Hi Mary,

The answer to your question is obvious - the women are all in the pictures that the men are posting in response to your message ;->

I see women sailing on the lakes, I just don't see them here. I have no idea why, but I also don't see women posting as much as men on other mailing lists. I'm involved in various mailing lists on subjects for which there are also conferences, and in general, the gender balance at the conference is much better than the gender balance reflected in the mailing list.

After reading your post, I decided to look at the mailing lists I administer to see if the gender balance is better among readers of the list than among posters. Sigh. It doesn't seem to be the case.

I know that my wife is interested in sailing, but not at all interested in reading about sailing or thinking abstractly about sailing. My wife has two master's degrees and is extremely intelligent, and writes well. She simply isn't interested in mailing lists. I think they are too anonymous and impersonal for her. We do have a private mailing list in our church, and that is the one mailing list she likes to participate on.

I suspect this may be different for lists about health, mutual support, etc. But I suspect that at least some women find technical mailing lists impersonal and uninteresting. This may well be an overgeneralization or wrong, but it's the first hypothesis that comes to mind.

Jonathan