Is asking a female interviewee, "How would you feel about working in a group of all men" acceptable?

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25. i would absolutely, NEVER ask that question. it's begging for a lawsuit.

the bottom line is that EVEN IF THE LAWSUIT HAS NO MERIT, it's an easy and obvious basis for a rejected applicatant to file one, and then you have to deal with the hassle EVEN IF YOU EVENTUALLY WIN. for this reason, you simply DO NOT bring up any gender-related concerns except in the very rare case that they are necessarily, specifically, a job requirement (not a whole lot of these, beyond stripper, acting, etc.).

but here's why i actually have a real problem with the question: if there were to be a conflict between a female employee and a group of male employees, why on earth would you imply that it's a job requirement for the woman to get comfortable with it? if a problem develops, it's hardly difficult to imagine the possibility that one or all of the men might be at fault, and then THEY should be asked if they had a problem working with a woman. and if they did, they should be let go.

in short, the question may not be the most overtly sexist question, but there's an underlying message that "we're just fine with the all-male way things are, and we don't want you to ruin it." it definitely fall on the wrong side of the law from my point of view.


if you did feel compelled to bring up the concern, a far better way to do that would be to simply have each candidate (not just the women!) meet the entire team. perhaps you get everyone in the conference room and have a group interview. no one says anything about gender, but the candidate can see for themselves that there's not a woman in the bunch. if they have a problem with this, they'll just turn down the job.

better is to just drop the whole topic, but the above solution at least gets away from anything overt. much easier to defend in a lawsuit. provided there's aren't any internal emails that would come out in discovery indicating the group interview was set up specifically to impress upon candidates that this is an all-male group. which is why, again, best is to just not go there in the first place.