got handed scarcity and tokenism and told to survive it. Of course some of them did the math and decided the safest play was to be the only one.

Except the math was wrong

BUT! There's some good news...

A study out of Brazil went looking for the queen bee phenomena in the wild, at a scale almost nobody has pulled off: 8.3 million organizations across roughly 5,600 municipalities. The researchers used close mayoral elections, races a woman barely won or barely lost, as a natural experiment. When the margin is that thin, who wins is basically a coin flip, which let them see what actually changes when a woman gets the top job.

If the queen bee were real, you'd expect the women below her to stall out.

But the opposite happened. When a woman won, the number of women in top and middle management went up. And it was strongest when she got reelected and had real time and real authority to make her calls.

Although queen bees are very much real, they are not the norm. Give a woman genuine power and room to use it, and you’ll see her pulling other women up. They even gave her a new name. Not Queen Bee. Regal Leader. Powerful, stately, reaching back.

The queen bee was always about scarcity. Put a woman in a world with one seat and she'll guard it. Give her actual authority and room to lead, and she fills the room with us.

So the real question is simpler: what happens when we build the kind of places where women can finally back each other?

Cheer louder

Which brings me back to the stadium (and let’s be honest, the bar).

We already know how to do this. We are extremely good at full-volume, no-shame, screaming-for-strangers love. We do it for athletes real and fictional (I’m looking at you Garret Graham). We do it for teams from countries we chose to cheer for because we love their airports (confession: I’ve been cheering for DR Congo all week. Did you SEE their leopard outfits?!)

Imagine aiming that at each other.

Hype the coworker who doesn’t feel comfortable to hyping herself. Say her name in the room she's not in. Be the woman in the group chat who yells CHAMPAGNE when a friend's skin infection clears up - let alone the promotion. Text her WHAT YOU JUST DID IS INCREDIBLE! Cheer like she just scored in the ninetieth minute, because let’s be honest, half the time, she did.

Be feral about each other and our wins.

YOU GO GIRL. At the TOP of your lungs.

xoxo

Kels

This Week's Thing

You're probably already cheering for her. In your head. You notice when she nails the presentation, when she handles the impossible client, when she makes the world a little bit more joyful for everyone around her. You're just doing it just…silently.

So this week, take the cheer that's already in your head and make it loud.

Pick one woman and cheer for her like she just scored in the ninetieth minute. To her face and to a room she's not in. Text her the thing you've been thinking but never said. Brag about her in a meeting. Tell your boss what your coworker pulled off. Reply-all with the praise instead of keeping it to yourself.

One woman. This week. Full volume.

Then hit reply and tell me who you picked. I want THE DEETS.