How To Fix The Queen Bee Problem
While the old adage may be one bad apple spoils the bunch, that’s far from true and the mortgage industry is starting to make strides with its efforts to recognize women in the space. There are many more women’s events that promote empowerment, mentorship, education, and community within the industry. However, when the events are over, and women go back to their respective companies, how can they deal with incidents of bullying that may lurk at their workplace, and more importantly, prevent these types of instances from occurring in the first place?
Much like conferences are developing women-specific events, companies need to develop better ways for their female employees to interact and develop a sense of community and trust with each other.
Just like our industry is male-dominated, most workplaces at the companies within our industry are male-dominated, which create these feelings, as mentioned above, that women are pitted against each other and vying for positions of power and working against each other rather than with each other. If companies can develop mentorship programs and a better sense of culture and community for their female employees, it would go a long way toward dissolving these feelings of me vs. you when it came to working on projects together.
Women tend to value the importance of relationships, not just transactional interactions, so having the ability to connect in a more meaningful way and build relationships with team members would go a long way not only toward eliminating the queen bee problem we are seeing in the mortgage industry, but also towards drawing more females into the industry and making it more appealing to women in the future.