Networking and Notworking – spot the difference?

I recently attended one of the industry conferences on my own and received a late night text from an anonymous person at the conference wondering if I was there.

In the morning, I replied that I was at the conference and asked if the person wanted to meet? (since we were there to do business) I then received around 7 more texts asking me to guess what he looked like and surely I must know who he is and did I want to meet secretly?

Although I didn’t reply to any of the texts, since it was obvious that this was a man (since a woman wouldn’t text this way), and it was probably someone I did know and was not really interested in business, I knew he would eventually reveal himself in person.

Sure enough he did and so I told him off for text stalking me and not saying who he was on the text as it had spooked me somewhat. He had thought it was all a bit of a joke and surely I must have known who he was and was confused why I didn’t reply and now why I was upset.

It does throw up the question of women on their own at conferences and men behaving badly! I am going to tiptoe through this subject as it’s a thorny one.

Women want to be treated equally for sure and that especially includes in business however we also like to be complimented for being a woman from time to time and this must get rather confusing. When we’re networking, we like to be friendly and need to approach strange men to do business with and this too can get misconstrued (after a few network drinks!!!)

I therefore don’t believe you can ever take ‘sex’ out of the workplace. One person’s comment could be construed as ‘flirting’, another’s could be construed as ‘sexual harassment’. Since sex cases are nearly always levied at men, how do men cope with these signals at work and at networking??

For friendly women, how do they ensure their safety and their ‘no’ signals especially when they are alone and potentially vulnerable late at night? I’m not sure I know the answers to these questions and I have ended up on lunches, which I thought were for business and were not. However I’m not sure that this situation is easy to change and no Europe do-gooders can sort the matter out with yet another law!

I guess it’s up to women to be clear about their intentions and clarify their lunch expectations and I suppose it’s for men to remember that work – even after hours – is in fact still work and that friendly women do exist and aren’t actually coming on to them.

Would love to know your views on this..

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