Women-only and men-only groups
A balanced gender ratio would be in the neighborhood of 50/50, and a skewed one would include a far smaller percentage of the minority gender. What happens in the groups in which no "tokens" are present at all? Are the online discussions and group activities of men and women very different when there are no members of the opposite sex present?
Victor Savicki and his colleagues looked at what happens when all-male, all-female, or mixed groups use email to discuss the morality of the actions of fictional characters in a weird story called "Lovers." To synopsize, Portland, Oregon-based Lance is in love with Susanna, who lives on the Olympic Peninsula. An earthquake rocks the U.S. Northwest, and Lance is desperate to confirm that Susanna is alive and safe in her wilderness cabin. The roads are impassable, but Lance turns to Portia, who has an airplane, for help. Portia agrees on the condition that Lance sleep with her, but he refuses and goes to his friend Ralph to talk over the problem. Ralph doesn't want to get involved; he's watching a football game on TV. Lance decides he must get to Susanna, and sleeps with Portia to secure her help. They fly to Susanna, who decides she never wants to see the unfaithful Lance again. Lance returns home, turns to his friend Pat, who becomes infuriated with Susanna's actions and sends her some poisoned hemlock tea. Susanna is hospitalized, and the curtain closes as Lance laughs at the poetic justice. After three weeks of email discussion, the groups submitted their consensus rankings of the actions of each character.
One reason the researchers used this bizarre story as the means to stimulate discussion was that previous research had used activities that were probably more appealing to men than to women. A common example is the Lost on the Moon scenario, a very task-oriented exercise in which the participants play astronaut roles. They crash in a crater and together must rank fifteen items on the basis of their importance for survival and rescue. Everyone agrees they need oxygen, of course, but group members get into interesting battles when they start ranking matches, foodstuffs, and other items. NASA has an answer to this puzzle, so researchers can score a group's submission for accuracy. Men tend to dominate discussions like this, so Savicki and his colleagues wanted to try another topic to see if women would participate more. Presumably, women would be more involved in a discussion about the intricate relationships and moral judgments, or at least our gender stereotypes would lead us to think so.
The largest differences occurred between the female-only and the male-only groups, with the mixed-sex groups usually falling in the middle somewhere. The male-only groups were least satisfied with the whole process, and the female-only groups were most satisfied. The men in the male-only groups were less likely than the women in the women-only groups to change their initial positions after group discussion, as though the conversation among men was more of a debate with unsuccessful attempts to change one another's views. Women used more individually oriented pronouns (such as I, me, or my) in their computer-mediated conversations, suggesting they were using language to express personal views and relate their own experiences as they pertained to the discussion. There was little flaming or argumentativeness, though what coarse language appeared was generally confined to the male-only groups.
On the Internet, there are innumerable male-only environments, though I know of none that actually prohibit women from joining, at least formally. They are male-only because of demographics and interests, and perhaps because their tone eventually drives women away. Groups formed specifically for women (so they could discuss women's concerns) are often populated mainly by men. Usenet's soc.women, for example, typically has more posts from men than women.
There are a few women-only groups that have sprung up as electronic havens, and one example is Systers. A mailing list for women in computer science and related disciplines, the forum provides that "port of call" feeling for women involved in an overwhelmingly male career. L. Jean Camp describes her experiences in it, showing how a supportive environment and that "aligned" style of interaction is so important to her:
Systers has given me comfort when I needed it, reminding me every day that I am not alone. The feeling is small, but constant. As Systers has filtered into my being over time, it has become a tremendous positive force in my life. ... The very strength that Systers offers can make it a sanctuary on a hostile net.