Everyone knows the movie and TV images of domineering female bosses who, in the story, humiliated their employees, especially men. Examples include Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly (The Devil Wears Prada), Chandra Wilson’s Miranda Bailey (Grey’s Anatomy), and Sandra Bullock’s Margaret Tate (The Proposal).
Scientists have long been interested in the personality type of despotic female bosses who:
- publicly humiliate their subordinates
- display superiority over their staff
- apply psychological pressure to their employees
- act with deliberate aggression toward subordinates
- use toxic methods against employees (sarcasm, gaslighting)
Those bosses get pleasure from wielding power.
A team of psychologists from the University of Kaiserslautern–Landau (Germany) devoted their new study to the feelings of who are managed by such women. The researchers found that many men feel threatened by assertive, harsh female bosses and feel unmanly in their presence.
Still from the film “The Proposal”
How men respond to domineering female bosses
wanted to understand how men react to situations that call their masculinity into question. The scientists included 19,448 men across 123 experiments, the Daily Mail reported.
After analyzing the large dataset, the authors identified a clear pattern: men next to despotic female bosses doubt their masculinity, and that doubt changes their emotions, self-esteem, behavior, and attitudes.
“Men feel their masculinity is threatened when they are told they are less assertive, dominant, or manly than others. They can feel that same threat when they are subordinate to a woman who takes initiative, or when they are expected to perform tasks that are viewed as unmanly,” the scientists wrote in their report.
“The reaction of male subordinates is surprisingly strong when they reach the conclusion themselves that they do not fit the male ideal — stronger than when they are told so,” said Sven Kahel, co‑author of the paper.
The study also showed that feeling this threat can lead to emotional distress in the form of:
- anxiety
- stress
- discomfort
- anger
Those emotions often trigger:
- risky behavior
- aggression
- contemptuous treatment of other people
- a turn toward patriarchy and a defense of traditional gender roles
“The results of our study have social consequences. Threats to masculinity burden men and negatively affect the people around them,” said Lea Lorenz, co‑author of the paper.
Lorenz believes that understanding when these threats arise and what intensifies or eases them can help reduce conflict, discrimination, and social tension among colleagues.
