I enjoyed our lunch-time meet up last week sooo much.  It gave me exactly what I wanted / needed:

- stimulating conversation
- a laugh
- contact with the wider world
- reassurance
- food for thought (and a nice halloumi salad for my tummy)

 I remember talking to a woman who had tried to start a similar group a few years ago and she said they quite quickly ran out of things to talk about.  That just doesn't seem to happen with CWIC.  Perhaps it is because we come from multi-disciplines. Perhaps it's because we only meet once a month and there are different people there every time.

It also surprises me how readily we talk about 'women's issues'.  In my experience these are 'risky' topics in general company and with people you don't know.  A bit like talking about politics or religion.  We heard about an engineering firm and a contractor who both run programmes to improve awareness and support around gender issues (I wonder if there are architecture firms that do this).  We talked about unconscious actions on all sides - how women nod in conversation to show they are listening and encourage the speaker, how men nod to say they've got it, now move on.  We noticed how, although we all made a point of shaking hands with men at a meeting, we hadn't shaken hands with each other (bar one).  So then we did shake hands with each other and we realised it gave us a chance for eye contact and to give our name and to hear the other person's name and I, for one, resolved to make sure I do this more often.

 

It strikes me that women are aware that they communicate differently and struggle for ways into a conversation with a group of men.  Out of work and in a balanced gender group the conversation topics can be more varied.  But, just as I have found myself talking about hairdryers and 'not having enough time to exercise' with women, so men can bond over formula 1 and whichever current sports tournament is on. There's a really interesting summary on male/female conversation styles here.

England's Natasha Hunt (scrum half) in last year's Rugby World Cup

I remember consciously deciding whether to join the pre-meeting rugby banter  once.  These were my options:

1. try and join in:" no I didn't watch France, Ireland but I did see them play Italy and I thought their line-out's were scrappy and Italy should've won"
possible outcomes - shocked silence, competitive probing questions which reveal I'm really just repeating what my Dad said, being thought 'laddish', being brought into the conversation and settling down to the meeting

2. join in with self-depreciation, "oh I don't know anything about rugby, it's not my thing" maybe risk a joke about funny shaped balls
possible outcomes - shocked silence, condescending reassurance, being brought into the conversation and settling down to the meeting

3. silent paper shuffling, writing the date in my notebook and drawing a pointless margin
possible outcome -  nobody notices,  others find you aloof, someone starts a one to one conversation, everyone settles down to the meeting.

Sadly, despite being a quite rugby fan I don't know much about women's rugby and didn't feel like challenging the majority so on that occasion I went for option 3.