But… I mean, think of a bakery of all (straight) men.
Then think of the same bakery, but it’s all (straight) women.
Then imagine the same bakery, but it’s mixed sex.
Can you see what happens?
Even if there’s no attraction going on in the last case, the fact that there could bedramatically changes the unspoken dynamics. It’s just not as stable as the other two.
I feel like you have some implicit additional assumptions WRT what you mean by “stable”, here.
Like, are we talking about an ordinary bakery where someone is the owner and they hire staff to work there? In that case, if “stable” means something like “rate of staff turnover”, I wouldn’t expect the gender mix to significantly affect the stability. I’d expect it to be much more driven by things like ordinary working conditions, how well the staff were paid, etc..
(I also have the intuition that a single-gender environment would be less stable in the sense of being somehow “more stale” and “less alive” than a mixed-gender one, and thus less stable in the long-term, though that may very well just be my personal discomfort with single-gender environments.)
I feel like you have some implicit additional assumptions WRT what you mean by “stable”, here.
True!
I think I meant mostly an intuition about how sexual stuff adds drama that isn’t relevant to (say) baking.
I also have the intuition that a single-gender environment would be less stable in the sense of being somehow “more stale” and “less alive” than a mixed-gender one, and thus less stable in the long-term…
Huh. Well, I guess it depends a lot on the social scene!
Like, I don’t think a football team would feel more alive if you mixed in girls. Even if you somehow navigate the thing about major physical differences between the sexes. There’s something about the way the locker room culture there can be masculine that’s actually part of the bonding. And I think having a girl or two mixed in there could add some rivalry that’d have to be sorted out to be a functional team!
But yeah, if it’s a group of programmers, it might actually work better to have mixed sexes. Vague intuition here. Though I notice that I picked this example in part because physical sex can be made way, way less relevant in that context. (E.g., it’s possible to have a team of programmers that don’t even know one another’s sex and interact purely remotely and over text. That’s just not gonna work in a football team.)
All of what I’m saying here is spitballing and not very careful. Just playing with ideas. Thanks for pointing out the questions here!
Interesting speculation!
I feel like you have some implicit additional assumptions WRT what you mean by “stable”, here.
Like, are we talking about an ordinary bakery where someone is the owner and they hire staff to work there? In that case, if “stable” means something like “rate of staff turnover”, I wouldn’t expect the gender mix to significantly affect the stability. I’d expect it to be much more driven by things like ordinary working conditions, how well the staff were paid, etc..
(I also have the intuition that a single-gender environment would be less stable in the sense of being somehow “more stale” and “less alive” than a mixed-gender one, and thus less stable in the long-term, though that may very well just be my personal discomfort with single-gender environments.)
True!
I think I meant mostly an intuition about how sexual stuff adds drama that isn’t relevant to (say) baking.
Huh. Well, I guess it depends a lot on the social scene!
Like, I don’t think a football team would feel more alive if you mixed in girls. Even if you somehow navigate the thing about major physical differences between the sexes. There’s something about the way the locker room culture there can be masculine that’s actually part of the bonding. And I think having a girl or two mixed in there could add some rivalry that’d have to be sorted out to be a functional team!
But yeah, if it’s a group of programmers, it might actually work better to have mixed sexes. Vague intuition here. Though I notice that I picked this example in part because physical sex can be made way, way less relevant in that context. (E.g., it’s possible to have a team of programmers that don’t even know one another’s sex and interact purely remotely and over text. That’s just not gonna work in a football team.)
All of what I’m saying here is spitballing and not very careful. Just playing with ideas. Thanks for pointing out the questions here!