Not me. I know exactly what he's talking about. Nobody can tell me men and women don't think and behave differently. I've managed groups of up to two dozen people with various mixtures of males and females, and my observation (admittedly only anecdotal) is that men will work on a team with people they personally dislike for the sake of the common objective, women will not, they will sabotage each other. Men will focus on the task to be done, women will focus on the relationships among team members, and I found the greatest challenge in being a manager was balancing those differences.
Something else I've noticed, as a manager of mixed gender work teams, and as a husband, and a father of females, and a friend of many women, is that women cannot not talk if there's anyone within hearing distance, even when there's nothing to say. They'll say something anyway.
I think the reason for that may be that men can compartmentalize their thoughts. I may dislike somebody, but I will compartmentalize the dislike, put it aside, if there is another, greater goal to be achieved.
Women are more into relationships, human interactions, so it is more difficult for them to compartmentalize. If they dislike somebody, that will spill over into any interactions they have with that particular person.
It is just a different way of thinking, it has its advantages and disadvantages.
Except those who are already in similar situations.
Well, I haven’t been in a similar situation. In our house these used to be male majority, we have one son and that is it.
During my career (engineering and then IT), it was mostly male workforce, both the careers were (I assume still are) male oriented. As to my leisure interests, my big passion is chess. Women are not attracted to chess even after giving them all kinds of incentives. Chess players used to practice affirmative action long before anybody thought of the word. In any chess tournament there is always a prize for the best woman player (so the woman can compete for all the open prizes plus for the women’s prize). Still there are very few women in chess.
In Gilbert and Sullivan, it is mostly mixed crowd, but nowhere near majority females. So in both social or in work situation, I have never been in a female majority place. Many times I have been in a male majority situation.
