Are "breakfast meetings" unique to good ole boy communities?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. I once taught at a college where the president was a good ole boy

He headed up a "faculty discussion group" that met in people's homes. Funny thing, only men were invited. I once overheard my department chair invite a newly hired man from another department. I had never been asked, and when I talked to other women on the faculty, none of them had ever been asked either, not even those who had been at the college for decades.

This lasted until some of the women faculty started their own group to deal with issues such as the lack of women on the counseling staff. We all felt that women students were coming to us with problems that were more properly the concern of professional counselors. The men on the faculty reacted defensively: weren't the men on the counseling staff competent?

One of the women shut them up by asking them to imagine being an 18-year-old male with intimate problems who goes to the counseling center and finds that all the counselors are middle-aged women.

A woman was added to the counseling staff the following year.