group dynamics in majority female/minority male groups

I don't think it is trolling (or rather I've no reason to think so). Plenty of people really do not get taught this stuff and it is pretty awful. TBH, I think these days you would struggle not to pick up some info about women in WWII simply because it is studied to death all over the curriculum. But plenty of other wars (including the current ones) aren't so well known about.

I think it was you SGM who said that really the significant change between wars in the past and wars now isn't women's involvement, it's the involvement of children? I forget the exact phrase but I found it shocking at the time.

It is a huge issue though, isn't it, that often we have a really skewed idea of what is a majority female or majority male group.

Reading thread with interest - hats off to EllaDee for feeding the troll and sorting them out in such a lovely polite way!

Has anyone heard of the "glass elevator", not the Willy Wonker one, but the one that happens to minority men in majority female occupations.

Whenever a man does what women traditionally do, he is given extra kudos because his presence lends status and prestige. Boo to that

nooka - at our parent council (where i was the sec) we initially had a male chair. he literally talked over female contributors to his male neighbour, but then lambasted the meeting for not listening to his own personal pearls of wisdom. within two months he had been replaced by a woman and lo, the meetings were vastly more productive.

lol carpets, there are loads of (female) academics writing about women in war. (and have been for yonks)

and although i've managed to slough off my own uniform finally, i'll be danged if i'm going to let another woman erase an entire gender in the history of conflict.

that said - i found my own years in the military interesting from a minority viewpoint (carpet - minority is not the same thing as absence). i was often 'used' - for want of a better expression, where my presence as 'different' would lead to gain, was essentially offered promotion because the 'first woman to get x' would be a bit of a pr coup, (although equally in a different context was told i couldn't do 'x' because the wives wouldn't like it)but essentially my work and professionalism (although validated by peers and seniors) was often dismissed by juniors as not a 'real' contribution by virtue of my possession of a vagina. and i watched it happen to junior female colleagues before stepping in and ripping the perpetrators a new arsehole. i didn't find any issues at meetings per se though, and was often the only woman present - no difference in contributions i don't think.

In terms of the original question - I find most/many men dominate the conversation in majority female groups. It drives me bananas!

DP (male) works in primary education.

When he was younger, he got coo'ed over a lot which was quite funny but did annoy him after a while. His description was lots of his colleagues wanted to mother him.

Now he is older, i think he is a father figure to the younger ones.

it seems to be a weird matriarchy.....without feminism.

I think threads just go on tangents sometimes! It does shock me though that we can make a whole gender invisible! And we're conditioned to assume that, if women aren't mentioned, they must have been doing good, womanly things like home-making. I really believe we are conditioned to assume that.

Thinking more about men in majority female groups, I really liked how on Great British Bake-Off (I know, I know ... ) it was nice to see that the men, who were doing this very female-dominated amateur baking (I know professional bakers are a different story) seemed perfectly relaxed about it all and didn't seem to need to conform to any particular stereotype of what they should be or do. A good one to watch with children I would think.

I am sleep deprived and kept reading the thread over and over and thinking I was not seeing some vital post. Although I've never really thought about the invisibility of women in war, really interesting. Actually, last night I was watching the news showing footage of all the celebrating in Libya and I thought 'where are all the women?'. Then I thought, well if I lived in such a strictly patriarchal society and there were thousands of untrained men walking around with guns, I'd be at home trying to be invisible too.

I didn't quite get that either - sorry if I shouldn't have replied, I think I misunderstood the first post then carried on digressing (as I tend to).

Back on track then.

But ... but ... how can it not be relevant to the dynamics of majority female/minority male groups that we still so often see the world as if women don't have a place in all sorts of important things (like war)? It can't not be relevant.

Sorry, but why are we talking about the war? I realise that sounds sarcastic, but it's a genuine question given that the OP is thread is about majority female/minority male groups.

AnOther - I'm just pondering, but your point about nursing seems to me to come together quite nicely with what carpet was saying. I do think there's a pattern that some female-dominated jobs or tasks (eg. munitions in WWII - which obviously, we know someone must have been doing but evidently in her class they just didn't talk about that job) can be ignored. Then, when they start being opened up to men (and I think it takes soem courage still these days to be a male nurse), the roles become increasingly professionalized and the job becomes much more 'visible' in society.

re world warII I know someone who made a film called the women's bridge about one of the london bridges built by women , and even horrible histories had a song about the women's role - very good
back to the OP - I know a few men in majority women space - couple of SAHD's - that seems to work ok - although I think they either get arn't you wonderful or other side a bit partronised/sidelined
In an exercise class I go to there is one man - and the teacher does sometime make a bit of a joke with him - I wouldn't like it if I was him
in primary schools my experience is the men do all the technical stuff and of course a disportatinate number of men in things like teaching and nurseing get to senior mangement

Really?! That's shocking isn't it?

I think teaching is much better now than when we were at school though - few of my students come up not knowing this stuff.

hmm... ok. You must have been taught differently ir from a different book. Pretty much all sources I read never mentioned women's roles

I agree with you though that modern wars sometimes give us a rather skewed idea of what war has historically been like - as a rule of thumb, any war where you're not fighting on your own territory will be very different from any war where you are fighting on your own territory. And of course, modern warfare is potentially much more remote (for technologically advanced side) than has been the norm.

No, that's not true.

Women in WWII were very active - in fact without women crews on the ground, those pilots would really have struggled! And indeed without women munitions workers, who had a very high likelihood of being killed because their factories were targeted.

I did this stuff at primary school and a good thing they got us to do was to actually talk to our grandparents about it - it was fascinating! It surprises me that this is not more widely taught.

battle of Britain. All pilots were men, women were at home either being bombed or being protected

No, that is a mistake.

Historically, woman have been involved in wars as combatants and victims. This is still happening in Afghanistan - women are right there, being killed, as are children. It is really sad.

It's actually a very modern development (and, obviously, one-sided), that for us Brits, war doesn't happen on our home soil and is often fought by men.

Though when I say this I always think of my very brave schoolmate who was killed a few years ago - she is much missed.

ella do you know history? What happened in times of War and still happens in modern wars? Men (mostly) go out to fight, their partners don't

Um, ok - sorry, I'm missing something, what's the relation to this thread then?

And which war are we talking? I've not read about the one where women stayed home and men kept the country safe myself, but always interested in learning.

nope, women were at home maintaining the home while their men kept the country safe

carpet - were they in majority female groups at the time then? Wow, I didn't know that, but it's quite possible I suppose. Do you have a link? SGM had some fascinating info a while back about women in WWII smuggling grenades in their vaginas - it was shocking and made me think of war differently.

My expereince is the same as SGMs.
One of the most interesting things that happened when I was doing my PGCE was the tutor said one afternoon that we could only speak if he said we could, he then only let the females in the room respond in the session. Within 20 minutes of this the males were positively seething. He pointed out that this was generally how the females experienced the sessions, silenced and largely ignored.