You never hear of a bossy boy

Alegrias2

I've worked for many people over the years, men and women. Some of the men were proper sh**ts, and so were some of the women.

Its very unfair - and possibly illegal? - to discriminate about who you want to work for on the basis of gender.

You are not serious?
Surely those in a position to choose between job offers still have the right within law to exercise that choice?
What criteria would you suggest instead? Surely not just salary? Those who say they would never work for a woman/man only have themselves to blame if their career turns out to be less than stellar.
???

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000mj18

Here it is - worth a listen.

Those pesky 22 year olds waking up in the night wanting a drink of water or because they’ve wet the bed and there she was with a vaccine to develop. BTW a little while ago she was interviewed on The Life Scientific - I’ll see if it’s still on catch up. I don’t remember the triplets being mentioned though - certainly not headlined

Its very unfair - and possibly illegal? - to discriminate about who you want to work for on the basis of gender.

Had I, or homefarm said that all women were bossy micro managers who won't let you get on with your job, you'd have a fair point Alegrias2. But that's not what was said is it? We said that the women we had experienced working for were bossy micro managers who won't let us get on with our jobs. You presumed too much.

I have really started wondering what to call a bossy boy! An interfering know-it-all?

Bossy was certainly only applied to women or girls when I was a child, and it wasn't kindly meant.

Neither was calling a girl a minx or saying she was catty.

None of these were commonly applied to men.

Only women were called shrews or shrewish, few men were every referred to as gossips and who ever heard of a hysterical man?

The description of little girls telling on boys for doing things they weren't meant to, rang a bell with me. It goes on right through junior school too.

Why, I wonder?

Not quite the same strain but I was astonished to read this headline today:
'...now I need sleep, says mother of triplets who led race for vaccine.'

She is Professor Sarah Gilbert, lead researcher of the vaccine development programme, and the triplets were born in 1998.

What a patronising way to identify someone of such stature. Oh, and her husband gave up his job to look after the children allowing her to throw herself into her work.

Actually, I am furious.

I've worked for many people over the years, men and women. Some of the men were proper sh**ts, and so were some of the women.

Its very unfair - and possibly illegal? - to discriminate about who you want to work for on the basis of gender.

homefarm

Not sure about the BOSSY bit. Most women I've ever worked for have been awful, dogmatic, over controlling and interfering .
Give me a man to work for any day. My last boss was wonderful. He'd give me a task to complete and a deadline and let me get on with it, when I retired he said he was sorry I was going as he could always trust me. The nicest thing anyone ever said to me in my long working life.

I'll second that homefarm. I worked very happily for my male boss for 18 years. He trusted me to do the job that he was paying me to do, without interference, for almost 2 decades. He retired in February of this year and his job has been taken over by a woman. The endless micro management, "catch up" meetings, daily, weekly, monthly filing of reports, incessant emails, phone calls, text messages...... thank God I've only got to go until April.

Our great grandson is 2 1/2 and is very bossy, we use the word, my husband often tells people his is a bossy little so and so. So no in our family is it not a boy or girl word its just a word

I have a bossy DGS lol. Aged 3 1/2 and teaches nanny every day

Not sure about the BOSSY bit. Most women I've ever worked for have been awful, dogmatic, over controlling and interfering .
Give me a man to work for any day. My last boss was wonderful. He'd give me a task to complete and a deadline and let me get on with it, when I retired he said he was sorry I was going as he could always trust me. The nicest thing anyone ever said to me in my long working life.

Bossy means being acting like a boss, and bosses were almost entirely male.

I am very proud of having been bossy and self-opinionated all my life and I intend to continue to be so.

My DD has been described as 'bossy' when she was a child but in fact she is now an excellent delegator, which is just as well
as she has a lot of staff to organise.

One of my school reports said "Sodapop is a born leader, unfortunately she leads her class in the wrong direction". Wish I could say I had improved
Oh, that made me laugh, sodapop.

But yes, you are correct, Lucca.

Traditionally it’s a gender thing - boys would be considered ‘good organisers’ - we need to move on a recognise girls are also ‘good organisers’ and not ‘bossy

I asked DH not to say 'sort it out / get on with it / what are you doing (or similar) woman' to a driver annoying him. He said he would say the same to a man. I agreed, but pointed out that he didn't add 'man' to the sentence.
He agreed, so now he just expresses gender neutral annoyance!

Many years ago I went to a conscientious awareness course. One exercise we did was to divide a large sheet of paper and list on one side female derogatory names and on the other male derogatory names.
I'll start you off - slag, slapper, cow, mare , bitch etc
Try it for yourself it is very enlightening!

I was always told I was bossy growing up, really pees me off. In a business/work environment men are encouraged to be "assertive" yet females are put down and called bossy. Makes me cross

No ive had bossy boys in the family also.

The vote (not developed!!!)

Over 100 years since we had developed….Maybe this is why I still lagging behind and the glass ceiling is still very firmly in place.

Summerlove

TerriBull

No Alegrias I don't, she can still give as good as she gets and believe me she does have the upper hand in that relationship being the eldest. I just remember her as quite bolshie when she was under 5, she's not like that anymore, or not with us at least. He, my grandson is a lovely little boy and is always happy to read to me when I ask and play other games such as "Jenga" or "Cat Bingo" but has set idea along the lines of who plays with traditional male toys.

I'm going back well over 25 years as to the "kindergarten Valykeries" the woman who ran that nursery was quite unorthodox but the children were very happy with her.

I’m sorry Terri, but with these descriptions it jumps off the page how you feel about assertive girls, and seem to prefer boys. It’s one thing to prefer boys, but I think it was quite unkind to take the wind out of the sails of those little girls!

I'm sorry too summerlove, because what jumps off the page to me from your comment is a presumptuous wrong and strong opinionated poster.

You know nothing about me, I have two boys, I never said I preferred boys, you've taken it upon yourself to make that judgement based on a brief description of happenings at a playgroup nearly 30 years ago At the time there were a handful of little girls, probably nearer 5 than 4 who took it upon themselves to order a lot of the younger children around. My son was only 2ish at the time and I saw no reason why he should be intimidated by "bossy" older children, who in that instance were girls, they could just have well been boys and yes "bossy" is a term I personally would apply to a boy. To pad that backdrop out more, and specifically in relation to your judgey comment, the Vicar's wife who ran the set up often told them, to stop interfering with the younger ones. Anyway I imagine said girls are CEOs of various multi nationals by now!

As for the "Kindergarten Valykeries" if you are taking that comment into account in your assertion of my favouring boys, it wasn't one coined by me but by the woman who ran the place. At the time I didn't know who or what Vaykeries were, I thought they existed only in Wagner Operas

As for my own granddaugher, who I absolutely adore and was thrilled to bits when I found out she was a girl. She was up to school quite "bossy" but in an amusing way, insomuch aged about 3 she would tell us which direction to take when we were out in the car, where to park etc. etc. and then "told us off" for not following her instructions, her favourite word was "No" if we deviated from any of her edicts, she would start the next sentence with "I SAID" It made us laugh, it still does and when I relate such incidents back to her she begs me to tell her what else she said when she was little as we both end up laughing about what she was like. My grandson who I love and adore equally, does have his little idiosyncrasies, I do jokingly argue with such assertions, which incidentally I don't shape, such as girls playing with cars and trains, but as I don't want to get down on the floor particularly, I let him get on with it! When my grandchildren are with me I want them to enjoy themselves not argue the toss about who plays with what

When I asked my dad not so very long ago whether he thought I was bossy, he paused, and said ‘well, um, you’re very......organised!’

DH laughed and so did my Son in law but my DD agrees with me that being good at managing stuff, and saying so, is not bossiness as long as you listen to other opinions. Someone has to make final decisions otherwise nothing gets done.

Isn’t that strange particularly as in the past ‘the boss’ was inevitably a man. So what can we call ‘bossy’ boys?

"Feisty" is another word that only seems to be applied to girls, isn't it? I have also never heard of boys being referred to as "chatterboxes". I hate that word - it implies girls should stay quiet. I may be wrong there but it's the impression I got when I myself was little and the word was used by various relatives of mine. It stung!