Women in general tend to be more attuned in social situations, (not that this applies to all women, caveats abound, etc.) Often their ways of communicating are less direct and more subtle (this is not the case for me), so I would think social rules would be even harder to figure out than with men.
I was thinking the other day about how hard I find it to talk to funders. I happily spend most of my time behind a computer. Since I lack subtlety, I can never figure out the magical way to talk to them, even though I’ve observed my colleagues doing it a hundred times.
I’m fine one on one, though. The more people you add, the rougher it gets for me.
There may be a sort of bimodal ‘inverted bathtub curve’ here. I’m fine one on one.
And in my professional life as an engineer I’ve often had to give presentations to a roomful of people, and that’s not too stressful… they just blur into an ‘audience’.
Smaller groups can be difficult though; there is a tendency for factions to form and it is sometimes hard to figure out the various agendas…
I read not so long ago that people on the spectrum can sometimes gravitate towards performance, and that was kind of an “oh!” moment for me. I’ve never acted or anything like that, but I was pretty good at music performance, and I am as an adult pretty good at presentations, talks, etc. especially if it’s a type of audience that I’m used to working with (work, church) and if I practice (sometimes a lot) first (that’s an issue I have with being able to find words and concepts quickly, not a spectrum issue). I can “turn it on” for an audience – it seems to me that part of what’s going on is that the rules for dealing with groups of people in a presentation-like venue are much simpler and more codified (and easier to rehearse!) than the social rules for dealing with an amorphous group of people where there’s no strict agenda or presentation that unites the meeting.
My diagnosed kiddo is pretty great at giving presentations and terrible at all other social interactions, even one on one, though her one on one is better than her group interactions.
My god this rings true for me. In my military career I had two different instructing jobs - one was a weapons and sensor course for a specific platform we had, and the other was a train-the-trainer course. I really enjoyed instructing and I also really enjoy presenting, as long as I know the material and can do a bit of preparation. But put me into a social gathering and I’m awkward and uncomfortable with IMO nothing worthwhile to say.