Phrasing in a professional environment

[BeetrootBonanza]

I was in a meeting at work today, and part way through a discussion a senior man said we need to "open the kimono" to understand what's going on in one of our systems.
I'm not normally one to get offended by things, but this usage has annoyed me when another phrase could have been used instead.
Am I being over sensitive, or is this inappropriate?

I agree that lots of cricket idioms have become common parlance - though not all, and people might have heard of them but not be precisely clear whether they are a good or bad thing.

There are lots of sports phrases (aka traditional "man things") that are common parlance - "ballpark figure"; "take a rain check"; "down to the wire"; "put the ball in their court"; "down for the count"...

I can't think of many idioms around traditional "woman things". Some proverbs about a "stitch in time saves nine" and "too many cooks spoil the broth", but beyond that...

Anyone?

There are lots of sports phrases (aka traditional "man things") that are common parlance - "ballpark figure"; "take a rain check"; "down to the wire"; "put the ball in their court"; "down for the count"...

What is masculine about these? Women play sport and most of those are so divorced from their sporting origins even I use them.

I can't think of many idioms around traditional "woman things". Some proverbs about a "stitch in time saves nine" and "too many cooks spoil the broth", but beyond that

Tailors and cooks are not and never were exclusively female. I don't have a mental picture of a woman for either of those.

Really, Lass? Sport is not traditionally seen as a men thing?

And your second comment kinda proves my point about things traditionally being associated with women not being used as figures of speech - those two examples were the best I can come up with, but if you think that those don't work, well, there you go.

These sayings are from men's competitive professional sports popularized by the sports announcers.

Baseball, horse racing, tennis, and boxing.
I think they allowed women to play competitive tennis.

These are examples of the sort of over egging that frequently goes on here "the society says women can't do/ must do" line when the reality is feminists saying society says.

No-one's saying that women aren't able to play sports I was simply making the observation that there is a lot of language commonly used in the work place that can be exclusionary, particularly to women, but that isn't outright derogatory

There was that thing as well about how men and women were performing in interviews at a company and the women were consistently being reported as not as "at ease", more nervious, less confident etc.

Anyway they had a look at some on film and realised that the male interviewers with male candidates would open with some sports chat before moving on to the questions. With the female candidates they went straight to interview. When they stopped the sports chat with the men, they found the difference in results went away.

The interviewers probably didn't even realise that they were doing it. A lot of this is not malicious or deliberate, and goes unnoticed.

No-one's saying that women aren't able to play sports  I was simply making the observation that there is a lot of language commonly used in the work place that can be exclusionary, particularly to women, but that isn't outright derogatory

The phrases you listed are not exclusionary to women. They may well be exclusionary to anyone not familiar with those idiomatic expressions but that is a different argument.

Are you seriously saying that in a work situation a native English speaker who is female would not know what "a ball park figure" or "the ball is in their court" means because they refer to sport?

There are lots of cliched phrases used regularly in business meetings. Personally I wouldn't use the 'open the kimono' one, which I agree has unpleasant overtones, but I am surprised how few posters seem to have heard it, because it is very common. I also struggle to believe that women don't understand sporting analogies/phrases in common usage. Many of them are derived from US sports, but it doesn't stop the rest of the world understanding and indeed using them - slam dunk and hitting the ball out of the park for example.

I work in financial services (think that qualifies as "business") and have lots of meetings and have not heard "open the kimono" it's awful!

And my company is very high scoring on bullshit bingo generally.

Men made the argument that sports were the reason women could not fully participate in the business world with men because they did not have the sports team bonding experience. Not "team players" don'tcha know.

Let's unsmuggle the budgie.

"OK everyone, lets really twist the testicles of this..."

Let's unsmuggle the budgie

I would say - this is entirely anecdotal, and untested - that, having been in a couple of meetings with just women in the last couple of days, that women just use regular phrases from standard English, and it's the meetings where I'm the only woman where I'm more likely to hear wanky jargon. I may pay more attention in the next meetings I attend and start a discreet scorecard.

Not "team players" don'tcha know.

Except when there's some sort of unpopular admin/coordination task, and then women are well-known to work more collaboratively than men, so are ideally suited for it...