When queen bee syndrome threatens women’s biz networking

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Thiruvananthapuram, Oct 20: For future women boardroom talents, stuck in the ‘queen bee syndrome’ and not quite in the circuit of ‘old boys networking’, here’s a mentoring hand from the US. The Indian subsidiary of UST Global, formerly US Technology, is revving up for a handholding session for potential women movers and shakers in business.

“In the US too, a girl’s upbringing makes her prone to a kind of ‘queen bee syndrome’, which inhibits her healthy business networking skills. For the male counterpart, on the other hand, ‘old boy networking’—in baseball games, school gangs, pubs—gives an edge. This has to change,” says Cindy Andreotti, president and CEO of Andreotti Group LLC. Andreotti, the former head of $14-billion MCI, world’s second largest telecom firm, is ranked one of the “most powerful women in the Washington DC” by Washington Post. She is now touring India as director, strategic affairs, to UST Global.

The ‘queen bee syndrome’, according to a study by Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, suggests that female leadership at work is prone to surround themselves with men, considering other women as a threat. “Networking with other women and brushing up confidence are the only ways to get out of this disorder,” says Andreotti.

Some of the speakers at a two-day Now-U (Network of Women USsociates) summit, to be conducted by UST Global’s software unit in Kerala capital this week, are Hema Ravichandar of Empower; neuro surgeon & neurophysician Pratika Chary; managing director of OEN Pamela Mathew; film editor and director Bina Paul and Latha Chembarkalam, business head of Bosche, Bangalore.

Based on the feedback from summit, the company is likely to throw open a larger platform for networking of women in management jobs. “We would perhaps make it a regular feature,” says Tammy Dollar, VP, corporate functions of UST Global.

The software company, reputed to pick and chose its clients fastidiously from Fortune-500 companies, has been lavish about pouring money into the women-networking initiative.