Hmm, when we made our first female hire (we are a computer games company), she was a graduate and I did point out that everyone else was male. We offered her the job. She accepted it. She mentioned whilst working she wished more girls worked here so she had someone to talk about girl related things with and go out shopping at lunchtime (it turned out one of the males here knew about shellac nails after this comment and they had a chat about it). Ultimately she moved onto a bigger company a year or so later (the male/female balance wasn't given as a reason, the new job was something excited her a lot more).
I think saying 'can you HANDLE being in a mostly male work environment' is not the right wording. But the decision I took to let a potential candidate know they would be working in an otherwise male only office, I would take again in the same circumstance - it WAS something she was interested to know and WAS something that also came up when she started the job.
I can't speak on behalf of any other women, or scenario in the world, the above is the account of what happened to us. We typically get at least 10X more male candidates to female, and we employ and the same ratio. For about half of the jobs we recruit for, the personal doing the interviewing is female.
Thank you for this honest real-world example. For the sake of context, I am also showing a bit of my bias concerning the issue of masculine frat culture that I myself have had the displeasure of being exposed to at previous start-ups. It was really uncomfortable, I could barely get work done and much of the sales hiring was pushing the culture of the company in that direction.
I perfectly understand the innocence of the question and can empathize with both scenarios: one where the candidate is frustrated by seemingly not being taken seriously, and one where the candidate is genuinely interested in knowing and hoping she can find someone to relate to.
Finding out if you fit into the social norms and groups is really really hard when you're an adult.
I think saying 'can you HANDLE being in a mostly male work environment' is not the right wording. But the decision I took to let a potential candidate know they would be working in an otherwise male only office, I would take again in the same circumstance - it WAS something she was interested to know and WAS something that also came up when she started the job.
I can't speak on behalf of any other women, or scenario in the world, the above is the account of what happened to us. We typically get at least 10X more male candidates to female, and we employ and the same ratio. For about half of the jobs we recruit for, the personal doing the interviewing is female.