Are there 'pink ghettos' in Canberra?

DHS. Sisterhood rife there. Pendulum has swung way too far from what I have heard.

LSWCHP said :

madamcholet said :

Didn’t read the article as like many others I can’t abide news.com.au, however I think I understand just from the title.

As a woman working in a small office that for a period of time was becoming female dominated I have to say that I would rather the balance was slightly higher in favour of men. That’s not for the eye candy reason that men would state, but because I just don’t quite fit in with what seems to become the collective female mind-set when you get a few of them in an office.

I tend to keep my own counsel and detest the cliquey-ness that seems to happen – patterns of which can shift overnight. I hate the whole cake for everything idea that seems to go with the territory, painful morning tea’s and the whole “let’s organise everything and include everyone so we can make a group decision” mentality. Ask my husband. I hate it.

Apologies to my female compatriots.

Ha ha ha…spot on.

My wife has until recently worked in an almost entirely female APS office, and she hated it, to the point of nervous breakdown. The politics, as she described them, were appalling, even deranged from my point of view. And the continual bloody morning teas. The stress at 11pm of “I have to bake something for morning tea tomorrow” etc etc.

I’d like to talk to your husband so we could compare notes, because it just about drove me bonkers too, and I only had to listen to her talking about it.

I recently attended a conference outside my usual line of work that was attended by about 95% females. The whole vibe was completely unlike anything I’d ever experienced in the patriarchal world that I usually inhabit.

I believe that all male environments, like all female environments, can become unhealthy in different ways. We should celebrate our differences and work together, using the differences and similarities to our best advantage.

Glad it’s not all in my mind. We have had a few casualties in our office – a female GM who was never going to win over the “group”, and others who can’t hack it – not one male has left tho’. I tend to sit back and watch and wait these days. What you find is that the marauding group does not play a very strategic game as they are so self-interested.

Have a word in the right ear and watch the show unfold is how I now handle it.

madamcholet said :

Didn’t read the article as like many others I can’t abide news.com.au, however I think I understand just from the title.

As a woman working in a small office that for a period of time was becoming female dominated I have to say that I would rather the balance was slightly higher in favour of men. That’s not for the eye candy reason that men would state, but because I just don’t quite fit in with what seems to become the collective female mind-set when you get a few of them in an office.

I tend to keep my own counsel and detest the cliquey-ness that seems to happen – patterns of which can shift overnight. I hate the whole cake for everything idea that seems to go with the territory, painful morning tea’s and the whole “let’s organise everything and include everyone so we can make a group decision” mentality. Ask my husband. I hate it.

Apologies to my female compatriots.

Ha ha ha…spot on.

My wife has until recently worked in an almost entirely female APS office, and she hated it, to the point of nervous breakdown. The politics, as she described them, were appalling, even deranged from my point of view. And the continual bloody morning teas. The stress at 11pm of “I have to bake something for morning tea tomorrow” etc etc.

I’d like to talk to your husband so we could compare notes, because it just about drove me bonkers too, and I only had to listen to her talking about it.

I recently attended a conference outside my usual line of work that was attended by about 95% females. The whole vibe was completely unlike anything I’d ever experienced in the patriarchal world that I usually inhabit.

I believe that all male environments, like all female environments, can become unhealthy in different ways. We should celebrate our differences and work together, using the differences and similarities to our best advantage.

I understand that the Australian Research Council has a particularly venomous pink ghetto gang leading the outfit, however I’ve seen it come and go in other departments. It usually needs only one person to “organize” the rabble. Of course the same used to happen with the boys clubs,but not so much nowadays.

I thought it was going to be about Paddington or Darlinghurst or…Andrew Barr’s office.

My Branch has 16 people, 2 positions are vacant and there are 10 women. I’d have to say most of them are almost normal people.

ACTCOSS is a well known pink ghetto.

they probably exist in workplaces or industries where the boys club aren’t interested in taking over (because there isn’t not enough power or money) to shut out all the women or install a glass ceiling to lock the women down in the lower levels.

oh look how i can generalise and stereotype in a sexist manner too!

Holden Caulfield said :

Yeah, it’s called the APS. 😉

Followed closely by the ACT PS. Leading in the local stakes is ACT Housing.

Didn’t read the article as like many others I can’t abide news.com.au, however I think I understand just from the title.

As a woman working in a small office that for a period of time was becoming female dominated I have to say that I would rather the balance was slightly higher in favour of men. That’s not for the eye candy reason that men would state, but because I just don’t quite fit in with what seems to become the collective female mind-set when you get a few of them in an office.

I tend to keep my own counsel and detest the cliquey-ness that seems to happen – patterns of which can shift overnight. I hate the whole cake for everything idea that seems to go with the territory, painful morning tea’s and the whole “let’s organise everything and include everyone so we can make a group decision” mentality. Ask my husband. I hate it.

Apologies to my female compatriots.

harvyk1 said :

The thing I’ve noticed with recruitment is that not only is it mainly women, but more frequently than not, they are very attractive women. I spent 2.5 years working for a recruitment company in an IT support role, so I saw them come and go only to be replaced with a virtual clone…

Very true, I hadn’t noted that, but you’re right. There was one mob in town, I couldn’t tell the difference between them, they were all 20-something, about 6 foot tall, very slim, long hair like in hair ads, with very high-heeled shoes and short skirts. Darndest thing I ever saw, I wondered if maybe it was a uniform or soemthing.

The sons of the owner worked there too, talk about a dream job.

EvanJames said :

I think recruitment often has a preponderance of women, but not as markedly as Health.

The thing I’ve noticed with recruitment is that not only is it mainly women, but more frequently than not, they are very attractive women. I spent 2.5 years working for a recruitment company in an IT support role, so I saw them come and go only to be replaced with a virtual clone…

Made going to work good with all the eye candy… 🙂

VYBerlinaV8_is_back said :

I, for one, would LOVE to work in a pink ghetto!

You really don’t. You’ll choke to death from all the bloody perfume, for one thing. I’m not kidding.

then, there’s the fun thing where women, even if they have partners, are still the ones to take time off to mind children. Or worse, they bring them to work with them. For days at a time. Often more than one child.

Then there’s the Arms Race Morning Teas (love that term). You just don’t see that in non-feminised work areas.

And, meetings. They go on for ever, there’s no proper agenda or outcomes, and they all laugh constantly while they’re talking. WTF is with that? No one ever says anything remotely funny.

And don’t dare try to move your own computer/furniture or adjust your lights or furniture. It’s like someone’s lobbed a fox into a henhouse, and then they start sending official emails about it. I wish they’d stop trying to fix the printer by repeatedly smashing the drawers closed. Maybe I should send emails about it.

I need a new job.

There will always be areas of work which attract one gender over another, what I think should not be done is giving a free pass into an area simply because an applicant is not of the typical gender who chooses to work in that area. (This goes both ways).

As for news.com.au, they are infotainment. I’ve lost count of the number of inaccuracies I’ve seen in story’s about subjects I know well (so I’d hate to see how many inaccuracies there are in stories where I don’t know the subject matter), it’s also amusing that stories often gets changed as someone has picked up inaccuracies and thus they pretend that they never got it wrong, so as a result I take everything I read from them with a massive grain of salt, as god knows if what I am reading with them is even close to accurate.

Of course the comments section is where the real gold is, full of bogans with little grasp on reality… 🙂

The Prime Ministers Office, Government House, Craig Thompson’s office (although whether it went onto the union credit card remains undetermined)…

Health. I never really noticed over most of my working years, most workplaces (white collar) were pretty even and you didn’t tend to think of it, but in Health, it’s women everywhere. Most areas of health I’ve been in, men are the exception, and often clustered in IT areas. Or management! In doctoring, oddly enough, it’s moving to an even split (more men in the older ranks). nursing is still heavily feminised, of course. But health admin, it’s WOMEN.

I think recruitment often has a preponderance of women, but not as markedly as Health.

G-Fresh said :

Positive Discrimination = oxymoron

Oxy moron = a very stupid welder

I can think of more than a few industries (e.g. nursing, early childhood education) that have been dominated by women for decades. Reading the article, though, it’s clear that by “workplaces” they actually mean “corporate offices”.

Positive Discrimination = oxymoron

VYBerlinaV8_is_back said :

I, for one, would LOVE to work in a pink ghetto!

It’s in danger of becoming my favourite euphemism.

When does the affirmative action to get blokes into these workplaces start?

I, for one, would LOVE to work in a pink ghetto!

…highly feminised industries dominated by gangs of women…

How can a highly feminised industry be anything *but* dominated by women? Or is the important part that they roam in Gangs?

Having worked in DoHA, I can say that the percentage of females is higher then other departments, and sometimes you get areas totally inhabited by them, but it has never seemed weird to me.

The pendulum swings… Some roles attract certain types of person.

Ah news.com.au. It’s like the Today Tonight of online news.

Yeah, it’s called the APS. 😉