Feminists
In reply to the discussion: Women Speak Drastically Less When They’re Surrounded by Dudes. And That’s Bad. [View all]kdmorris
(5,649 posts)but that's mainly because I feel outnumbered. Most of the time in my job, you end up with 50-50 men/women and the women definitely talk more.
I remember one situation where I was the only woman in the room. There were 6 men and me. One of the men was a complete asshole anyway, and known for saying stupid, offensive things. At one point, we were discussing whether to put something into the product and this asshole told me "If you put that in your specs, I'll bitchslap you". I immediately reacted with "Excuse me?". He was laughing hysterically at "the look on my face". I told him that it's not even close to funny and if he didn't stop laughing I would report him to HR. He stopped laughing, but I felt VERY alone. All of the other 5 men looked uncomfortable, like they wished they could find a hold to crawl into, but only one of them (the new guy) came to my defense and all he said was "Dude, that's not cool to talk to her like that".
I decided at that point that we all needed to take a break and went to tell my boss. This guy did get fired a year later, but I doubt it was because of me.
When I'm in a large group of men like that now, I don't really feel threatened, but I do feel like they think I'm kind of "pushy" because I refuse to not speak. But less than 75% of how much I talk in a mixed group is probably about right.