A queen bee is a woman who dominates or leads a group,[1] is in a favoured position[2] or behaves as such.
[4] Such tactics are sometimes referred to as heterophily (in the sense of positive preference and favoritism for opposite-sex colleagues) or the queen bee syndrome.
[5] The term loophole woman, coined by Caroline Bird in her book Born Female: The High Cost of Keeping Women Down (1968), has a similar meaning.
Such professional success, if attained by women on a large scale, would detract from, if not substantially reduce, her own status and importance.
They are often stereotyped in the media as being beautiful, charismatic, manipulative, popular, and wealthy, often holding positions of high social status, such as being head cheerleader (or being the captain of some other, usually an all-girl, sports team), the Homecoming or Prom Queen (or both).