Dipping a tentative toe in the swirling whirlpool of sex wars in the workplace is always a daunting prospect, especially in an era of relentless cyberspace indignation.
Not that fears of virtual abuse from anonymous contributors (what is the point of expressing any point of view if you are not prepared to put your name to it?) deterred Lou Jones of Birmingham-based C3 Consulting.
Ms Jones fanned the flames of a sexual bonfire when she told the newly formed Hotel du Vin Women in Business Group in Birmingham that macho males often can’t see the wood for the trees at work.
She went further, saying men spend too much time bogged down in meetings and rarely accomplish much as a result. She says Christmas would never happen and nobody would ever get a birthday card without the input of the female sex.
Sadly, after nearly six decades of life as a domestically-challenged male, I suspect Lou may well be right, certainly as far as Christmas and birthday cards are concerned.
Workplace issues tend to be more blurred, although the male-female divide can be as striking in the office as it is at home.
In almost 40 years, I have stumbled across a whole range of working types, from bureaucrats to bullies, and rent-a-mouth merchants to rebels.
Men make the more obvious bullies, with their strutting demeanours and twisted compulsion to intimidate underlings purely to reinforce an illusion of power, however temporary. Sad and desperate, both for victim and bully.
Women are far more subtle, and can be much deadlier than their male counterparts. Multi-taskers, often with masters degrees in office politics, they tend to rely more on brains than brawn in my experience.
Men are often at their worst in groups, as testosterone levels rise along with a faintly pathetic desire to impress with the funniest joke. A weird group mentality then takes over, and the whole room becomes a bit like those old Friday night ITV Central Weekend shouting matches.
But women aren’t like that, at least not at work, and never tell jokes in any case. Mrs Thatcher was infamous for a complete absence of anything resembling humour.
But in the stealth and intuition stakes, it’s nearly always the female sex to watch.
