What’s it like working in a female dominated field?

29 comments

1. I’ve done both.

   Too many men, the workplace becomes piggy. Too many women the workplace becomes bitchy.

2. The dirty jokes in the break room have a lot more emotional depth and character development.

3. Not good in my personal experience. Same problems as male dominated fields. Condescending and sexist atmosphere. Not everyone of course, but enough to be pretty noticable.

4. I work in education. No complaints! I mostly make friends with women anyways.

5. It was a never ending cat fight trying to reach unattainable consensus.

   I took the door off my office for my personal safety.

6. From what I’ve heard it’s heaven for men looking to date. Male doctors have their pick of female nurses for example.

7. I did a mandatory stint (it was four weeks only) in the hospital as part of compulsory military service in my country and was basically put to work in a predominantly female station. It was not fun.

   The women hated each other and there was constant trench warfare between them. The station was a viper’s nest. The concept of hierarchy and leadership was not accepted well. What was worse is how the women in power treated their subordinates… and especially us guys.

   I was exposed to systematic sexism. Some guys had their ass grabbed, during roll call I was told to drop my pants so an old administrator could suck me off because her husband could not get it up that morning (I did not comply) and all the women found it incredibly funny.

   Command simply told me: Either fuck the old hag or defend yourself for one month and it’ll be over. This was a known issue for years and there was nothing to be done. Imagine you’re 20 years old and forced to serve in this environment. That is institutionalized sexism.

   Nobody cares if it is men who experience it.

8. I’ve only worked at a couple of places that were female dominated. All customer service type stuff, like store clerk and such. Lots of gossip and complaints about each other, plenty of backstabbing and sabotage. My favorite was the lady who tried to get me fired. Very nice and polite to my face, though she constantly complained about others. Luckily I was on very good terms with our manager, so her efforts were futile.

9. I diagnose and fix stuff that is broken (things, not people). This field will *never* be dominated by women.

10. We have a ratio of 4:3 in favour of the women at my work. Its actually pretty chill becos retail is retail. Not bitchy or piggy becos its only 2/3 staff a day so you have to get along with everyone

11. I worked in a call center for a few months several years back and it was with mostly women. My supervisor and boss were men but on a team of 15 people, I was one of two guys.

    That particular work environment was honestly really good. It helped that my boss was really cool too. I would’ve stayed if there was room for advancement and better pay.

12. No different than working with men. They’re people just the same. You will have drama with both. What _is_ different is the kind of drama you will have.

    With guys, it’s more aggressive and direct. Pissing contests and confrontations. Generally, guys will come to a mutual understanding(after butting heads) and learn to “deal with”(tolerate) each other to get the job done.

    With women, it’s more catty/bitchy and passive-aggressive. If there is a grude against you, it will be ongoing. There will be no mutual tolerance. One of you will go. As another poster said, “backstabbing and sabotage” is probably the best way to summarize it.

13. When I was younger, I was a nurse assistant in a large retirement facility. I was the only guy out of a department of 25 other nurse assistants, plus two female administrative nurses, plus a female facility manager. Not a lot of guys on staff in general.

    Overall, it was actually a pretty good experience. They’re definitely was some cattiness between the female employees, but not towards me. They were friendly to me, and they loved to come talk to me about how they appreciated me being there so there wasn’t “too much estrogen” in the workplace. 😂

    Some minor issues I encountered:

    -The head nurse getting female themed gifts for the entire department that I really didn’t enjoy (like nail polish kits).

    -Everyone stealing my hand lotion, which I desperately needed after constantly washing my hands all day.

    -Getting yelled at if I ever left a toilet seat up.

14. I’m a nurse, so it’s 90% women i work with. I actually feel like I’m treated better for it compared to how they treat each other. It’s like I’m totally immune to the cat fighting and social hierarchy (hierarchy is an exaggeration, but pecking order sounded worse).

    The only thing I notice that I think is bullshit is that patients and even some coworkers think I’m more qualified (literally not even a year in, I’m still a “baby nurse” in terms of being an RN) and the patients like me better because “that female nurse is such a bitch”.

    Also has to be said but I tend to get screwed with the heavy, violent, harassing patients because I’m a dude and I’m the pack mule if the PCTs need help. I don’t mind helping with the lifts, it’s just tiring at times when I’m trying to do my own stuff and have to run to another hallway.

15. I worked in public libraries for years, which are typically dominated by women, and were in my experience too. I enjoyed it quite a bit. My bosses were women, my co-workers were mostly women, and they were supportive and great. If there was any bad feeling among them, it didn’t reach me.

16. My first job was at a fast food restaurant and although it’s not a female dominated field I was the only guy there. The women talk about many inappropriate things I can write a whole book about it. And they fight a lot, they make each other cry and some even quit because of the bullying. Being the only guy there I feel like I had special treatment, they were always flirty and playful around me but like vicious cats with each other.

17. I used to be a housekeeper at a holiday inn, it was usually pretty chill, of course there was always miscommunication with management and the front desk, but I never really felt weird working with almost exclusively women.

18. Engineering office where most of the staff was on the road. On a given day most of those reporting to the office were female employees in administrative roles.

    Most are alright to work with and seem immune to office drama. A few are moody and always looking to spread gossip and stir up shit. The older 50+ women seem to be the ones more prone to office drama.

19. Considering the female dominated field I work in is dominated by age 40+ females, it’s quite nice and feels like having a bunch of aunts and moms.

    Young women are the scary ones.

20. No problem, except I found female supervisors and managers to be a little less trustworthy and getting a good team dynamic going a touch more challenging.

    The bonus though, is being able to gain real insight on how women think and feel. If you have the wit to listen, you will can learn things that will make you a better husband, BF, father, son or brother.

    I worked in a business where the women out-numbered the men 2 to 1. As a young man, I learned what sort of an impact, mentally and physically things like child-birth and miscarriage had upon women. This helped immensely when I started it have meaningful, mature relationships with women.

21. Like watching crabs in a bucket, they’re all out to get each other or making up shit about one another. The worst thing though is the older women, 50+, want to touch everyone and I really hate being touched. Ive had to explain several times not to put your hand on my shoulder while you’re talking to me. That one might just be me, but I really hate people touching me at all.

    My last job was the other way around though, maybe 1 or 2 women, and it was worse for me. Boss treated the whole team like a football team, slapping people hard on the back good morning, complaining about his wife, trying to squeeze your hand to hurt in a handshake. After a few months someone told me if I ever wanted to get promoted I had to join his outside of work pickup basketball team and I was like fuck this. At least the women leave me out of it.

22. Used to model in my twenties. It is fine. Money was meh (men make nearly no money ) but it gave me first dibs on clothes which made up for it. Also was a self propelled dildo. So it made social part fun

23. I absolutely hated it. I don’t think it’s possible for cishet men to be successful in a female social hierarchy.

    Endless over-sharing at meetings and over-collaboration. Sometimes you’ll be about to end a meeting early and it ends up just like in grade school when the teacher says “Okay if nobody else has any questions then we can go to recess early.” and the girl in the back of class raises her hand and says “Uhm… I… uhm… Wanted to say that I like the color blue.” Then every woman has to take their turn appreciating the color blue and talking about their favorite colors while all the guys are going nuts because they just want to go play soccer.

    You can’t get a word edgewise in meetings, even when called on, even when directly asked a question. They’ll interrupt you to answer the question for you, but if you do the same you’re a huge bully.

    Also nobody ever makes a plan and sticks to it. The plan changes depending on what mood everyone is in.

    It’s about 4x harder to get promoted as a man. Hard stats, not perception. x% of men in the company represented well under x% of promotions.

    You can’t ever speak plainly. Euphemism for everything. We didn’t have layoffs, we had ‘The event last month.’ Billy didn’t get fired or laid off “Billy has left the team.”

    Women are allowed to make off color jokes and openly lust about celebrity crushes and whatnot… But men get insta-fired if they do the same. I’ve seen women try and loop men into these conversations and the men nervously excuse themselves… then the women laugh about their power. I literally saw a woman threaten to file an HR claim over a man mentioning a benign and non-sexual body part turn around months later and tell an extremely not work appropriate story on a group meeting with no repercussions.

    Nobody is willing to call out a bad management decision because everyone is too conscientious and will follow the ‘alphas’ no matter what.

    Open discrimination in training, hiring, corporate travel, etc…

24. Horrible. All men sucks, men shaming non-stop, jokes about men, all but crapping on their exes and husbands… They’re always gossiping about other woman. Impression I had is: woman loves everyone on their faces, but hate everyone on their backs.

    My experience with male dominated also sucked, but I think it was better. Men just keep talking about sex, who to fuck next and when, but at least there wasn’t shaming on woman. Besides these really uncomfortable subjects, we could actually chill.

    But as a man, my experience could be biased, and the two workplaces were totally different.

25. I don’t work in a female dominated field, but there was a point where I was spending a lot of time in women’s stores. I was sent to cosmetics stores and mall clothing stores that only sold women’s clothes. It felt a little awkward at times, but it was still fun.

26. Fucking terrible.

    There is a standing glass hazard in the hallway and nobody will let me move or secure it. And not for any reason, just because “Do not fix it.”.

    The same goes for whenever anything else goes wrong. I have to either fix it while nobody is looking and just pretend that it fixed itself, or a toilet will be out for days because nobody is willing to do anything about it.

27. Men tend to work together better in their peer groups and have issues with outsiders. Women tend more to pick apart their peers and seek approval of outsiders or the larger group to gain local dominance.

    I’m personally a very useful person and I “save a lot of asses.”. I tend to benefit very well in female dominated locations because they complain TO me about the person that took 30 seconds longer than needed in the restroom than complain ABOUT me. Other guys would obviously have a very different experience.

    I distinctly remember one guy eventually quitting because of constantly being treated like everything he did was gross or creepy. I could tell by their conversations that this all came from him wearing bright white tennis shoes to work. This has typecast him into an “uncool” label and when he occasionally acted “outside his lane” by trying to crack a joke like he wasn’t a total outcast… The social punishment was merciless. He should have known better than to act like he had more status than he did…. It was ugly.

28. I have worked in a variety of Health care settings, I introduced a descriptive term for some of the areas, it was the B.O.B factor! If the B.O.B factor was high it meant that there were a lot of Bitches in the team, as in Bunch Of Bitches.

29. Someone said women in power are worse than male in power.