This sentiment is very strange to me, coming from an IT company with lots of both men and women co-workers. Of course there is sometimes sexual attraction at work, as there probably is for any gay colleagues. Maybe it sometimes even causes tensions. But it is in no way 'overpowering' the ability to work well together, as team members, as managers or as subordinates.
There are many social dynamics that complicate pure professionalism. Feelings of attraction are nothing compared to ego or to the desire of climbing the ladder at any price, in my experience.
Later edit:
> As a proud owner of an ADHD brain, I don't understand the victimhood narrative at all. If someone doesn't want to work with me because I feel "weird" to them, why would I want to work with them? Why should they be forced to work with me? Who says I'm entitled to a job? Who says they owe me anything?
In our society, work is essentially the only possibility of leading a decent life (assuming you're not born rich, of course). As such, the right to work for any group must be protected by the state. Historically, blocking the right to work has been a favorite tactic against hated groups - black people, gay people, trans people are the most recent examples.
Citations needed. I've never had any issues working with women, nor have I heard any coworkers or friends express this belief, or raise issues about working with members of the opposite gender. I don't think people aren't talking about this because it's "politically incorrect", but rather because most people (at least in Canada) simply don't have any issues working with members of the opposite gender.
Being unable to view female coworkers as you do any other coworker is misogynistic, whether it's intentional or not.
Women in the infantry -- The Effect on the Moral Domain.[1] Covers a lot of ground, with pro/con data points across multiple nations and several decades.
[2] Is about the Navy's struggle with the costs and effectiveness impacts of pregnancies.
Can gender-integrated work forces produce (whatever the metric is for "productivity" in a particular domain). Yes. Will management/leadership responsibilities be inherently more complicated? Yes. Does gender diversity inherently guarantee an objectively superior output? No. I think that it is domain/problem-set specific. Human intelligence (HUMINT)[3] and civ-mil ops[4] absolutely benefit from female integration in order to fully access 50% of the population. Especially important in a counter-insurgency context.
[1]https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a262478.pdf
[2]https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/apr/12/pregnant-na...
[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_intelligence_(intelligen...
Indeed: gender quotas and "positive" discrimination is both misogynistic.
You don't seem to value diversity of opinion that high, and expressing such opinions can be disastrous for one's career.
> Being unable to view female coworkers as you do any other coworker is misogynistic.
Sure, now what? There exists misogynistic people in the world, a lot of them in the workforce. That would imply that comment saying "men and women still don't work together" is at least worth consideration. You can't solve social issues by assigning a label.
Was? I wouldn't call it misogyny, because it isn't out of hate but out of the unique social dynamics between genders, but absolutely nothing has changed except one thing: it's now politically incorrect and against the rules to actually say what you think/feel, so everyone hides it.
Men and women still don't work well together. The attraction dynamics between them still overpower any attempts at keeping things professional. The social differences are still all there.
As a proud owner of an ADHD brain, I don't understand the victimhood narrative at all. If someone doesn't want to work with me because I feel "weird" to them, why would I want to work with them? Why should they be forced to work with me? Who says I'm entitled to a job? Who says they owe me anything?
And most importantly, I would need to be sickeningly entitled and delusional to assume that society has to adapt to fit me rather than vice-versa. That's the kind of reasoning children use when throwing irrational tantrums.
I've never had trouble socializing, but ADHD does produce all sorts of strange behavioral patterns. It's 100% my responsibility, as a human being with personal agency, to read the room and adapt my behavior to the society in which I'm participating, not for the entire rest of the world to cater to me.