WHETHER it's the way we use the wing mirror when we reverse, how we explain Sudoku to strangers or the way we approach tough decisions at work, there's little doubt that women and men do things differently.

What we experience is mediated by gender. Whether that has its origins in differently-networked brain structures or socially-constructed norms of behaviour, evidence in the social sciences is increasingly finding that we are hotwired differently; we experience stress differently, use different models to solve problems, display different ethical prerogatives, mature at different rates - if at all - and we have different understandings of business survival and success.

Because men and women do so many things differently, though, doesn't mean we should organise society around gender differences;

it would be severely costly for men if they were to be proportionately financially responsible for the extortionate bill for our prison service just because 91% of crime is maleperpetrated. Although? However attractive the possibility, it would be unjust to make one gender responsible for all the rioting, joyriding, fighting and public urination about us. It may be gendered behaviour, but we have promoted a social responsibility model for citizenry which doesn't reward or punish the gender differences in parking prowess but merely tickets or clamps the parker who happens - more often in the case of parking indiscretions (only) - to be a woman.

There are gender differences and fallout from playschool to car park to shopping centre, but nowhere is it more evident than at work. Sometimes it's moderated or exacerbated by other variables and sometimes it's just unbearable, but there's no wondrous way to handle the gender issues without rendering ourselves ineffective and irrelevant so it's an ongoing battle - albeit, these days, an unspoken, camouflaged one.

And it's not all down to gender.

Mary may feel more in common with Martin from her home town who also loves Frasier and gardening like her, than she does with Suzanne from the city who, though Mary's age and gender, hits the clubs every Friday instead of heading home to husband and kids as she does.

There's such a variety and so many subcultures within both genders that to categorise and make assumptions for everything at the level of gender is to reduce and stymie the values and processes with which we individually identify ourselves. That's why gender-specific clubs and activities are suspect.

It's not that groups of 'girls' from 16 up don't love to get together and solve the problems of the world over alcopops and, later on, over wine, or that men don't like to meet and say very little of real insight about the practicality of living but share jokes or interpretations or tales of third-hand antics to entertain and impress.

We like different things sometimes, but segregated socialising, when arranged informally, is a natural expression; when it's formalised it comes with a discredited whiff of either oppressive structural discrimination or, when its 'women only', a pass� '70s sisterhood previously known as cronyism.

The really great thing about professional women's groups, according to half a random sample of males in my address book last week, is that there'd never be a shortage of chairs and things would be much organised. The other half of the men surveyed suggestively questioned the meaning of 'professional' and indicated approval once the women were cute, otherwise, no opinion.

According to a collection of 'accomplished, professional, highachieving' females - the target market of many latter-day women's networks - the purpose of a business women's network is at best anodyne and outdated, and at worst vexing and suspect. They're anachronistic, unfashionable and ultimately indicative of a penchant for power playschool, rather than the real power politics that working with a full spectrum of personalities involves, came the replies, or thereabouts.

Networks of people who meet to promote their professional interests may be made up of otherwise career-obsessed isolationist hermits who have no friends, one pal suggested, but in general, having never attended a women's professional meeting or any type of girlie dossers' group, I can only imagine the benefits.

For some, it must be social, for others, psychological and for the really high-achieving ones, profitable.

Professional women's networks, of which there are many from Ireland to Albuquerque and New South Wales to Moscow, may fulfil a personal need for group endorsement, an understandable need - if self employed or functioning as a lone worker - to have a sense of a collegiate and learn from others' views and experiences, or just a professional requirement to push one's brand across the sisterhood before attempting the brothers, because one step at a time is more effective for world domination.

Most women I asked didn't feel that participating in the activities at these gatherings would really improve the quality of their lives.

Others said that attendance might even disrupt their personal identities and expose lingering divided loyalties, and undermine the calm deliberate 'non-gendered' presentations they have nurtured so well.

The problem conceptually is that there appears to be a conflicting goal endemic in the notion of women's business groups.

The inconsistent rhetoric and action is often what makes these groups unsavoury. The conflicting material and normative pressures on women mean that we respond to resource constraints in business and try to make the most money and be as efficient as possible at the work we do - that's how men do it, and they are the aims of business so to compete at all, it's necessary to try to gain advantage.

The other pressure is normative and is a stronger pull for us all, so that we try to meet our social and cultural expectations, and when these are in conflict with the former, we engage in symbolic activities to make it appear we're obeying the norms while simultaneously ferreting away at instrumental Machiavellian antics to gain share price or increased sales or whatever is the ultimate aim of the basic profitmaking imperative of business life.

It's all so exhausting; sometimes it might just be easier to go for broke in the open-plan, open competition world of men and women, achievers and non-achievers, professional and non-professional and see who sinks, who swims and who flops about making swimming noises while holding onto the rails.

Social psychologists say that what goes on in these organisations is a sort of decoupling of both worlds.

On one side, there are the social norms that need attention to reduce psychic dissonance and internal role conflict, and we meet these demands through symbolic activities like press releases sent out, launches, impression management manoeuvres and PowerPoint presentations.

High ideals thus espoused, there's more uncomplicated energy left over to take on the true external environment and engage in the cut throat behaviour of Big Girls in the real world. And women in these networks are just as shrewd and just as quick to compete and topple another woman as they are a man.

So what's the point?

Ultimately, whereas there are no doubt a multitude of reasons for joining such a group, the concept of a group of people bonding merely due to their gender pierces from within the illusion that women like me have created that our functioning, achievement-oriented and wellordered world is historical and unanchored in the messy stuff of gendered political affray that our mothers muttered about as they peeled potatoes and practised quips.

Or maybe not. Maybe these 'monthly opportunities to meet, discuss, decide and share experiences' are wonderful, supportive 'stand on each other's shoulders' opportunities for women to promote each other in business and gain the advantage needed due to historical discrimination. Or maybe they are just organised hypocrisy, with no shortage of chairs.

Patricia Murray is an organisational and work psychologist