In reply to mike kann:
> (In reply to Beth-Cath-T) I'd just like to point out that by making it gender separated, men who are inevitably quite different to women purely down to testosterone, will not learn how to better accommodate women partners.
Most men I know are more than happy climbing with women, and do so quite often. They don't need to 'accommodate' their women partners. They just enjoy their company and climb in partnership with them. Climbing is a sport which seems pretty unsexist to me, with climbers being taken on their own, individual merits.
>Men and women more often than not quite clearly have very different attitudes to risk, the way they approach climbs and how they respond to pressure.
Isn't this just true for every individual? I know men that are a lot less bold than me, and women that are far more bold!
> However it is not always something that is picked up on by men (or women for that matter)
If you want someone to understand where you are coming from, then why not just explain your individual stance to the individual concerned?
> and actually it is a vital part of better integrating the fairer sex into this excellent game of ours. How are people with such differing sets of values and motivational drives supposed to work well together if they don't understand each other?
I tend to climb with people that I have something in common with and who I work well with. They may be male, they may be female, but it has never seemed a problem to me?
> Perhaps these womens symposiums, rather than concentrating on how to make climbing fair to women, should concentrate on how to get men and women to climb well together in a more supportive atmosphere.
I didn't think it was 'trying to make climbing fair' to women? I thought it was just providing women with an opportunity to climb with and learn from other women, which is not very often available to us? But then maybe I have misunderstood the point of it - after all, I wasn't there.