AIBU to wonder if women feel excluded from workplace sport chat?

[Littletoaster]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51261999

Basically the women in this article thinks football and cricket chat in the workplace should be moderated as it excludes women. As a woman, I like cricket and join in with cricket chat. I don't like football but I don't feel excluded if others are discussing it. I don't think we need to start moderating sports chat. What do you all think?

I feel a lot more excluded by people talking about their shoes/clothes or TV programmes than I do by people discussing sport.

Nothing irritates me more than all the cooing that goes on around babies, either from males or females This too.

I'm a guy who doesn't like any sport, although I do, for some reason, enjoy watching Wimbledon. I feel left out by both men and women who have sports chat in the office.

Oh, no I don't, that's bollocks. Like the article.

Cologne - tv/netflix/movies etc are a more universal topic than sport.

I don't feel excluded by football chat. I'm not interested in it, but I don't feel excluded - they would let me join in if I wanted.

I did feel excluded when my manager and two male colleagues all decided to get tickets for Goodwood Festival of Speed together. They didn't ask me because they thought I wouldn't be interested, but also didn't think to bother mentioning I would be the only one in the team that day. To be fair to my two peers, from whom I found our by accident, they assumed I had been asked and had said no (I was out of the office when it was first organised.) I wasn't interested in going, (which is good, as it was a fait accompli by that point - someone in the team had to work) - but it would still have been nice to be informed I
would be working alone. I raised it with the manager, especially as he'd recently been telling me there was no sexism in the office and I am over-sensitive.

It's that sort of unthinking behaviour based on assumptions that leads to people feeling excluded, not sports talk per se. (He's not my manager any more.)

No more than I would feel excluded from conversations about reality TV, make up, clothes and drinking...

Os this basically just a continuance of "aircon is sexist"?

I think it's just a symptom rather than a cause of sexism at work. I've worked in male dominated workplaces where it's used as an excuse for the senior guys to bring the junior guys away for a coffee to discuss or arrange after hours events and not invite the women. It leads to less informal mentoring and basically the dogs body work was left to the women and the small number of uninterested men.
I don't think it's sport per se but it is conveniently used.

I like sport but I have been excluded from should have been a three way conversation at work by one man talking about sport and assuming I had nothing to say because I was female. We have formal internal dinners at work and the man was more senior than me and sitting to my right. A more junior male colleague was sitting to my left. None of us knew each other well as they were both very new. The senior one talked to the junior one and each time I joined in I was ignored.

I know lots about sport and can keep the conversation flowing and include everyone, so this was just rude. The senior one didn't last long at work as he was just as bad with the other people at work and they got rid of him quickly.

Another one here who would rather talk about rugby or football than fashion or makeup.

Cologne - tv/netflix/movies etc are a more universal topic than sport

Not for me. Subscription channels are obviously exclusionary to an extent.

And I hardly watch anything on the non-subscription channels. I'd rather waste time on MN instead.

Cologne - tv/netflix/movies etc are a more universal topic than sport.

You mean, you think that television is more universal than sport. I have zero interest in discussing spectator sport, but I also understand that I am not representative of the species in general.

I'd happily talk about sport, if only someone at work liked the same ones I do. Unfortunately there isn't anyone.

It's clearly rubbish. Aside from the fact that I also love sport and find the assumption I don't rather ridiculous, I also discuss things with female colleagues that many men in the room wouldn't be remotely interested in, and I wouldn't want to be censored either.

This sort of nonsense is actually getting harmful. Genuine issues and causes risk being reduced to a laughing stock every time someone chooses to cheapen them with such insulting drivel.

Entropy - more people consume tv and movies over all than sport.

I’m a woman and love sport! About 4.30 on a Friday as people wind down in the office talk turns to weekend plans and I’ve often been involved in discussions about the rugby / football watching at the weekend. It is generally with the men but some women who like sport join in too. The others just talk together about whatever interests them. I find this sport sexism thing very strange!

@Catdogmum That's really sweet! My cat is named after a footballer as well. Gary, after Gary Speed.

I think if I worked in an office where they ignored a female colleague's attempts to join in the sport talk, one day I'd bring in a particularly luscious cake. And then I'd explain to everyone that I intended to share it with people who shared conversation with me. Which excludes you, you, you, oh, and you. Learn some bloody manners and you can have some bloody cake next time.

I had to laugh when I read the justification that sport was a slippery slope towards inappropriate sexual chat at work.

I wonder who the hell they work with.

Some people do. We have men at my place who run away from me on a Monday morning if they know I've been to a match… I was at a meeting the other day and over lunch the only 2 women were talking about football and the men were talking about one of them having a new kitchen installed.

Swings and roundabouts, isn't it?

I my office there used to be chat of things I didn’t know anything about like sports or some TV but then we’d start talking about house renovations and I’d be included and other people would be excluded or children and those without children would then be excluded.

I get it if you feel like you’re constantly excluded all day from all conversation but the natural conversation I’ve seen would naturally drift towards things people had in common.

She said And it’s if it just goes unchecked it’s a signal of a more laddish culture and it’s ve easy for it to escalate from the VAR talk and chat to slapping each other on the back and talking about your conquests at the weekend.

I don't know which offices she's been in recently but that sounds like something a Mary Whitehouse type would say!

I’m very usually the one starting the sport chat! I’m the cricket and American football “expert” in my office and I’m usually heavily involved in discussions about football too.

I don't feel excluded when it's football/rugby/cricket talk. I use it as a good time to get my head down. The men do ask about the sports I follow sometimes.
It's no different from the childcare chat which I'm equally uninterested in but my male colleagues discuss on a loop.

That's insane!! Surely it's far more sexist to moderate conversation that women 'might feel excluded from' than to just let people talk about what they want.

I look forward to the office football banter!