Why Women Fear Mean Female Bosses

June 30, 2006 — -- Miranda Priestly, Meryl Streep's character in "The Devil Wears Prada," is right up there in the pantheon of movie meanies.

"Devil" opens nationwide in theaters today. It is a satire about a would-be journalist played by Anne Hathaway who becomes an assistant to a fashion magazine's editor in chief, Streep's Priestly.

Priestly is the kind of boss you love to hate, like Sigourney Weaver's character in "Working Girl."

Those bosses may be fictional, but more women say they'd take a mean male boss over a bossy female any day.

A recent survey by Lifetime Television found women preferred working for a male boss, 3-to-1.

Tory Johnson, "Good Morning America's" workplace contributor, has a theory on why women prefer male bosses.

"Oftentimes women are harder on women because we expect something. We go in with the expectation that she's one of me, she's going to be my friend," Johnson said. "We're going to be girlfriends, and in fact it's not true."

According to the Bureau of Labor statistics, 23 percent of CEOs today are women and 50 percent of all managers are female.

Women managers face a Catch-22, says Geraldine Laybourne, founder and CEO of Oxygen Media, which has a staff of 250 employees.

"We are raised to be good girls. We're raised to not ruffle feathers," Laybourne said. "But the truth is we don't build business by being accommodating. Sometimes I think when we are direct, we are perceived as, you know, the b-word. And that's not right."

It's especially not right when you consider that male bosses are just as likely to be office tyrants.

In fact, Streep has said most of her models for Priestly have been men. Some experts also say women are better at leadership than men, work more collaboratively, and are more nurturing.

Reported by ABC News' Nancy Weiner on "Good Morning America."