How women act differently in the presence of men

it is indeed

sorry, not inevitable that they find you weird!

inevitable that one ends up being on "best behaviour" and playing a part

i think it's inevitable if you're brought together not through mutual interest, but through circumstances, such as having partners who happen to get on, or children of the same age who do the same hobby

Agreed, these are really important skills. I think the whole of University life would be improved if there wasn't some sort of residual value in being an absolute boor orating at length on any given subject, say in meetings, or in answer to some minor query about administrative points, or over the desk in a shared office. Fortunately my habitual, resting face seems to say: are you some sort of idiot? so I am okay at minimising the boorish damage in these situations. But I've sst at countless meetings listening to some twat mansplain to the chair, when that chair is usually very polite and accommodating even though she has four post-graduate degrees and an honorary doctorate in chairing meetings.

And YY to fostering these skills.

I was also thinking about education, so that makes sense to me.

We get told all that guff about how women are innately better at being primary school teachers because we're such patient facilitators, but we are also really strongly socialized to genuinely be better.

I think the issue is about value, really. If society could be persuaded to put a proper value on skills like creating an inclusive conversation, jobs like teaching would (I think) also be much better respected.

Slight tangent, but IMO women's skills for this in education are also expected to be better than men's - classes will give a male teacher more slack if he fails to help shy/socially awkward people to speak, and will be more forgiving if he uses a crude interruption technique rather than a tactful one.

Yes I suppose for future action we should be looking at how to foster those skills in men

Ha ha, your not dickheadness has made me feel surer of mine.

It's funny you should make the comment about women being skilled in inclusive practices - the point I was going to make earlier is that my mate with a PhD focused on dialogue as democratic action said to me that all tough political negotiations should be undertaken by women because they are better at creating democratic dialogue spaces and they are more able to shift their own position in order fully to appreciate the position of the other. I'm now thinking that that could make women better educators? Of course she was speaking from the point of view that women are socialised to have such skills, rather than assuming the rules for effective dialogue were printed on our ovaries.

outs I also had the 'shit, I'm a dickhead' self-assessment.

But I think you're right why it happens - we are all used to be interrupted. In fact, something I found myself doing with another big women-only group was slipping into teacher mode (because that is pretty much the only experience I have when I don't get blokes interrupting a lot). I felt like a massive wanker.

Something I like about being in a group of women, though, is I think people are a bit better at noticing someone who is either naturally quiet, or struggling to find an 'in' to the conversation. It really frustrates me that in mixed gender groups, you can often see a woman sitting there clearly wanting to say something, and even if all the other women notice that and try to sort of interrupt for her, it doesn't work.

I think women are probably more socialised to pay attention to who's not speaking and might want to, in the 'a good wife helps the conversation flow' kind of revolting way. It's actually a really good skill.

Btw, this is just me ranting, but went to a wedding last weekend and here's a great example of women acting differently in the presence of men! The blokes started talking (pseudo) learnedly about booze and my female mate went to join in. She knows her stuff. They froze her own, in a fairly wankerish way, and she ended up seething and retreated into small-talk cliches because she couldn't be arsed.

But I know if she'd been in a group of women she'd simply have called them on it, and then she wouldn't have been seething for the rest of the conversation, and she wouldn't have ended up talking cliches, either.

inevitably, the "safe", small-talk, conforming to stereotype conversations are likely to be dull for many women. it's not supposed to be interesting, really - it's just lubricating the wheels of daily interactions, demonstrating that you're prepared to show willing and play along with social norms so that people feel comfortable in your presence

i think it's probably the same for many men as women - sport tends to be a safe topic of conversation for many men, and my dp admits that he doesn't find football very interesting but it's useful to loosely follow what's going on in order to join in with casual conversations with other men. likewise, i'll make conversation with another woman about shoes, hair, clothes, nails, those sorts of social niceties, if they bring it up or i can see from the way they dress that they take an interest in that. i'm not going to go straight in there with a description of what it was like having a coil fitted

i had MH problems for a number of years and isolated myself socially. when i started socialising again it was mostly with dp's male friends' female partners, and as someone upthread has said, this doesn't always make for close female friendships. i didn't find them terribly interesting, and i don't think they found me all that interesting either. all we really had in common was that our partners were friends, and i was something of a newcomer so they were naturally cautious with me and less open and relaxed than they would have been if i hadn't been there. these days, some of them i still have little in common with, but with others we have become more intimate friends and i recognise much of the descriptions of female company above

I find groups of women quite dull when it's all sitting around talking about cake and diets and stuff.

That is pretty dull, but it's just as dull when men do it. < Looks pointedly at male team members, who can bang on boringly competitively about 5:2ing and the gym. >

One of the things I like about the women's group at work is that they're not that obsessed about rank in the way that men can be. It's important in the sense that more senior people have the contacts we might need, and may also have the power to do things which have been decided, but it's irrelevant in the sense that anyone might have useful ideas and feedback, and people are listened to, regardless of rank. I find when discussing things with men (as most of the rest of my daily work is, as it's very male-dominated), they will pay more attention to those who are more senior (and possibly more male than me) - and they're missing out on some good ideas as a result (I get ignored when pointing this out.) Some are worse than others for this, but it does seem to be something men at work care about more. I don't know if the dynamic between women would change if there were more of us.

Some of us are funny. I think people pay a lot of money regularly to hear me speak at least in part because of the humour compared to many other male and female speakers on my topics.

Oops, didn't quite delete the first thing I put in which wasn't really on topic

I was just talking about dialogue styles of men and women with someone who has a PhD in di

It's interesting to think women only spaces about cos I was only the other week meeting a group of MN feminists and I had the slight concern that I came off like a dickhead, which is always a bit of a worry to be fair, but when I thought about it, I got the dickhead sense from the fact that when I spoke, everyone turned and listened, and let me finish what I was saying. And I am totally unused to that, and feel instinctively that if I have got through a whole point without being interrupted or talked.over, and then that point has been accepted and responded to, then I must be dominating the conversation in an unacceptable way. So I put the dickhead sense down to being socialised in a way to expect to have to really fight to interject, and then expect to be talked over, etc. (Though obviously am right now thinking I'm double dickhead for being one in the first place but being such a massive one that I've found a politically convenient way of rationalizing it rather than being able to recognise it).

This was a very particular kind of women's space, it wasn't mates doing the raucous thing or like the women only spaces that happen in my parenting life - in these spaces I recognise the points PP have made about how the topics are notably different. It was women only political and intellectual.space and it was noticeable (and interesting and welcome) how the dialogue style was really accommodating.

There are good ways and bad ways, I definitely only have discussions about sexism with the other women (mainly at work but IME female scientists tend to all be feminists so it's a very safe environment to discuss it). The loo thing is interesting, I'm currently working on a project that has a female project leader, for the first time ever I have (ad hoc) meetings in the loo. It feels naughty and radical even when we aren't discussing anything controversal.

Some people have hinted at it but there's definitely that 'hyper-female' type of discussion that I never know how to take part in when some women (NAWALT) talk about diets/make-up/nail polish. If that's your only experience of women's conversation it's very sad but just because there are some women who talk about those things some of the time doesn't mean that's all women talk about. There's a ot of valuable discussion about 'the female experience' (periods, contraception, pregnancy, being a mother, menopause let alone sexism) that is worthwhile and only happens in female dominated spaces. Never mind the very raucous humour that we have, at work the only laughter comes from offices with women in them.

yeh i agree, if you're gonna swear, like fucking OWN it

I'm not a great fan if swearing tbh. But I can't stand men swearing and then saying 'scuse my French chem' . If you were really being considerate you just wouldn't say it was it in the first place.
Last job was mostly men (80/20). This job is same ratio but my team is much more female, so much nicer, more accepting that we have life outside work and collaborative rather than competitive.

BOFster: exactly. My response has always been " make up your mind sunshine. Either don't swear or swear and don't apologise but fuck faffing around"

Well if I've learned one thing from this thread, it's that the correct response to a man saying sorry for swearing is "Don't fucking apologise to me, you sexist twat" .

Communication is vital so men kow what everyday sexism women put up with.

Unusually I am very often in almost all male groups and I am usually in charge, the most senior person there and highest paid (this is wonderful by the way - I recommend all mumsnetters get to that position - it rocks....) so not surprisingly no one puts me down as they are kissing my feet (or not quite but a bit like that).

However I virtually never cycle without men make some comment or other even at my age. Every day sexism is out there.

I meet high paid professional clever women so I don't really see them giving way to men. They tend to be competing with them and trying to beat them. I think that's a wonderful trend. Long may it continue.