Question of the Day: Are women ruining the workplace or are we enriching it? I’m asking that question seriously and would love to hear your thoughts.
This topic from my show’s opening monologue today isn’t even meant to be a controversial topic.
My husband and I were debating the pros and cons of potentially sending our son to an all-boys school. My husband went to one and insists the environment made for better learning because there were no distractions for the students in terms of the fairer sex.
When you keep the sexes separate then they’re able to focus on their work and academics. It allows children to blossom, he claimed. It was an interesting argument.
Then I said, “But what happens to those kids once they get into the real world? There are women in the workplace. Will we be seen as a distraction?”
But the more I thought about it, I realized, yes, we kind of are a distraction.
If you think about what men have to deal with when they go to work now, it’s essentially filled with verbal and social landmines. There are inherent differences between men and women — including the way we speak and our humor — and they don’t always fit together nicely in an office setting.
To be clear, I am not making an argument that women should not have the right to work and be relegated to staying in the house.
I’m not saying that whatsoever.
Yet, men do constantly face the pressure of having to avoid making innocent comments which could be taken the wrong way in the workplace.
‘Do I say something, do I not say something? I have to be careful in how I speak to this person because she’s a woman. Oh, do I tell her she looks nice today? Or is she going to think that’s inappropriate? Is it appropriate, especially in the post-#MeToo era? Forget it. Do I say anything to her? Well, if I don’t say anything to her, well, she’s going to say that I’m ignoring her because I am a man.’
The internal dialog that men must be having at work at all times is unimaginable. This new dynamic has also changed the way the office functions.
For example, numerous corporations are now having dry Christmas parties. Presumably, a big reason for the shift is that having alcohol could lead to major major HR headaches. If you supply alcohol and there are men and women having a good time — things could happen that make work awkward. Perhaps inebriated men and women start flirting. Maybe men look around the party and say, “Oh, I always thought she was cute. She was kind of cool. Let me go talk to her.”
But then what if it goes wrong? What if the woman thinks even saying hello in the wrong manner is inappropriate?
So, it seems reasonable for many businesses to now say, “Do what you do in your spare time, but at work, you have to keep it professional and that means no alcohol.”
Now, outside the office, women enrich the lives of men. For example, a bachelor pad or a man’s house is usually bland and lifeless. After marriage, it comes to life as men and women become one.
Yet, obviously, relations are different in the workplace which leads to a bit of tiptoeing and eggshells for everybody involved.
So during this discussion, I thought, “OK, well, what if you had a scenario where — similar to boys-only schools — only men are allowed to work in the office together? What would happen there?”
Well, that already existed, so we know it works.
Then I thought, what if only women would work with each other? How would that office be? Weirdly enough, it would be a disaster. Women would kill each other. Consider “Mean Girls,” it’s taking a satirical stab at female culture. We attack each other all the time so we don’t flourish on our own — and that would be the same in an all-female workspace.
Then, curiously, I came across a Reddit post where a man shared how he got in trouble because he made some crass talk comparing his digestion issues to a female employee’s while the two were in the company’s gender-neutral bathroom. The female employee thought it was harassment, and in my opinion, it was a little weird — but I am not a man.
For a guy, that situation might be normal. Men, for whatever reason, tend to be more comfortable with those sorts of jokes and hanging out in the bathroom in general. Women usually find the bathroom disgusting and don’t like jokes about it.
Yet because offices now have to be woke — gender-neutral bathrooms are pushed on men and women. And in turn, the differences between men and women clash with each other in awkward ways that interrupt work.
This happens at Christmas parties, gender-neutral bathrooms apparently, and other day-to-day activities that wouldn’t normally happen if women weren’t in the building.
So my opinion is, yes, women are ruining the workplace.
There is less laughter. There is less joking. Things are different. We are not enriching it by any means.