There probably is something to that. Apparently single-sex education is one of the ways that actually work for getting more women into math and engineering, due to less self-consciousness about gender roles when studying as a teenager.
I don’t think it’d be worth the effort for adults though. Socializing people to behave in mixed-gender environments is pretty important in Western culture. Adults are expected to be able to deal with mixed-gender groups, generally are able to deal with mixed-gender groups, and enforcing a single-gender membership would raise the weirdness perception for the club for a lot of people.
Single gender groups for adults would be worth trying as an experiment.
You’re guessing that adults are reliably able to handle mixed groups, especially if the groups are doing activities where the members might have bad memories related to gender roles.
Suppose that some women had been told repeatedly when they were girls that they were bad at math, and saw boys doing better and getting more attention in math class—they might do better in an all-women math class.
Similarly, if some men had been told as boys that they were less good at relationships than women, they might want to start out therapy in all-male therapy groups, or groups which aren’t exactly therapy—note that PUA is used for dealing with women, but the support structure seems to be typically all male.
In both cases, they would presumably want to build confidence and knowledge and then take both into being comfortable with the other sex.
There probably is something to that. Apparently single-sex education is one of the ways that actually work for getting more women into math and engineering, due to less self-consciousness about gender roles when studying as a teenager.
I don’t think it’d be worth the effort for adults though. Socializing people to behave in mixed-gender environments is pretty important in Western culture. Adults are expected to be able to deal with mixed-gender groups, generally are able to deal with mixed-gender groups, and enforcing a single-gender membership would raise the weirdness perception for the club for a lot of people.
Single gender groups for adults would be worth trying as an experiment.
You’re guessing that adults are reliably able to handle mixed groups, especially if the groups are doing activities where the members might have bad memories related to gender roles.
I’m guessing that adults will do mixed groups better than teenagers. Agree that single gender groups would be an interesting experiment.
Can you expand on that?
Suppose that some women had been told repeatedly when they were girls that they were bad at math, and saw boys doing better and getting more attention in math class—they might do better in an all-women math class.
Similarly, if some men had been told as boys that they were less good at relationships than women, they might want to start out therapy in all-male therapy groups, or groups which aren’t exactly therapy—note that PUA is used for dealing with women, but the support structure seems to be typically all male.
In both cases, they would presumably want to build confidence and knowledge and then take both into being comfortable with the other sex.
You are, of course, quite correct.