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

[Albadross]

Is it though? Doesn't that depend on us all agreeing on some universal idea of what is masculine/feminine?

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".

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...

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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!

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...

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.

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.

It's a massive organisation with hundreds of thousands of employees globally, but the makeup event was put on by our women's network!

This gender IQ one is part of the heforshe campaign and weirdly it's being run by a woman I know who is a champion for diversity (corporate bollocks indeed). Unfortunately all of these types of things come across to me as patronising and as if women need men to let them play at being senior.