Why Competitive Women Are Sometimes Seen as Threats

"The media often portrays competitive, ambitious women as villains, and this pattern appears again and again in popular movies and TV shows. Consider one of the most iconic depictions of a powerful woman in The Devil Wears Prada: its formidable editor, Miranda Priestly, who is feared and disliked by most in the film simply for being authoritative and unapologetically ambitious. The stereotype is embedded in the title itself, where a successful woman is framed as cold and devilish for being open about her ambitions."

"Traditional explanations of the above illustrations point to the double bind: Women who display confidence and competitiveness, traits often needed in order to succeed, violate expectations that women be warm and modest. Decades of research show that women who behave assertively are penalized socially, whereas men showing the same behavior are not. This dynamic is echoed in popular culture; for example, Taylor Swift's "The Man" highlights the harsher judgment of ambitious women."

Media often portrays competitive, ambitious women as villains across popular movies and TV shows. Iconic depictions, such as Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada, show powerful women being feared and disliked for authority and unapologetic ambition. Social dynamics mirror these portrayals through phenomena like tall poppy syndrome, where successful women are socially cut down, often by close friends. Traditional explanations invoke the double bind: confident, competitive women violate expectations to be warm and modest and face social penalties that men do not. The queen bee phenomenon describes senior women distancing themselves from junior women, reducing support for female leaders.

Read at Psychology Today