Yet plenty of women, like Adela, have experienced other women making their lives hard at work, even driving them to quit. There’s no comprehensive proof senior women are less helpful – or more harmful – to junior women, compared with senior men to junior men. And while there’s plenty of data showing that female mentorship can be advantageous for women, there’s just as much anecdotal evidence indicating that having a female boss hinders a woman’s chances to be happy, successful and supported at work. And it’s the latter narrative that has prevailed in the popular imagination. In discussions about what helps women succeed in the workplace, experts often talk about the importance of female role models. After six months, she quit and made a resolution for the rest of her career: never work in a team of only women again – and be very careful choosing to work for another woman at all.Īdela’s experience of conflict might be more dramatic than that of other women who have worked under a female boss, but it’s certainly not atypical. She says that created an atmosphere of fear, where juniors felt uncomfortable speaking out, and everyone seemed defensive. Her female bosses, she says, were “image obsessed”, and unwilling to embrace fresh ideas or perspectives. “Because the book actually did mirror my future relationship with many of my female bosses at that workplace.”Īdela, who is withholding her surname for career considerations, recalls that the work environment at the company was “toxic”, built on a culture of “secrecy”. “It was kind of hilarious at the time, but with hindsight it was really sad,” says Adela.

The book was The Devil Wears Prada, the 2003 novel by Lauren Weisberger, about a young woman who endures behaviour that borders on psychological and emotional abuse at the hands of her fashion-magazine editor boss, who’s also a woman.

“He told me it would serve as my manual for working here,” she says. During her first week on the job, one of the few men she worked with strolled over and dropped a book on her desk. Her team was predominantly female, including her bosses. Adela was 23 years old when she started working for a global consumer-goods company in London.

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