Social Skills

 I have noticed that social skills are not uniformly distributed across genders, even if you keep some things constant. There seems to be a gender disparity, that is statistically significant. The women in general, have much better social skills, than the (poor) men. I am not sure if the men are aware and are happy about this (if they are aware, that is). But in my view, we should not be too thrilled (again, assuming my findings are right).

Why do I say so? I have now interacted with thousands of students in and out of class. During the teaching term, if any students came up and asked for any more inputs or expressed a fear of stats (what little was in my Marketing Research courses), it was mostly the women students. Also for extra-curriculars, clubs, committees, it was the women members who took the lead to approach me to participate, write, contribute, etc.. no idea why.

Even more pronounced is the banter on social media. Though a couple of men students/alumni are good at it, including comments (one in particular, from KIAMS), in general, the women alums known to me from various B schools are generally more involved, more frequent in engaging in a chat, or in asking for advice about a course, or responding positively to any request to meet up in their city. I have therefore ended up meeting a lot of alums of the fairer sex in all these years. This includes a couple outside India such as Smita in Dubai and Swapna and Vidya in Singapore. These have been very enriching meetups too, I must add, for me. 

With ex-colleagues, it is more balanced, with some of the men outdoing the women in catching up- maybe for a drink or a game of Golf. So far.

Not sure about readers of the blog yet, unless there's some more research to back it up.