[6Wc1p3KH]

Throwaway for obvious reasons.

I'm not a manager, but I eat lunch/dinner one on one with men far more than I eat lunch/dinner with women, and it's because I try not to be a creep. I try to manage bias and I try to be aware of when I might be doing something for a coworker just because she's female and pretty, and unfortunately that means that when it is actually genuinely appropriate to grab dinner together and talk about our work I second-guess myself. When it does happen, it's usually a more senior coworker taking the initiative first.

No idea how to stop doing it other than time and experience. If you've got tips, throw them out there.

[kthejoker2]

Don't make it a dinner or drinks? Just meet and discuss work 1 on 1. That's the surest way to communicate the intentions of the meeting.

Also: do you offer to mentor the "not pretty" females? That statement alone in your post shows a remarkable immaturity in you about women in the workplace.

[6Wc1p3KH]

> Don't make it a dinner or drinks? Just meet and discuss work 1 on 1. That's the surest way to communicate the intentions of the meeting.

The problem here is non-formal social opportunities that aren't meetings and don't take the place of meetings. If there's solid work-related content to discuss then of course you can meet with someone and discuss it, but that's not the same as grabbing dinner with someone when you're both working late and chattering about career-related stuff.

> Also: do you offer to mentor the "not pretty" females? That statement alone in your post shows a remarkable immaturity in you about women in the workplace.

Of course I do, I mentor anyone who asks to be mentored. Formal work relationships like mentoring aren't a problem because they're explicitly endorsed by the company and usually facilitated by a manager or initiated by the mentee. I worry that I'm being too condescending as a mentor because of implicit bias, or overcompensating in the direction of not giving enough help, but that's a different problem.

"Am I doing this because she's pretty?" is relevant to the conversation about this article because creepy behavior by men who are attracted to women seems to be a core complaint of professional women and a part of the #MeToo movement, and men are asked to be aware of their own biases and motivations and actions to try to fix this.

[random123987]

> The problem here is non-formal social opportunities that aren't meetings and don't take the place of meetings. If there's solid work-related content to discuss then of course you can meet with someone and discuss it, but that's not the same as grabbing dinner with someone when you're both working late and chattering about career-related stuff.

This is not female-vs-male problem. You will get the same kind of trouble when you smoke with colleagues while there is a non-smoker in the team, or when team member has kids and cannot stay late with you, or when there is a remote coworker, or just some people on the team enjoy watching football and some not.

Yes, you do need to think when and how you discuss work related stuff. And your friendly relations with someone on the team affect team dynamic.

Generalizing it to "working with women is harder" is plain wrong.