ABSTRACT
The chapter aims to address the culture of female-to-female bullying by women leaders in higher education and propose solutions that individuals and institutions can implement to better cultivate and support female leaders. We examine existing literature on the historical and current patterns of particularly high rates of female on female bullying. Previous studies have identified “queen bee” dynamics in which some female leaders diminish female colleagues to preserve their own outlier status, horizontal violence through which individuals from oppressed groups express their frustrations with the inequities of larger systems through hostility directed at peers, and relational aggression patterns through which aggressors use subtle techniques to manipulate another’s social standing within a group or organization. Our goal is to use existing literature to develop an overall model of how and why these patterns emerge, what perpetuates them, and how individuals, groups, and institutions can better support the development of female leaders.
