Men sicken me when there are no women there. I for one LOVE women in the workplace. It elevates the dialogue, professionalism, productivity etc. As effectively as the military addresses discrimination of minorities.

if a man doesn't have women Friends, then that usually means trouble for his partner and his view of women isn't exactly healthy.

Maybe it isn't so off topic then - if men treated women as real friends they wouldn't treat women in the trades like they do.

Lots of stories on that from my personal experience - women firefighters for one, oiy, that was a combustion family topic for a long time. And is true, none of these so called he-men who felt threatened by women doing 'their' job, had real women friends - to confide in, to joke around with (without being stupid and sexist) because women only had a couple purposes and those were related to serving men.

Any effort is seen as leading to an affair. So, it is especially hard in the trades, to have female friends. Usually work, or known BEFORE you met your wife. That SHOULD change.

how ridiculous tho but I know how groups can act in a scenario like that: say a opposite sex friend visits you at work and all the stupid jokes and nudge nudge wink winks start. *sigh

And I've walked into offices, looked around, and realized the interview was a waste of time. When you are dark haired, tall, and sturdy ...and everyone else is between 5' and 5'4", blond, tiny, young, and fashionable. I've had a man call the employment agency to tell them not to send someone so 'intimidating.'

others. At least MOST guys. Madmen aint far off.

A visiting male once doing some work in our company stated to the few in that office, that he would like to do that to me.

I went home and did not return until he left. Disgusting.

But that was not common.

front side of his business - when it comes to wanting the work done i.e. those that will do the work, but are hidden away - he hires such as me.

He is typical of the wife stays at home syndrome - very misogynistic in his views and very sexist - he won't change he loves his "cigars and brandy" evenings with the men folk.

skirts. He wound up with a stalker affair, that would show up to the co. Funny as all hell. She was not a quiet affair. This was big time co.

I have experienced some sort of condescension my entire life despite having parents who thought their girls were the equal of men. I have always worked in places with more men than women.

I have fought (in the sense of not being cowed) it all the way with patience and eventual mostly success.

My first male boss was the best - I could do no wrong. His wife did not work and raised 6 kids.

It actually depends more on the man in question - I am now in an environment with engineers, one of whom is really for women doing well, from the start of my employment. Another, with more of a Christian right-wing bent, was very wary at first, but after x number of years has changed. The work, to put it mildly, has been challenging. And the wives do not work.

When I was 17, I went to work in an industrial lab during university vacation - and by reports impressed the only men environment, because I only needed to have something explained once.

And on occasion, I have encountered the competition of other women - but that happens regardless of gender.

The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

This is anecdotal, but I have found over the years that my female bosses were more apt to try to solve a problem, sometimes creatively, whereas male bosses tend not to deal well with conflict, problems, etc. in the workplace.

Working my first programming gig, a couple years into it, and I was still just a grunt programmer. My boss, whom I'll call Susan, called me down to her office, which usually meant a shift in priorities to work on something else.

She asked me to go ask George, one of the most senior programmers, about blah-blah-blah. I have no memory of the details, but I scribbled it on my notepad. I stood there walking for more details, but that was it. She wanted me to ask George a question, and a question she could certainly ask George. There a brief silence, and then she added, "He's mad at me."

OMFG! Seriously? I did a silent scream, and a silent OMFG. She nodded and quietly said, "I know", as if to say, "Yeah, I really need you to this, so go ahead and get it out of your system, then please in all seriousness ask him this." I had to cover my mouth out of fear I would laugh out loud. Deep breath, game face on, and I was now wearing a shit eating grin so I could not help but be positive with George.

If Susan leaned back in her chair, she could see George across the hall maybe 20 feet away in his office. I turned and walked across the hall to George.

Me: "Hi George. Susan wants to know about blah-blah-blah."
George: "Well, blah-blah-blah."
Me: (walk back across the hall to Susan's office) "George said blah-blah-blah."
Susan: "Do we know if blah-blah-blah?"
Me: (walk back across the hall to George's office) "Do we know if blah-blah-blah?"

This continued. After about the second trip, Susan stopped waiting for me to echo George's words, and she responded directly to George. George made me echo Susan's words a few more times before he started responding directly to Susan.

As I moved back and forth across the hall between the two offices, George migrated across the hall to Susan's office. He went from sitting at this desk, to standing in his office, standing in his doorway, standing in the hallway, standing in the doorway of Susan's office, to standing in Susan's office talking directly to her. Once we reached that point, they were talking, and I was just standing there trying not to make a sound watching the conversation go back and forth. It was like being in the front row, middle of the court, at Wimbledon.

Because I was the catalyst for the reaction, I did not want to screw up the experiment. Anything I said or did at this point could cause the whole thing to blow up. Also, I did not know if I was an Ace up Susan's sleeve that she was keeping in reserve. If George objected because he had to work on the Thingus program, she could hand that off to me.

Conversation concluded, George agreed to do what Susan wanted, and he left. She looked relieved, but going into this she was clearly very nervous. What if it didn't work? What if George took it out on me, then we get into it. Or what if George took it out on her, "What you can't ask me a simple question? You have to send Kennah to do it?"

Bottom line, it was over, and it worked. It was the single most amazing bit of calculated problem solving I had ever seen, before or since.

Susan thanked me, and as I was leaving I decided to inject a bit of levity. I paused, looked at her, looked at the name plate outside her door that said "Team Lead", looked back and forth a few times, and Susan replied, "Shut up. Go away." I laughed, she smiled, and I went back to my office.

why would you waste all that time not confronting a problem? any boss, male or female should have skipped all the goings-betweens and cleared the air and sorted out the problem immediately. why is passive aggressive the new gold standard?

My first encounter with a gender bias issue at work was 14 years ago at a previous firm when I was hiring for a job and using a recruiter. After a couple of interviews with folks that weren't for what I was looking, the recruiter, a woman, emails me and says, "I found the perfect person for you, and the best part is... she is gorgeous!".

I called her up and said, now you have made hiring this person much more difficult, you realize you cannot say things like that, right? So, I hung up and arranged interviews with this person and three of my female staff members who indicated they thought her job knowledge skills were strong before I interviewed her.

Second encounter with a gender bias issue was when one of the other temps started sexually harrassing this woman a few weeks after I brought her on. I let him go that day.

I have regularly seen in my career and in non work situations where if you have a meeting, men feel like they can cut women off or talk over them. I usually wait until I get a chance to speak and say "I have a number of things I would like to add, but I would really like to hear what she (the woman who was cut off) had to say."

I only hire women.

While about 20% of the employees in the building were ostensibly male (judging from names in the directory), I worked in one of the departments were all of my coworkers were female.

It was so pleasant when compared to the offices I've worked in where there were more than a handful of men.

Nearly all of the admins were female too, at one place I'm thinking of. It was great, very empowering and things went incredibly smoothly.

Now I work in a school--once out with all of our department staff at a professional development event, we took a break for lunch. There are only two female teachers, myself and one other. We left the line after ordering lunch and found that all of the other male teachers had found a table just for themselves and not one big enough for all of us to sit together. We literally had to sit by ourselves at the "girls" table. I said something about it too, and they all looked at me in poutrage. Some of them didn't speak to me for the rest of the school year. I doubt they meant it maliciously, they just didn't think about it at all.