Working With Women

The BBQ Pit
81

HOMS: * To those who say they work with a shitload of women and can’t stand it, let’s put you in a workplace with a shitload of men, and I bet you’ll find something about “all men” that you don’t like, either.*

But maybe you’ll be more likely to assume that it’s just the way the job is, rather than just the way that men are.

Men and women do seem to get differently socialized to some extent, have different styles of communication, etc. etc. And it’s only natural that the two sexes would exhibit somewhat different trends in assholish behavior, too.

I think that one reason “typically female” assholishness seems to bother many people more than “typically male” assholishness is this: The “male” kind tends to be taken for granted as a basic part of working life. After all, the traditional workplace has been a male environment for centuries. It’s very natural that it’s been structured to accomodate typically male types of assholishness more easily than typically female types.

Remember, the stereotypes about “typically male” assholishness tend to be things like: they’re slobby pigs, they’re aggressive and competitive, they have fragile egos, they’re obsessed with their own power and prestige, they’re obsessed with sex, they’re show-offs, etc.

Now this kind of behavior in a social (i.e., traditionally mixed-gender) environment tends to be criticized as assholish, and men and women alike get pissed off by it. But the same kinds of behavior in a work (i.e., traditionally male) environment are more easily tolerated or accomodated.

In the traditional work environment, men don’t have to fight tendencies to slobbiness: they have secretaries and cleaning staffs to clean up after them. Office hierarchies and prestige perks and so forth cater to male fondness for competition and dominance, which they’re encouraged to channel into working harder and achieving more. Sometimes men yell and get angry in meetings, and nobody’s shocked. The traditional workplace is set up to function in ways that are comfortable for men. So when male coworkers sometimes act like assholes, it’s more likely to be accepted as just par for the course in working life.

But the “typically female” types of assholishness—the bitchery, gossip, backstabbing, all the stuff that people here have been complaining about—are not traditionally accepted as a typical part of life in the working world. So, IMO, people tend to notice them much more and to have a much harder time putting up with them.

82

Featherlou, you hit it on the head for me. I want to get my job done, do it well, and then leave. I have little or no interest in office gossip, and will frequently walk away when it starts. As such, I don’t “bond” with my female coworkers very well. And, beyond hoping they are generally healthy and happy, I could give a shit about their personal life. Yet, the conversation in my office is borderline inappropriate 90% of the time. In addition to keeping a scorecard of things they think I have done wrong, (which I’ve had to painstakingly refute and explain to my boss when it would have been so much easier if they came to me and asked what or why I did something…), they care an inordinate amount about my personal life. Just recently I found out they were bitching that I had gotten a cat when they knew I had been struggling with my debts. It’s none of their business! And why do they care? It’s simply another nasty thing for them to bitch about behind my back, and I will be damned if I play that game. I’m not in high school any longer.

That being said, whenever one starts to gossip, I always either walk away or say something really nice about the person they are bitching about.

Sigh.

83

I have worked in both female-dominated fields (retail, customer service) and male dominated (currently engineering / manufacturing) and I will testify that I have seen gossip and backstabbing galore on both sides of the fence. My husband works in Tool and Die with a total of zero women in the company and he could tell you stories about the gossip and pettiness that goes on there. I wouldn’t go so far as to say there are no differences in general between men and women in the workplace, but I have seen enough that I know better than to say men don’t gossip or talk behind your back, or that women won’t come out and tell you things to your face.

And I have stories to tell anyone who thinks men aren’t petty or manipulative.

84

Men and women are definitely equal, but they are also definitely different. Being human they share many common characteristics but that doesn’t preclude the fact that they are different.

I am male.

I’ve worked in a few different environments. I don’t have a gripe about men or women particularly. I generally have the problem that I am unable to shut off my sexual attraction. I don’t have to act on it, but it’s still there and that makes it more difficult to work with women.

The major issue I have with women in general, working or not is that I can oftentimes tell when they want to say something and won’t. Then I spend however long it takes, waiting for the other shoe to drop. I think this happens more with women than men. I’d like to see women being more assertive.

As for Monstro’s question about gender vs race. It’s the law of averages. 50% of people are women. So one out of every two people we run into is going to be a woman. I live in New York, and I see many cultures, but I run into women more than I run into black people or arabs for instance, only because those races are not 50% of the population. So gender issues are more pressing than racial issues on a person’s day to day existance.

Erek

85

Exactly! I know some sexist individuals and that’s exactly what it’s like. Every woman is X, but I’m a woman, and I’m not X, but I don’t count – nor does anyone I know.

FWIW, I work with almost exclusively women, though we do have a few men both as peers and managers (though my direct manager is female). We’re a pretty big organization. I am fortunate enough not to work with any raging assholes or bitches, but overall, I’ve not noticed a fundamental difference in the way women interact vs the way men do. All that seems to change is the subject matter of conversation – though everyone talks about their kids and family, women ask you if you have any kids and if you are married; men like sports, women tend not to. This is just culturally ingrained.

We don’t have any of the stupid backstabbing, office politics bullshit. Maybe we’re just too busy getting work done. I work in a very high paced job.

86

Totally agree. Office politics chafe my ass. I try to stay as far away from it as I can.

I think the bitchiness/backstabbing/gossip factor varies depending on what kind of environment you work in. I’m lucky in that I work with a really good group of people. I can’t think of one female co-worker I have who I don’t like.

Unfortunately, all the potential vitriol that could be spread out over several people is instead concentrated into one waste of flesh - my boss. But, he’s a guy.

87

I’ll agree with that. I work on a campus, in a department, and with a faculty association, all of which happen to involve pretty much equal numbers of men and women. I am happy to go to work and see them and hang out. I’m going to a girls’ night out next week with them, though I don’t mind the men’s company either.

Having left behind a campus where most of the management and some of the faculty (of both sexes) drove me absofuckinlutely crazy to the point of wanting to throw them down the stairs and break their necks, I firmly believe that much of this is institutional. Let the vicious humans tear at each other, I decided. Then I went off to a more civilized place.

88

I think that a group of all women or all men tend to act weird. Having members of the opposite sex around seems to have a balancing effect. Someone mentioned earlier that there are two main conversation styles/strategies that women and men use. In general, this seems to be true, but of course it depends on the individuals involved.

That said, the worst working environment I ever encountered personally was when I worked in an office with nine women in their late-30s or older. I was the office assistant, low man on the totem pole, and I was only there part time (thank Og!) I had heard vague things from acquaintances and friends that working in an all-female office was not a nice thing. I found out why.

I was mostly able to avoid getting smeared with the feces they flung at each other but I had to devote an inordinate amount of time and energy to evasion. After a breaking-in period where I figured out what was going on, I refused to gossip, either listen to or provide, and I avoided ever, ever making any kind of a disparaging remark about anyone. And still I got a facefull of shit every once in a while.

One of the others said that women talk a lot in the workplace. I will second that emphatically. I had to share a small semi-enclosed office with the chattiest of all the other women. She never, ever shut up. Ever. She responded to no social cues that I was not interested or that I needed to end the “conversation.” Eventually, I got to the point where I just ignored her and she would actually keep speaking even when I turned my back. The others hated her not because of her professional failings (many) or because of her annoying habits (innumerable) but because she was sexually more attractive than them. Her talking too much didn’t even make the top 5 on their list of dislikes. (While I didn’t participate directly, it was impossible to avoid hearing the gossip and backstabbing).

They constantly came to try to recruit me to their coalition, or to solicit my opinion on how much of a bitch one of the others was, or to complain about something, or just to blahblahblah. As the token male, it seemed that my main role was to be arbitrator for disputes. At least, that was the role that was requested most. I felt like I was babysitting these women, some of whom were old enough to be my mother. My efforts to remain neutral worked well, for the most part, but it was exhausting and took a massive amount of time out of my work. This, where the lowest level of education (besides my Bachelor’s in progress) was a Master’s degree. You’d think they’d be more professional.

The best working environment I had was when I worked at the Post Office as an assistant mechanic. My main job was picking up and dropping off vehicles for maintenance. There were no women, there was no gossiping, there was very little jockeying for position. Everyone got their work done and cooperated most of the time. If there were disputes they were solved very quickly and everybody got back to work. If someone had a problem with you, you’d find out right away, get the problem resolved, and get back to work.

In general, I’ve found that mixed male/female or mostly male environments tend to be the ones where things get done. The times when I’ve had to work with mostly women have been a royal pain in the ass. They spent more time on social relations than they did on working. Plain survival in the workplace depended on a certain minimum amount of politicking. I just want to keep my head down and get my job done. If given a choice between male-dominated and female-dominated workplaces, I would choose the male-dominated as being more likely to allow me to do that.

89

How could you possibly know this? Is it your man’s intuition that tells you so?

90

One mostly female office I worked in was full of people bitching at each other. I don’t think it was the office so much as it was the fact that most of the women were in one tiny space. There were about 6 of us in a space the size of three closets. Not exactly comfortable. There were also two other women in the back.

Then I moved to another office with the same company where there were only five of us or so in a space that was the size of an actual room. Less bitching, more productive.

It was a high-stress job, and most of the people in “peon” positions were women. There were a few women in administration, but that was mostly restricted to accounting and HR. Most of the CEOs, CFOs, managers, and assistant managers were male. I always wondered about that.

91

That has been my experience, too, and I’ve worked in a lot of offices. Maybe that’s why women seem more bitchy - we’re not stupid enough to not notice that most of the underlings are women, and most of the decision-makers are men.

92

I’ve probably worked with more women than I have men. My current boss is a woman. I’ve had several other women bosses. I cannot identify w/ the OP in any way whatsoever.

93

Reading this thread I have been thinking that maybe the different atmospheres people observe in mostly female/mostly male work environments have more to do with the nature of the job than gender. If you’re in a mostly female work environment, it’s probably low-level office work or a “pink collar” job like retail, nursing, or teaching. A mostly male work environment is more likely to be one in administration or management, or one involving manual labor or technical work. These kinds of jobs have very different pressures and expectations.

To take Sleel’s example, I would expect that people working as mechanics for the Post Office would have a straightforward, “you do your work and I’ll do mine” kind of attitude simply because of the characteristics of the job and the sort of person likely to be attracted to such work. On the other hand, an environment where everyone is doing low-level office work is the perfect breeding ground for idle chatter and gossip. Tasks like filing, data entry, and typing generally do not require the person to focus carefully on what they’re doing. It’s dull and repetitive work. Put a bunch of people performing these tasks into close quarters and of course they’re going to spend a lot of time talking.

94

I don’t know about this whole women versus men thing. I work for six men and three women (in academia). The men tend to be more mind gamers than the women. The women don’t pull bullshit with me either because:

  1. They aren’t that kind of person
  2. They know I’ll call them on it.
    The men are Ri-diculous! If I accidentally mess up something, they go to my boss rather than talk to me. One guy had the gall to tell me that he believes “Women make better assistants.” Hmm… might explain why all his grad fellows are women. The guys in my office like to stew over a problem and never give me work or feedback until performance review time. The women tell me immediately if there’s a problem.
    In my previous job (non-profit), I had two female bosses who were absolute mind gaming terrors so I can understand the complaint about working with women for my previous job. It’s on an industry basis I guess.
95

Right now I’m a zoning administrator; by boss is the office manager and land-use planner; the receptionist is a woman; the assessor is a woman; the elected clerk is a woman; and I have no idea why I used semicolons for that list.

I worked w/ all women at a telephone answering service. I was a copywriter for an online sporting goods catalog; my boss and closest coworker (we were the only two in a gigantic room) were women. I was a graduate teaching fellow at two different universities (economics) where I worked as a GTF for women Profs. and had women as fellow GTFs.

Which is not to say that your hypothesis is incorrect. But it could use more nuance, perhaps. There are other reasons, too: the answering service was quite high-pressure, for example.

If I were to guess, I’d guess that both sexes can be as boneheaded as the other, but since we have the stereotype of women being communicative and political, while men are uncommunicative cavemen, the examples that fit our stereotypes are easily recalled and those who don’t are easily forgotten. But since I’m not guessing, I won’t guess that.

96

Did you read the very next sentence? Check between the parentheses.