No, Women Didn't "Ruin the Workplace," But Polarization Might

"Women, by contrast, were framed as biologically less suited because they prioritize equality and avoid direct confrontation. According to Andrews' prior work that informed the NYT piece, women have reshaped the workplace through petty tactics like gossip and exclusion to "cancel" others who don't align with them. As Andrews put it, "female group dynamics favor consensus and cooperation. Men order each other around, but women can only suggest and persuade. Any criticism...needs to be buried in layers of compliments.""

"However, as someone who studied evolutionary psychology during my Ph.D. program, I noticed the argument missed a core point of evolutionary psychology: It is fundamentally about flexibility. Humans adjust their behavior to context and their environment. Nature and nurture are not separate forces; we are shaped by their interaction."

"The article also overlooks that women may downplay their directness as a form of impression management. Many workplaces still punish women, especially women of color, for acting direct. As such, women often soften language to manage risk, maintain relationships, and prevent backlash, but it is not because they are inherently indirect. And while the piece suggests these dynamics occur primarily among women, it ignores that men also use indirect, relational aggression to manage relationships."

Evolutionary explanations that portray women as inherently unsuited to modern work overlook behavioral flexibility and contextual adaptation. Human behavior results from interactions between biological tendencies and social environments, producing conditional strategies rather than fixed roles. Women often modulate directness as impression management to avoid penalties, particularly women of color who face disproportionate backlash for direct behavior. Softening language can be a strategic tactic to manage risk, relationships, and reputation rather than evidence of innate indirectness. Men also deploy indirect or relational aggression. Context, power dynamics, and social consequences shape workplace behavior more than immutable sex differences.

Read at Psychology Today