It's 2025, Ladies. Aren't Women-Only Groups Just A Little Archaic?

Have we still not learned how to get along with the boys?

I don’t think I could find anything more ridiculously archaic than this. Public domain photo

“Hey, you want to join this?” my boss emailed me a few weeks ago. It was a women’s online networking group for IT services professionals. I checked my calendar. No, it was not 1972.

“Is there a professional networking opportunity?” I asked. “We want to sell more managed services. Do you think I could find leads?”

No, he just thought I might be interested. I wasn’t.

Sex-segregated spaces put my brain to sleep. What’s the point? What are these gals afraid of? Mansplaining? Inappropriate comments? Andrew Tate aggressively flexing his tattooed muscles? Some dude Zooming off on-camera?

I believe in only a limited need for sex-segregated groups, for trauma or emotional support. Trauma victims sometimes need a man-free safe space. Others need to just bitch. So do men (more on that shortly).

Otherwise, I prefer my gatherings and groups sex-integrated. It’s 2025, girls!

In a progressive world mad for ‘inclusivity’, there’s grand irony in excluding half the human race.

Public domain photo from Pxhere

Woman up, ladies!

Radical Radha and I have written before about how diversifying the workplace is one thing, but then everyone has to get along. Especially women and men, who constitute the world’s first division of Us vs Them.

Better DEI Will Teach Women How To Handle Conflict With Male Colleagues

I don’t see how we can do that when we refuse to network with each other. Our polarized world has taught us to stick to our own and not even bother trying to understand someone else’s perspective. Judging males via one’s own experiences as a female, or vice versa, is ignorantly sexist.

We are different, with psychological sex differences. A quick look at the headlines on gender difference articles at Science Daily indicate the many differences between men and women: How they respond to stress, that women talk more than men (but only during certain life phases), that the ability to better negotiate for more resources starts early with boys, and that women deal with significantly more body issues and feeling judged at the gym (did we really need a study for this?). Is it real or is it all in her head? Zen koan: If you’re trying to lose weight or get in shape, why aren’t you focusing on your workout rather than Barbie McPerfect and Ramboner?

Several years ago I joined a women’s-only group for aspiring entrepreneurs and solopreneurs. We met at various restaurants, and the camaraderie was friendly, warm, and female. It wasn’t especially business-oriented. Frankly, few of us knew what we were doing. It was the blind leading the blind.

Radha had a similar experience. Her group tended to turn into emotional support sessions. These aren’t business-related. What many self-starters need to talk about is understanding the best practices and processes for starting a business, whether they’re selling coffee online, as twin sisters in my group were doing, or starting up her own employment agency, as the leader was attempting to do. Self-starters often tend to bumble along, learning as they go, which is easier if you have a business or financial administration degree. You already know you need to develop a business idea; study the market to make sure you’re fulfilling a genuine need; create a business plan and choose a business structure; research the product or service you want to provide, and develop a business strategy.

Everyone else doesn’t know this.

I don’t remember what we talked about, but we didn’t talk about those things. If we had I would have stayed. It would have been relevant.

I stopped going. I wondered how much more productive we’d be if men were part of the group.

In the corporate world, women who want to succeed, whether to start their own business, become self-employed, or just move ahead, simply must engage with still-powerful men. They possess much of the knowledge. Many are willing to share it. Men have created the world we live in, for better as well as for worse. We often forget the first part.

Radha pointed out that men in men-only groups may exclude women not because they’re trying to cling to power but because they’re afraid female joiners might be ‘woke nazis’, a not-unreasonable concern. As a result, men consolidate their power, intentionally or not, with unintentional collaboration with women. No one wants the Language or Microaggressions Police present any more than women want private Zoom messages informing them how pretty they are while they’re trying to focus on new business best practices with the IRS.

Confronting conflict

A couple of years ago someone asked on Reddit:

The querent notes that she ‘feels more comfortable’ in a group of all women, ‘freer in her expression, more emotionally open’, and with an ability to connect better. Other responders complained about couples tending to socialize with each other in mixed groups, or having to deal with “harassment, belittlement, and mansplaning [sic]’. Or misinterpretations of friendly behavior as an invitation for a come-on. Or men not understanding that women’s experiences with work and family obligations are just different.

Third-wave feminism (it should be called third-rate feminism) has taught women not to take responsibility for themselves, their feelings, or how they handle others. Men are the way they are; communicate as they do; don’t take feelings as seriously as we; don’t understand the subtle signs that a woman isn’t interested just because she smiled vaguely at him.

Handling it rather than running off to your ‘safe space’ hidey-hole with your girlfriends teaches both sexes how to modify their behavior or their responses to take into account how others understand communication and respond.

It opens the door for men to do the same: To politely handle misunderstandings with women, including those not caused by themselves. Women must be open to learning and modifying their behavior, too, to interact with men more effectively. It’s not all about our comfort, either.

The women-only hiking group could encourage everyone to engage with everyone else on the hike, not just the folks who are like them (single, married, gay, etc.). In their community guidelines, they and business professionals could state how to comport oneself with the opposite sex to reduce the likelihood of romantic misunderstandings. To remember that this was a business group, not a dating service, so tread very, very carefully.

And women need to speak up.

I speak as a mouthy old broad. I’ve written about how even I, an old lady over sixty, who’s supposed to be invisible because I’m not the wank fantasy I once was, who should STFU because no one cares what an old lady thinks, is still heard whether people want to hear me or not. I make people hear me, and others can too. They can talk over and shut down mansplaining. They can learn to hold their own debating a man. They can be firm and clear about their lack of romantic interest without dragging #MeToo and the U.S. Supreme Court into it. No means no. Every single Canadian man knows what that means when he hears it.

We can pass the stick or stitch ‘n’ bitch in our own groups, and after we’ve spoken with our own frankly about our fraught relationship with our father, or whether our spouse is supportive enough or not, then we can perhaps one day integrate and listen to each other with open hearts, without all the sex-based defensiveness.

Richard Reeves argues in in his article The case for male spaces that feminist fear of the ‘Old Boys Club’ harms males. Women are afraid of men-only groups, he says, fearing they’re inherently sexist, when males do in fact need them for reasons other than as mini-Davos summits for Da Patriarchy. <insert Da Patriarchy sound effect> He says men-only groups function to help men develop better friendships, to support each other, and to combat loneliness. He notes that can benefit women by relieving them of relational emotional support which is still primarily female-borne. Although benefiting women is not the point, he says. This isn’t about women’s needs. For a change.

Sex segregation does make sense for emotional support groups. But I still ask both parties: What about later? How about non-segregated groups so the enlightened can now hear much different stories and experiences from the other side?

Just a thought for the future.

Tear down the social and professional binary

Radha has written extensively about the workplace problems she’s encountered that came from other women, not men. On Radically Pragmatic she’s written about accusations of being a ‘pick-me’ girl; of women undercutting her; of how DEI ignores the many ways work colleagues can harm, discriminate against, abuse, and malign their co-workers even when they’re not white, male, or both.

Pandemic isolation degraded everyone’s social skills and many of us were isolating long before COVID made it cool; the rise of sophisticated pocket phones and algo-addicting social media apps had already turned us into a nation of cell zombies. The pandemic made it much, much worse.

The recent federal election illustrates just how far we’ve grown apart: Young white women continue to vote Democrat while young men of all colors moved toward the GOP, many of them citing how fed up they were with male-demonizing feminism.

Random Stuff Men Say That Make Me Go, ‘WTF, Feminists?’

It doesn’t matter anymore that women were never given a fair shake to contribute, develop, produce, or co-create for thousands of years. History, oh that’s interesting. But that was then, this is now. We can’t change the past but we can change the present and future.

Success coaches tell you to hobnob with the already successful. (This was what was wrong with the lady entrepreneurs group). Seek out all the accomplished, not just the ones who look like you.

The professional world is highly competitive, but as Radha has written, women are no less competitive–mostly with each other–and nothing would change if men disappeared tomorrow.

Let’s tear down the social and professional binary.

Several years ago I was in a women-only Pagan Facebook group where I had stopped engaging because it had gone so uber-lefty. I wanted to stay, but not at the expense of shutting up to keep the peace. I tested them with an article I’d written questioning the value of women’s-only groups and whether this one should desegregate.

I knew it wouldn’t go over well but I was surprised that no one liked it. Not even my privately heretical long-time Pagan friend.

“I need my safe space to fight the Patriarchy,” a Pagan lady snarled. I envisioned an older woman hiding in the gutter under the sidewalk, slapping at men’s ankles as they walked by.

When I finally returned to leave the Facebook group, they were planning a witchy weekend and a transwoman was complaining she didn’t feel ‘included’ in a planned ritual honoring female fertility and menstruation, since she was incapable of neither.

How so like a narcissistic man to make it all about him, I thought, considering that there would be prepubertal girls and post-menopausal women taking part.

But still, there he was! A man! Apparently not violating any ‘safe spaces’ or regarded as a member of Da Patriarchy! <sound effect>

Well done, Monsieur, well done. These ladies need some male energy, and this might be a good, gently challenging start.

Undercover disruption of the binary paradigm. I like it!

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