Gender Diversity ..... Good, Bad or Ugly??

There’s such a lot of hue and cry being made about gender diversity in teams and work places and organizations … I mean... apparently it’s important that there is an equal number of men and women in the team so that there is a balance in the work environment … ASK ME!!!
I am the only girl in my team of 15 people… whew! U think it works to my advantage… well yes and no!!!

Yesterday we’d a team dinner hosted by our super boss for the excellent way our team is working and for us to communicate outside work also in a more friendly atmosphere and settings… hmmm…
I was BORED… dead bored..!! and here BORED would be an understatement … being the only girl is a little unnerving at a dinner setting with 14 other men folk… I mean for heaven’s sake they were all behaving in a way that was unlike them at all… I mean what is it with men and a few drinks and food??!!?!

So in any case my super boss was asking or rather telling me yesterday over the course of dinner that it’d be good for us to have another girl in the team and that I must be feeling all alone with no other female in the team… to be honest it does not matter so much to me… as I said earlier there are advantages as well disadvantages… for one, they all think of me as a kiddo (apart from being the only girl, I am also the youngest!!), and so whatever mischief I do, or whatever I say, they don’t take me seriously… which is a good thing because there have been a lot of instances of me suffering from the ‘foot-in-the-mouth’ disease…. Apart from that, I get preference on anything that we partake of and I am spoilt a lot as well… :-)… moreover, when it comes to work, there is always a willing hand to help me out and brainstorm with me…! :P but of course on the flip side, though am treated like ‘one-of-the-guys’, I am also subjected to a lot of MCP behavior, crude jokes, and a lot of swear words – trust me – my knowledge of swear words in a variety of languages has improved considerably ever since I joined this team… and those once-in-a-while mails that gets forwarded to only guys, and god-forbid if I even get a peek of that… well that sometimes makes me wonder, do they really think I am a kid-who-knows-nothing???

But anyways, thankfully when it comes to hard-core work, the whole Shakespearean concept of ‘Fragility thy name is woman’ does not hold good for my team… so that’s the biggest plus point of the lot.. :-) I have to do my share of the work, come what may and that’s the best thing about this..!! ‘Coz at the end of the day, the work you do is what matters here, fun and jokes apart!! :-)

Anyways, as far as I am concerned, I am thankful for my team and the gender balance or whatever term is used in that regard… I certainly would not want to lose my cherished position of being the only girl in the team… ‘Coz for me, it’s smooth sailing all the way through… work for work, fun for fun and I like it the way it is… ;-)