Men dominating the conversation even at ‘women’s’ event

I have a daughter in an industry that's mainly female. She gets frustrated that there's a man who always dominates the Zoom meetings, treating the women as if they know less, even though they're more experienced. Yet she's still "be kind" and TWAW. It makes me want to scream!.....

I commented on the gender split thread because in my experience of mixed groups the men take over and I am completely uninterested in what they have to say. No Nigel, I don't want to hear about your racing times, I want to hear your wife's jokes about her cracked nipples please!

I have this issue frequently at work. Last year we had a small Teams discussion following a company wide presentation about BLM and racism.

Our team of 6 includes a Chinese woman, a woman of Caribbean descent, 2 white women and 2 white men, guess who talked most?

Our manager is lovely but won't shut the men up and so I ended up trying to steer it back to the women who I knew through previous conversations had some really interesting things to say about the racism they and their families have experienced.

Even I (white) have some insight as my DH and DCs are Indian/ mixed and so we have had some issues but no, it was the older white guy who thought racism was overstated who had the most to say.

He also is very much "what about the men" in pretty much any circumstance and the younger man bravely if foolishly said he "hadn't really thought about it before" in regards to ongoing racism in the wider discussion involving several hundred colleagues. It was all a bit of a shit show.

A few years ago I listened to an interview with the author of the book "Why Men Fight". It was really interesting, and what particularly stuck with me was his statement that "testosterone is the status seeking hormone". I assess all of my encounters with men against this statement now and it makes perfect sense. Even my mild mannered, people pleasing DH, I can see how his interactions are always coached to gain someone's gratitude/admiration.

This has been a bit of a revelation to me - it feels like it explains something I've been trying to put my finger on for ages.

The other thing men do is to say ‘this isn’t so much a question, more of a comment’ and then ramble on smugly at length about themselves.

God yes, clicked on this thread to say this. Men loving doing the 'more of a comment than a question' thing. Especially at literary events, telling the author what the author really meant in their book.

[quote tiktok]@CandyLeBonBon do you really think the coach was intimidated into not managing this situation better in case she erred in assuming Dave was a man....?

Whatevs. Coach should have shut him/her/them/zie up.

I have noticed this phenomenon all my life, from school onwards. In normal times, I went to open lectures at the local university. They had some big names occasionally. Every time questions opened, a man would speak, and if a woman had her hand up, a man with his hand up would be called to speak instead. I am not especially fond of standing up in front of 300 people and talking, but I actually deliberately try to pose a Q as it encourages other women!
One Big Name (man) said at the start of questions he would try to take the first Q from a woman, and then alternate man/woman after. This worked better, though no one challenged him about what if someone IDd as a woman. This was about three years ago. I think there would now be a fuss.

The other thing men do is to say ‘this isn’t so much a question, more of a comment’ and then ramble on smugly at length about themselves.

😡[/quote]
Not sure why you're tagging me? I wasn't the poster who brought gender identity into the conversation. My comment was querying the relevance of that poster's assertion that nobody knows whether anyone in the room was a nan or a woman, which I found a bit suspect, to be honest!

Not at a specific Women's event but at work certainly.

I work in a very male field of research and development, the example that sticks out most is a couple of years ago I was working on a project in a consortium. At one meeting, a member of the group had a student (M) on placement accompany him.

I presented, shared the physical samples we had produced & my findings. My associate (F), who is a Professor and expert on the topic, started discussing the results of testing she had done on my samples.

My associate, partway through her presentation is interrupted by the student, who tells her that she must be wrong. He had recently read a paper on the topic and the theoretical paper predicted the results would be different to her actual findings. He actually said 'that can't be right'.

We had the actual physical items on the table, the results of hundreds of externally verified tests, and footage of the testing.

She was gracious, very firmly held her ground, and explained again the results, and told him to save his questions until the end. He was adamant that the paper couldn't be disproved and only backed down when the Chair interjected. His supervisor didn't even reign him in, just nodded along.

When I got back to the office I explained what had happened to my Business Partner, he actually gasped, and said that had never happened to him in 30 yrs in the industry....says it all really.

What is a 'Not a dude' ?

I run training courses in my workplace. I remember one particularly tiresome young man who kept trying to derail the topic we were working on by sharing with us his scintillating nuggets of wisdom. We were all getting quite fed up. One one occasion, he interjected “ChaToilLeam, did you know [insert irrelevant fact]” and I just deadpan said “Yes”.

Another time: “Can I ask a question, ChaToilLeam?” “Does it relate to our current topic?” “Nooo…” “Then, no.”

I’m a grumpy older woman and I just shut that shit down now. Total waste of time for other participants who are actually there to learn something. Only regret I have ever had with such an approach is not cracking down more quickly.

Looks like the event wasn't well moderated either. I sometimes use the below tool when I am meetings and keep tab either on times or number of questions:

arementalkingtoomuch.com/

Pot stirring again?

You might have misread the room again!

Straight man Graham Glinehan does seem to be a rather dominant voice in gender-critical events, wouldn't you agree?

very lengthy and attention seeking icebreaker he'd volunteered to do. It went on for 2 hours.

A two hour icebreaker?? Even a half hour is bad enough, they are invariably excruciating.

In the same industry I was giving a presentation and was constantly challenged about the terminology I used.

The man talked over me and persistently 'corrected' me despite the fact I had a specific number of minutes allocated to me. I stopped, told him I was using a specific methodology that demanded participant led understanding / use of words rather than professional/scientific terminology being imposed and asked the organisers if I could have my minutes back.

I got right royally drunk for free at the bar later, so many people buying me a drink for putting him in his place. He, like many other men at that conference, just couldn't shut up if a woman was talking. It really annoyed me back then and still does now.

Went on an away day very recently where a junior male member of staff (who is gay, which is relevant as we are a diversity based organisation) but majority say 75% employees are women, high percentage non white too. Its a great diverse place really except the male/female split. That's because pay terrible! So this man took over the day. Greeting people as they came in like it was his party. This man is not young at all but very new to our industry. He's on a return to work type programme, very much the most junior there. He was allowed to dominate the whole day with a very lengthy and attention seeking icebreaker he'd volunteered to do. It went on for 2 hours. Apart from a handful of his entourage, the rest of us spent excruciating hours sucking this display up. Later he couldn't even listen to a very distinguished invited speaker without leaning over to chat about how amazing his section had been. He was given a special extra clap for his contribution at the end. All enabled by a senior female manager. And yes he likes to tell us all how to do our jobs. Because he's gay he seems to get away with behaviour that would not be acceptable from straight men in our public sector roles. E.g. bitchy jibes, poking fun at overweight colleagues etc. All my team were in agreement that misogyny was at play and hiding in plain sight. Its funny that in the absence of straight men where perhaps usually he'd not be top dog, he's assumed this over women and women of colour. (I think he messed with the wrong crowd!)
I can't ever remember witnessing a woman behave in this way. But its accepted. He's already been promoted once in less than 12 months.

I work in a generally women-dominated industry, but there is a sizeable minority of men. I've been lucky in that in my specific field the men tend to be the more creative, sociable sort that are perfectly happy in themselves and don't think twice about having women as bosses. However, the related fields are ripe with condescending arrogant old tosspots.

"We find them tedious as well"

Yes, I think the majority of humans find these boorish pricks irritating. Interesting point about the status-seeking hormone - you could almost feel sorry for them slavishly competing for status the whole time instead of actually deriving some benefit, learning or enjoyment from their experiences. I say almost...

A few years ago I listened to an interview with the author of the book "Why Men Fight". It was really interesting, and what particularly stuck with me was his statement that "testosterone is the status seeking hormone". I assess all of my encounters with men against this statement now and it makes perfect sense. Even my mild mannered, people pleasing DH, I can see how his interactions are always coached to gain someone's gratitude/admiration.

I worked in a male dominated industry during my 30s and witnessed this male domination on a daily basis. It's one of the reasons I established and run a women only social group (the other reason being unwanted sexual attention), which I mentioned on another thread about girls' nights out being discriminatory if male partners couldn't come along. Some posters genuinely couldn't see how including men makes any difference, lots of "What difference does having a penis make?" comments. Well actually it makes a shit load of difference.

After all the violent crimes being reported against women, and the current sustained attack on our identity and safe places I'm sad to say I'm thoroughly sick of men.

They do this everywhere. I occasionally run info and training events introducing people to my own specialist little area of knowledge. Pre-Covid days I used to attend literary festivals and conferences and events. At most of them there is usually a man who puts his hand up at question time, when others are asking relevant and carefully honed questions, and embarks on a long and pointless anecdote in which he is the hero. I've often been tempted to yell 'Shut up' and now I've turned 60 and am a viper, maybe I will.

As a man who has attended many specialist events in engineering there are a few competitive men who hog the conversation.
They are repeat offenders. In a conference of a thousand, small group or at a table in the pub. We think them tedious as well.

@CandyLeBonBon do you really think the coach was intimidated into not managing this situation better in case she erred in assuming Dave was a man....?

Whatevs. Coach should have shut him/her/them/zie up.

I have noticed this phenomenon all my life, from school onwards. In normal times, I went to open lectures at the local university. They had some big names occasionally. Every time questions opened, a man would speak, and if a woman had her hand up, a man with his hand up would be called to speak instead. I am not especially fond of standing up in front of 300 people and talking, but I actually deliberately try to pose a Q as it encourages other women!
One Big Name (man) said at the start of questions he would try to take the first Q from a woman, and then alternate man/woman after. This worked better, though no one challenged him about what if someone IDd as a woman. This was about three years ago. I think there would now be a fuss.

The other thing men do is to say ‘this isn’t so much a question, more of a comment’ and then ramble on smugly at length about themselves.

😡

There was some research I saw in media recently that suggested that if a woman was first to speak or ask a question then women’s contribution to the discussion went up massively. If a man did, then the men essentially talked among themselves and women found it much harder to break into the conversation

The only way you'd know was asking everyone. I think it's important not to hide this kind of interaction as it perpetuates the patriarchy. The coach might have felt unable to ask the men to leave as she could have no way of knowing if they were 'men' or 'women'.

Well, quite.

And, yes OP - I had hoped that that particular ghastly behaviour would wither away as older men retired and younger men came through who were accustomed to a different society. But it seems like something some young men have and other men acquire as they age and like exerting social control over others.

I think that's a reasonable point.