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To me, that behavior connotes a combination of wanting to project femininity (not so much sexual behavior or attractiveness) and having lower-than-average self esteem (i.e. perceived status). It is mostly the latter that can be slightly annoying in the workplace, since such people are often unwittingly excluded from discussion (wobster109 also raises this point).
The root problem here is not so much the behavior itself, but lack of perceived status that then leads to that behavior as a kind of overcompensation. ISTM that high self esteem often boosts both social attractiveness and effectiveness in the workplace (as long as it doesn't come with 'Type-A' overt aggressiveness, and even then sometimes), and that this broadly applies to both males and females.
Low self-esteem hypothesis is difficult to falsify, because whatever social role given person plays and however they behave, one could still say "but maybe deep inside they feel insecure". Having said that... yes, this may be an instinctive reaction of a nervous woman, but I believe I have also seen high-status women doing that strategically.
Imagine a club that has informal lectures at its meetings (not LessWrong, but similar), and a 30-something woman, a long-term relatively high-status member of the club, interrupting the lectures every few min... (read more)