Feminists

Likely. I think it becomes more pronounced when you add in ethnic origin. I work on a number of large enterprise level contracts where a significant portion of the workforce is not white-anglo, and is perhaps 70/30 men to women ratio. White women are perhaps the most demonstrative, followed by native-born black women, in these settings, but even there it is rare that they initiate discussion and they end up participating in the conversation less than the number of women would predict.

You get outside of those two primary groups, and the participation rate drops off even faster - the project we have is done by an Indian owned company, so a significantly higher proportion of the workforce there is Indian than is usual for most US companies. In this setting Indian women are very much marginalized, tend to be highly deferential to their male colleagues, and very seldom attempt to steer the conversation.

Societal male to female ratios may affect that as well. With a different project with a large number of senior Vietnamese participants of both genders, Vietnamese women tended to be far more assertive than was typical, albeit still differential. Given that the female to male ratio in Vietnam was skewed heavily towards women after the wars in the 60s and 70s took out a significant percentage of Vietnamese men (and given that most of the participants in these organizations came to the US after the fall of Saigan) the unusual assertiveness is likely an artifact of that high ratio. The very subtle shift towards about a 1.5% advantage for women vs. men in the US may also be instrumental in decreasing the assertiveness of American women, especially as this is abetted by a higher percentage of women than men in college, which tends to promote assertiveness and the challenging of authority figures.