I can give a few answers for you:
1. The desires of minorities tend to be poorly served in
rule-by-majority groups like democracies and anarchic mobs.
2. Being a minority (e.g. woman; expatriate) can be an unpleasant and
alienating experience. Humans are social mammals who seek out the
company of similar individuals. We have developed the ability to
compartmentalize those needs to some extent, and can get by some of the
time by associating with people we are compatible on one or two specific
or important traits, like occupation/hobby, gender, religion, native
language, etc., but this is never as fulfilling as associating with
people with whom we are compatible on multiple traits. A guy joining
(e.g.) BangPypers gets to hang out with other guys like him; a gal
joining BangPypers gets to hang out with guys that might be like her if
she weren't a she.
3(a). Guys sometimes make sexual or romantic advances towards women
around them. When the gender ratio is heavily unbalanced, this can be a
huge problem. If each guy spends 5% of his time talking to and trying to
flirt with the girls around him, and there are 20 guys for each girl in
a group, then each girl will spend an average of 100% of her time
dealing with guys trying to flirt with her (if you interpret
multitasking as double-timing, at least). Perhaps you can see how this
might be a problem in some circumstances.
3(b). In groups with highly unbalanced gender ratios, the majority
gender tends to not get much practice and tends to be pretty awkward in
how they make or take the advances. As a female Physics major friend of
mine used to say about romantic prospects with her predominantly male
classmates, "The odds are good, but the goods are odd."
4. If you want to rectify the gender ratio imbalance, creating an
atmosphere that is extra-friendly towards women can be desirable, since
it would help counter any cultural prejudices against women entering
science or technology fields, and would also help to counter some of the
effects described in 1-3. It wouldn't fully counter either of those
effects, but it's a start.
On 9/8/2013 10:58 AM, Mandar Vaze / मंदार वझे wrote:
before, and I would be interested in your response:
"What purpose is served by creating a women's group, instead of
joining the existing group thus making it more diverse?"
In other words, what purpose is served by intentional segregation?
Was this ever answered ?
-Mandar
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