When I worked in government I noticed something similar. Every department had about five senior leaders. There would be one female and she would always be the hard as nails, gruff, no nonsense type. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realise that they had had to behave like that to be taken seriously and trusted to be competent. The men could get away with being affable and clubby but women’s range of accepted behaviours was far narrower.
Yeah, I'm pretty personable. I've found that being more standoffish is necessary to get taken at all seriously, otherwise men just interpret everything as flirting, basically. Whether they want to be flirted with or not, it does absolutely nothing for me professionally.
