[Clive]

Michael - I don't think participation in online forums (fora?) is necessarily any guide to the ratios of women submitting poems to small magazines. That could simply represent a male preference for that particular kind of workshopping rather than anything else.

And again, I'm afraid I'm going to drag A N Other inequality in representation that suggest the existence of a certain hegemony - where are the working class voices? I can think of a handful of working class poets (all men, btw). Now, you could argue that working class people just aren't submitting. But the explanation can't end there. WHY aren't they submitting? Is it because they're not writing as much? WHY is that? Why are more middle class people writing poetry? I have no answers to any of this, but I suspect that the status quo still discourages working class people from artistic pursuits. That doesn't mean, incidentally, that middle class people are actively conspiring to keep them out.

Mark - yes The Blank Slate theory is discredited, but I don't think there's an inborn gender preference for dusting over bricklaying. I suspect that social conditioning works on some innate gender-related qualities to produce the kind of differences you mention. Otherwise, you couldn't have outliers, like me, who finds hammers and drills scary and much prefers ironing.