I am male and have worked in both. Here are some trends I saw, which of course all have their exceptions.
Advantages of mostly male workplaces
- People are less likely to be offended
- Straight forward communication
- People are quicker to feeling comfortable with each other
- People are quick to forgive each other
Disadvantages of mostly male workplaces
- Can be rough
- Can result in hypermasculinity and competitiveness
- More aggressive toward each other
- Less compassionate of weaknesses or setbacks
- Solutions to problems can be intense and aggressive
Advantages of mostly female workplaces
- More understanding of individual differences
- Solutions tend to be less harmful/aggressive
- Individual weaknesses are accepted and accommodated
- Setbacks due to unexpected circumstances are more tolerated
Disadvantages of mostly female workplaces
- Gossip and drama
- People can hold grudges for a long time
- Shady and deceptive interpersonal interactions
- People form cliques
- Indirect communication with double meaning
- Intentional misunderstanding to play power games
This is spot on from my experience as well, you can even see this dynamic play out within individual departments in the same company.
Definitely not mine. Men gossip. are full of drama, form cliques, are easily offended, and do not forgive at all
I'm a 6'5 reasonably muscular male running two offices entirely staffed by women, except for two gay guys. There's no masculine competition, which is nice, and communication is much more personal. Due to my strict rule of not considering any of my coworkers potential partners, I make sure I'm as supportive as possible without being threatening to any of the girls or their respective partners. It's very interesting seeing how patients act towards me vs the other workers. They seem to treat me as an authority figure, and take what I say at face value, even if I'm just confirming what one of the women already told them. The girls have to convince patients they're professional and not jerking them around, where I can just state something and they'll believe me. I'm viewed as a scientist, and the women are viewed as salesmen or interns.
I mentioned my stature earlier, because it's led to me being the office protector. I will defuse situations, defend my workers, and even fire patients if they offend anyone else in the office. If a rep for a company talks down to any of the women, or only wants to speak to me, I won't do business with them.
Ive hired men before, but they never last. They either make the girls uncomfortable, try to start relationships, or try to butt heads with me as if they hold authority over anyone else. It's very easy to see how someone with less feministic views could easily take advantage of the situation I'm in.
Edit: they're always fucking cold though. 73 degrees is not fucking cold Donna. I'm wearing a suit. Put on a sweater.
I hear you on the cold part. So many tripped breakers from space heaters.. and that one time, a very angry UPS that got plugged into.
In my experience, predominantly male environments are fairly disdainful of anything non-technical and include a lot of unexamined biased views toward women. Workplaces with more women, or a balance of both, don’t have the same issue, in my experience.
I’ve worked predominantly in two fields - engineering and environmental policy. I find the culture of engineering to be pretty toxic - too many conservative men. Environmental policy suffers from too much being demanded of workers, I think mostly because of the expectation that you’re motivated by your passion, rather than being paid for your time. I don’t know if that is directly tied to the gender balance in the workplace, but certainly women historically and presently are not compensated fairly for their work.
It’s a shame that I’m better at doing engineering, because I vastly prefer to not work in a place where I can hear my boss listen to Hannity every day through the wall.
"Unexamined bias" was exactly the phrase I was going to use. Homogenous working environments tend to ignore blindspots and assume that their team experience is universal.
The advantage is that I'm around other people
The disadvantage is that I'm at work
That reminds me of the feeling while at work. It goes something like "damnit I'm at work"
Me irl
I’ve had good and bad experiences with mostly-male and mostly-female groups. I think it has less to do with the actual gender of the group, and more to do with: (a) the manner and extent to which group members are invested in performing their gender, (b1) whether the group embraces deviation from that performance, or (b2) whether one’s own performance of gender is similar enough to the group’s.
I’ve often described myself as “not very good at being a woman.” My weirdness and difficulty with hidden meanings has gotten me shunned by fellow women and usually bullied out of all-female groups, particularly when I was young. But as I discovered a few years ago after adopting a more active lifestyle, I get along fantastically with most women who play sports.
All-male groups were usually not much better. I still had to keep LARPing a persona, it’s just that the “cool girl” persona came easier to me. The main advantage was that mostly-male groups didn’t tend to say one thing while meaning the opposite. (For example, “stay as long as you like” actually means “you should probably go home now” and that is absolutely nonsensical to me.) But all-male groups never accepted me either, so the best case scenario meant being tolerated instead of shunned.
When it comes to work environments, it’s only been women who played the game of psychologically tormenting me until I have a breakdown and quit (although one of those was a woman boss in a mostly-male small office). So mostly-male groups have been somewhat better because I usually don’t have to waste as much brainspace on LARPing the correct persona. I still tended to be treated more as a tagalong or novelty, though, and gender isn’t a guarantee of future behavior (for example, one of my current coworkers is a man who politicks like a woman).
You sound like you might be on the spectrum. Couple of things you said pop out, difficulty with hidden meanings being the big one.
I've had plenty of good and bad coworkers of both genders, so I don't care much about the ratio as long as everyone does roughly their fair share of the workload.
As far as bonus points go, other guys are generally more into the same hobbies as me, so there's more "bro talk" about that stuff. The girls seem to provide a wider range of topics and I learn about things I wouldn't with just other guys. I have pretty diverse interests though, so having a mix of good guys and girls to talk with is the best scenario for me.
About the only perk to working with majority males is then I'm not always the first one the boss asks to lug around heavy crap.
I seem to feel for some of the girls in all girl teams though. They can be way harsher to each other than I've seen all male teams work. I would not be able to continue in some of the situations I've seen them put each other through...
Main advantage I've found in unmixed workgroups is less (no) fighting over the thermostat
my dumb-ass thought you meant an environment that was mostly male AND female
I chose what happened to be a predominantly female class in my chosen job course in high school and social interactions definitely rolled off the tongue better.
