Been homeless over 6 years. My social services agency, high turnover. Being female , almost all my case managers have been female, standard practice.
Out of 17 case managers, only 2 have been male. Female cms: detailed, logical, responsive, solution oriented, clear effective communication. Male cms, the opposite.
I try to communicate clearly, effectively, which is easy cuz autism, and the 2 male cms, i get constant 2nd guessing, passive-aggressive defensiveness. Get impression they're automatically assuming I don't think clearly, don't know what I'm saying. It's weird, and I can't figure out why.
I know not all men are the same. I'm not like all women. Have I just been unlucky with these 2 cms, or is there a gender aspect to this I'm not understanding? I'd like to learn.
Try to recall whether you acted uncomfortable in your initial interaction with them. The first one due to surprise of them being the first male social worker working on your case. The second due to the unpleasantness with the former.
The first impression usually sets the tone of a conversation, so there may have been a misunderstanding which then solidified into prejudice.
It's not emotional, social. It's mostly text communication. Like, "I'll meet you at the front gate 215pm." Female cm, we meet at the front gate 215pm. Male cm, 15 min later, im still waiting, then angry text from him saying he's waiting somewhere else.
It's important to not stereotype based on a tiny number of samples. If i saw 15 white social workers who were mostly nice, and 2 black social workers who were rude, do you think it would be reasonable for me to say white social workers are nice and black social workers are rude? There are literally hundreds of thousands of social workers. You've seen 17 of them. And only 2 were men. Plus i bet they were mostly all from the same agency, so the person doing the hiring there will very much be filtering who you work with, and the individual doing the hiring at that particular place may choose to hire nice women and rude men.
Bottom line - I totally believe what you say about your personal experiences, but the number of men you worked with isn't anywhere near big enough to say anything about men social workers as a group.