I know that I'm not meant to be political at all this week, but my experience over the last three years of working mostly with men & now currently in a team that is 50/50 makes the reality of psychological differences between the sexes increasingly clear to me.

It's particularly stark in communication styles when it comes to moral support when things are stressful. Men are much more likely to offer a single sentence of sympathy & then move straight into practical problem-solving combined with taking the piss out of me.

Women are much more likely to first spend time sympathising & confidence-boosting & to keep an element of this remaining while doing the practical problem-solving.

BTW, the sympathising & confidence-boosting that seems to happen more among female friends & colleagues are also practical problem-solving because one of the problems to be solved if you want to achieve progress is the upset & discouraged feelings of your friend or colleague.

But my experience with (most but not all) my male colleagues is that they don't want to address the negative feelings they are having about a problem by processing them verbally to a sympathetic listener, but by immediately & solely focusing on doing things to resolve the problem