Lord of the Flies
I used it as a manner of speaking; it's difficult to define a single moment. The best way to describe it, is that the female floor of our workplace had an atmosphere that was toxic and very unpleasant. The team was no fun to work in, not good to work with, had low productivity and was not producing high quality products.
My predecessor didn't give a fuck - not about the people and clearly not about productivity/quality either. Which is why I was hired. In the beginning I didn't have a clue what was going on, but it was quickly obvious that my usual 'laissez-faire' manner of management that worked well with most groups consisting of men -only and mixed groups, was a terribly bad style for this all-women group.
I'm sure I would not have been able to last as long as they did (and all of them did last - no one ever said 'fuck it, this sucks, I'm out bitches'), in that environment. It was cutthroat, nasty, and well, as I said - toxic and horrible.
We're talking about a workplace with never more than 20 people in total. My style of running such a small place meant it had the flattest organizational structure you can imagine. Absolutely no reason for 'games' of any kind.
Yet the "girls-only" floor would -internally, just among themselves- have infighting, strategies concerning the planning of jobs and vacation days, bullying, sabotage, etc etc. All things that sound petty on paper, but when played out mercilessly by adults, will have a huge impact on your working as well as private life. Really hardcore office politics that I wouldn't even think of. Nor, in my sample size, would other men.
Obviously the men too would have disagreements, but after a coffee break with a bit of name-calling and maybe the slamming of a door, any issue was always resolved amicably. Truly amicably, not fake-amicably as would be the case with the women, who would then sneakily turn the dial to 11 on whatever was not-so-amicably fake-resolved.
Almost always the guys themselves worked it out, or I would end it by executive order and the latter meant that all the disagreeing parties ended up unhappy.
One important part that I do want to mention: each male-only team that I ever added one or more women to, improved as well. It wasn't essential though, which adding men to female-only teams turned out to be.