Later this month, August 26, we will celebrate 90 years since the 19th Ammendment was ratified to allow women to vote.  It was a long journey for women leading up to that vote, and it’s been an even longer journey ever since.

I grew up with mostly boys.  I was the tom-girl that played football, climbed trees, and raced the boys…hoping that one day I just might beat them.  In college I was an engineering student.  The imbalance of men-to-women was seen very clearly.  While chemical engineering held the best guy-to-girl ratio (60:40), it was clear that I was setting myself to stay in the minority.  As if engineering itself wasn’t enough, I found myself walking into an industry that is well rooted, established, and by extremely male dominated.  As my work experience grows, I can’t help but aknowledge the tension that I feel as a woman living in this world today.

I recently started reading Women, Work & The Art of Savoir Faire by Mireille Guiliano.  In it she attempts to communicate to women business sense and sensibility, all the while aknowledging that men and women are different…and those differences are seen not only in the obvious population percents, but also in the less obvious ways of how things are handled and communicated.

In the first couple chapters I began to notice (which she also parenthetically acknowledged) that in trying to drive home points, she uses stories and analogies that women will relate to.  The one that stuck out the most was her use of cooking a dinner to articulate one of her points, noting that had she been one of her male peers, she would have used a sports analogy.

Her example immediately took me back to a luncheon I attended a week ago, where one of the directors made a reference to baseball during our conversation.  I had no response, no rebuttal, nothing.  I know NOTHING about baseball…nor can I even remember if the team that was mentioned was his team, or the rival of his team (sorry!).  I can usually hang if it’s about football…but baseball?  I’m screwed!  I don’t think I’m alone…

Think about it, camaraderie, rapport, and business relationships are often built on the golf course, or over a few beers discussing sports.  Where does that leave those women who have goals and aspirations, but don’t play golf or know the difference between the Red Socks and the Redskins?  Perhaps tea or coffee is much more their flow?  Families and yoga, perhaps.

Women have made so much progress in the traditionally male-dominated fields, but I must say that the uphill journey isn’t over and we’ve got a long way to go.  Understanding the way people build relationships is only one key to sustaining the progress that women have already attained.  Working in a male dominated business industry, it might seem as if the only way to do that will be to push your interests and passions aside for the sake of entertaining theirs.  I’m not sure that’s the most effective route, but I’m also not advocating that the men in the world must now bow down and begin to communicate and attempt to relate to women as they are most easily relatable.

I’m not sure I have any answers, but I do think that regardless of who you are trying to engage, the best place to meet is somewhere in the middle ground.  Think about it, (to draw from my mathematical understanding) the shortest distance between two points is in the middle of the line that connects those two points.  Whether you’re talking the differences of men and women or the differences that are found across the generations (another hot topic in business these days), it takes effort on part of all involved to build those relationships, and perhaps we should be open the reality that in 5 or 10 years it might not happen on the golf course.  Perhaps it’ll happen over facebook or on a blog, or maybe it’ll happen in the company sponsored yoga classes.  It doesn’t mean that we can sit back and expect everyone to bend to us…sometimes it means that we step out and learn a little about baseball, or know how to ski and play golf.  Perhaps it means that we stumble our way through a conversation on cooking or the newest blockbuster, that also happens to be a little on the chick-flick side of the spectrum.

I’m not really sure what this will look like for me personally, but it does remind me that as a young professional who aspires to grow in my career, it won’t always be as easy as building relationships with my girlfriends.  We can’t expect to only connect with our mentors over Starbucks and tweets, but we shouldn’t always have to know everything about baseball, or hockey or whatever for rapport to be built.  Maybe it’s about understanding those around us, being willing to share a little about ourselves, and being ready for whatever change may bring to what we think we understand of navigating the worlds in which we work.  Whether the Redskins will be better than the Ravens this year might clinch the connection today, but change is inevitable, and other avenues might be better utilized in the future…recognizing and appropriately responding to what those are is anyone’s guess.  And for that we all, young and old, male and female, must be ready.