'We all have masculine/feminine behaviours - that's a fact'

I once had to take a psychometric test as part of a promotion application to a senior leadership position. The results were interesting (I got to discuss them with the test provider afterwards), in that when compared to other women I displayed aggressive and controlling tendencies, if my results were read as if I were a man they were completely within the bounds of normal.

almond - I also think that fem. behavior/stereotypes are pretty much the same, but was just varying the language.

Lass - I was trying to imply that the Gender IQ was a load of corporate psycho babble dreamt up by people who charge a fortune for running workshops.

the bottom line is, not everyone gets to the top, and part of the reason is that companies are structured to make that impossible. I think the OP is being told that if she has the right hair and make-up, and knows how to be more feminine/masculine/whatever, they might think about promoting her. But then again, maybe not - they just like spending money on shitty workshops about make-up and bullshit.

Wait wait wait - rewind. Where the fuck do you work that they run training sessions on using make-up to get ahead?????
Did I misread that?
I think unless you work for a cosmetic company, it's pretty clear that you have heavy industry bias as to expectations of male/ female roles and I think splitting hairs about attainable skills is not your main issue.
You appear to work for an organization whose entire ethos is steeped in not only recognizing but in encouraging a definitive gender binary. I might be looking for a new job...

I think there are very different interpretations on here of what went on on this course.

I thought that the OP was talking about a course where more feminine traits were undervalued in the workplace and that increasing these skills would improve the workplace.

Kickassangel, what is the difference between feminine behaviour and gender stereotypes? To me those are the same thing, and factually it exists!

I would imagine what they're going for on this gender IQ thing is to make people see that so-called 'feminine behaviours' are beneficial to business

I am the owner of a business , along with my partners, which employs around 250 people with an annual turnover of, well quite a lot. I literally have no idea what the statement "feminine behaviors are beneficial to business "means.

And this as well
teach ways of how to perform the right kind of gender roles in order to become a leader at work

Marcia there are no real female/male work tendencies. We are all so different as we are all individuals and hopefully at some point this will be seen

Kua, yes, indeed. Thinking about my immediate team and department I can't think of any of them whom I would describe as displaying feminine characteristics or masculine characteristics beyond their clothing.

qumquat - from what Albadross has said, this workshop isn't so much discussing the stereotypes in order to dismantle them, as using them to teach ways of how to perform the right kind of gender roles in order to become a leader at work.

Obviously, there are many, many (maybe even all) behaviors which are learned/enforced upon us based on societal ideas of male/female etc. and in general day to day life, we may often gloss over these and then work with those stereotypes.

However, in a work event designed to be about gender IQ, surely the starting point should be about whether those behaviors really are innate/learned? Really masculine or feminine? For someone to have gender IQ (wtf is that anyway? sounds like corporate bollocks to me) they can't just start with the assumptions that there are masculine and feminine behaviors and we all just have them. That's a huge load of massive assumptions before they even get into how to apply this knowledge to the workplace.

There are many, many groups of people who 'fail' to conform to gender stereotypes, including those on the spectrum. That shouldn't mean that they can't do as well in the workplace. The workplace should be able to cope with people being individuals if they are doing their job well.

I'm with almondpudding there are stereotypically masculine and feminine behaviours. The stereotypes are harmful but this doesn't mean they don't exist. I'm not sure what denying their existence is meant to achieve. We need to highlight their existence in order to challenge them (see almonnd's footbinding example).

Marcia there are no real female/male work tendencies. We are all so different as we are all individuals and hopefully at some point this will be seen.

Well I am definitely an introvert and I suspect have strong Aspergers tendencies (without formal dx) I work in a male orientated environment and have never had an issue standing up for myself and getting on with my job. I cannot do the "bigging myself up" thing though. It is alien to me. I keep a folder of "good job" emails and tell my boss. This is not sufficient apparently. I have no idea what male and female work tendencies are like...

I've have been described as having masculine behaviour for example I will not be shouted down in a meeting by males (comment made by a male )that said I will never be treated as a male as I am quite obviously female. I just get called "Ballsy".

And hopefully you it is obvious that I don't believe those foot binding statements - I'm presenting your argument back to you.

I'm trying to think of an example. Let's say foot binding.

Foot binding isn't really a fact because it isn't culturally universal. There are loads of women who never bind their feet.

Foot binding isn't really a fact because the pain people (better not say women - that might suggest it is innate) who have their feet bound say they experience is a subjective experience anyway.

Foot binding is only a fact because we keep talking about it. If people just stopped mentioning it it would probably go away.

The fact that foot binding is simulataneously culturally enforced and the people (better not say women) who have it are viewed as lesser should be ignored, because it is only if stop talking about what is happening that the problem will go away.

Maybe not the best analogy, because feminine behaviours are actually essential to society, unlike foot binding, but hopefully it makes some sense.

So we should stop talking about toxic masculinity in institutional environments then, in case it offends individuals?

Albadross - stop stating the blatantly obvious common sense idea that people are individuals who don't conform to neat stereotypes.

how else can those poor people running the workshop trade on those stereotypes to 'other' people, victim blame and make themselves some money?

It's just the work-place equivalent of those people who run workshops along the lines of 'give me hundreds of dollars and I will lecture to you about why you're doing it wrong, I'm right, and then we'll pretend that I've been so inspirational that after this evening you'll go home, change your life and end up a multi-gazillionaire'?

Sadly, capitalism is a pyramid system. It's a harsh economic truth that only a small number of people end up near the top, because they require others to be lower down the system. No amount of leaning in, male behaviors or make up will change economic fact.

I'm not sure what is going on here.

Presumably as feminists we accept that there are such things as gender roles and those things are socially constructed. As social constructs, they vary from society to society.

Factually, masculine and feminine behaviours have been defined in society by psychologists, and they have demonstrated that nobody has only one or the other.

I don't understand OP how you can be claiming as a fact that most women with ASD have an even balance of both masculine and feminine traits and then claiming not to believe those traits factually exist!

A lot of us probably conform to behaviours/traits which have been declared "feminine" or "masculine" which I believe to both be terms created/fostered to entrench gender/sex roles (I'm not sure which of these is correct to use here as we all have a sex but "gender roles" is more often used generally). We're almost from birth pushed towards the one which is deemed appropriate for our sex in so many ways and it's difficult to shake them all off I think. These behaviours aren't specific to a girl or boy, woman or man, but as we're bombarded with the idea they are or we should conform to the appropriate one from such an early age it's easy to see how we fall into them.

It seems to me "feminine" behaviours are ones associated with a lack of power, submissive almost, deferential, while "masculine" behaviours tend to be associated with power, success, confidence (though they're not exclusively positive with others connected with aggression). They're all just human behaviours not intrinsic to women or men.

Apologies if I'm missing the point or going off in the wrong direction and explaining what I'm trying to say badly.

Exactly what I was about to say Even

How about "we all have a mixture of human behaviours - fact"

Not a useful fact, maybe, but true!

I have AS and I find the 'extreme male brain' concept really insulting. If logical, unemotional, organised thinking is a male brain does that mean irrational, emotional, chaotic thinking indicates a female brain?

And if you can have a male brain and a female brain then what does that make women like me, biologically female body but with a male brain?

almondpudding wrote - "masculine and feminine traits have been defined by psychologists".

For example: the Bem Sex Role Inventory

Who decides what's masculine or feminine behaviour and where a particular example falls on the continuum?

Who?!