I WENT on a press trip to Kenya last week and before I was due to meet the other journalists, I was told that I was to be going in a big gang of women.

I was delighted and slightly irked by the idea that one male journalist was coming along as well, to intrude on our mutually nurturing female fraternity.

After years of struggling to fit into a predominantly male office environment, I have come to regard female company as a safe haven from my daily, testosterone-fuelled work climate. All male conversations leave me feeling cheated - all that emotional concealment, one-upmanship and football.

I have always had a rosy picture of female companionship ever since I did my MA in Women's Studies, when 12 of us would sit around drinking coffee and saying "I know how you feeeeeeel. Men are just useless." There was none of the bravado or naked competition you find in male groups. We were happy to admit to weaknesses and even laugh about them together. So it was with this sepia-tinted vision I embarked on meeting 'the girls' for Kenya.

We all turned out to be refreshingly different. One was a pretty blonde working on a magazine, another was an earthy Northerner and the third was a good time girl out to drink cocktails. I could tell the guy was already put off by our 11th hour shopping sprees for tampons and panty liners before take-off. For a while it was fun and we talked to our hearts' content about period pains, faking orgasms and how hopeless our exes were in bed.

The poor male journalist retreated into himself and became an unofficial butt of our girlie jokes. At one point, my heart nearly went out to him when he tried to join in on a conversation (about whether Clinique cosmetics were better than Clarins) by taking out a mouldy Body Shop lip salve and asking the ladies "Anyone want some?" Laughs all round.

Anyway, it took me a good few days to realise that a female group may be anything less than blissful. The pretty one and the Northern one formed a whispery, playground best friends-style bond. They seemed to know each other's histories, likes, dislikes and sexual preferences intimately. The third girl was the hanger on, desperately wanting to get in on the other two girls' popularity.

But it was only when we started talking about male-female dynamics with the poor male journo that my feelings of antipathy finally crystallised. He said he did not have many female friendships and he found female groups to be bitchy, competitive and quick to form exclusive alliances. Yeah, I thought. Pretty accurate. Get me out back to the simple pleasure of the blokes in the pub with a beer balanced on their groin. I will never complain again.