This is about right. When I've seen my SO in female-dominated workplaces, the constant strain of "collaboration" is exhausting. However, "collaboration" in thi

This is about right. When I've seen my SO in female-dominated workplaces, the constant strain of "collaboration" is exhausting. However, "collaboration" in this sense is usually playing a competitive popularity contest, and in the archetypal case this was achieved by bad mouthing people behind their backs. If you were able to talk to every girl individually, you'd eventually build a picture which painted everyone loathing everyone else. That wasn't true, but that's how they bonded ("You're my favorite in this office, I don't like everyone else" being said to multiple people). In my small sample size (< 4), this seems to be how a lot of female-dominated workplaces are. I think the difference might be that the bell never rings for females, the popularity game they are playing is constant and exhausting. Men are able to see each individual flash point as an individual battle, and that it's usually a battle of ideologies rather than active dislike. Actively disliking someone is tiring; I can't keep it up for longer than a couple of weeks. The ability for guys to hug the opponent and share a beer is drastically underestimated, in my opinion. We don't often talk about positive traits of males in workplaces, but I think that is definitely one of them.