Anthony is entirely correct that two years, working in only one bank is pathetically myopic.
Bob, I agree about the nature of many writers, you may have seen that I worked for a while as a mildly senior journalist, and I will share that publishing shares the sort of behaviours you cite, and media in general is sexist, racist and class-ist to a degree that would astonish anyone who has only worked in banking.
You are also right that I am saying that her behaviour is unlike mine, and therefore suboptimal, and let me defend that...
I accept that other behaviours are at least as valid, indeed since many people have been more successful in banking than me, that is an inevitable conclusion. Bob, you've seen my other writings on QN, and perhaps you've seen my disclaimer that I give advice not only from a position of expertise, but also because I wish others to learn from my mistakes, some of which are quite gruesome, a few are so really awful that they almost sound like bragging.
They key here is that they are
my mistakes, I own them, and have drilled down through my defective thought processes to debug them and share the results.
Many so-called 'male' behaviours are actually rational responses to competitive situations.
Some success is attained by superior performance, some by luck and the rest by screwing with the competition.
Excluding competitors from social interactions is a classic example of this; you see it in children of both sexes in playgrounds just as much as trading floors. That combines with a need in competitions to form alliances; building trust through shared experiences and the discussion of them is a reasonable way of doing that. I date from a time when there were no proper girlie bars in London, and all it meant was more discussion of football, drinking cars and TV, it did not increase the discussion of Art.
A problem many women have with 'male environments' is that they don't adjust to the idea that the men aren't really trying to sleep with them, at least not very much. Our culture puts the onus upon men to start that process, and women get into the habit of deflecting such moves, which makes them poor at initiating conversations with men they don't know well and often one observes frustration that they can't elbow their way into a conversation. Although I'm male, I don't have that talent at all, I've had to build the skill, and enough work has been expended that everyone thinks it is natural, but is actually artifice. Hence my scorn for anyone who hasn't bothered their pretty little heads.
Working women often act like lone wolves, the sport/beer/breasts behaviours above mean that men's social networks are vastly superior, and that combines with the dysfunctional aversion to such activities exhibited by the majority of women in banking. As an example, think back to the last time it was a woman who initiated some ad-hoc social event of the form "let's go down the pub".
Thus we understand the line that Andy cites right at the start of this thread.
I can't look into the heart of the CEO, but like me he may have learned that many women and that girl in particular sigh, roll their eyes and frump whenever a conversation outside their sphere of interest goes on. Indeed women use all sorts of words that men don't use, about 'sad' men who actually are intersted in stuff.
Also a CEO is a leader, and part of that craft is making sure that the led have the right relationshp with him. A common technique is to take one aside and say 'this is the thing between you and me' making the minion feel special, and that requires exclusion of others, so it's a mistake to believe in any of his partitions whether sex, race, job function or sports team supported, they exist to help divide and conquer.
Also he may not have liked this chippy bimbo, I don't know her as a person at all and can't tell whether I'd like her, but can state as a fact that she'd hate me, a lot. Not because I'm sexist, but quite the reverse, I treat pretty much everyone the same, but she wants to be treated as
special, the only woman that gets that is my wife.
Or he may be sexist, seeing women as inherently inferior and/or preferring the company of men.
The point here is that human motivations are not expressed in the VBA level thinking this girl suggests.
People don't say to themselves
If Sex==Female then respect = respect * 0.5
They think in spreadsheets
They sum up a variety of factors from self interest, boredom, prejudice, laziness, et al and do whatever feels right at the time, aided by a mediocre random number generator.
