I disagree. It's hard for everyone when they get out of college - and at this point in time young men have an uproad battle.

Also, i think the fact that Ivy league women are leaving the workforce for motherhood is actually a sign of great confidence. The are not leaving because they can't hack a job - they are leaving because they seeing mothering as being more important. I did not stay at home full time with my kids, but my friends who made this choice had to face a lot of women who accused them of not being able to cut it.

Interesting idea. However what I dislike about it from a business perspective is this: what happens when the all-female company has to interact with other businesses (who have males). Say in order to sell their product; the all-female company has to negotiate with a hard charging man. They will have zero experience dealing with this personality type and will be ill-equipped to succeed. Additionally, any company that's worth a damn will take the best employees regardless of gender, race or anything else.

Regarding the women from ivy's who stay home - my sense is that they do it because they can afford to because likely they married ivy men who make enough money to allow them to do it. I also agree with GenXpert that it's a sign of confidence at least as much as it is a sign of anything else.

What you are trying to do is use gender as a shortcut for classifying personalities. While this might work in a majority of cases, the exceptions are EXACTLY why we have laws against gender discrimination in our society.

Because, in essence you are saying that men can't be as sensitive or in-touch with their emotions as women. Sure, in general, most men act like.. well...men. But some would thrive in an all-female office. It would not be fair to exclude them

Also, you would be including women who are less sensitive and less emotional than the majority of other women. Including them in such a workplace might cause the exact problems you were trying to avoid.

Instead, what we need is to match peoples skills and personalities to their job, regardless of gender.

There is no shortcut.

This sounds nice, but as a minority female, I have found that even among all women, women just find ways to segregate themselves. So how well will this really work? The problem starts long before women join the workforce or go to college.

I think that the real problem is that we see one way for success, both men and women. We think that a woman must be less "womanly" and a man more "manly". He bucks up, a woman bucks up all the more.

There is space for all types, if we allow it, and teach people to capitalize on their strengths. Also, every industry isn't for everyone. And this has nothing to do with gender.

I also don't think that women leaving to have kids is a sign they can't cut it. It is a sign they want to do something else. I know that men feel an awful amount of pressure, just like women do, to fulfill their familial roles. Some relish in that pressure, which is one of the reasons I think that married men tend to make more money (and live longer) than single men. But some feel suffocated by it. The trick is, how can we make people feel better with both?

Of course people (men and women) will try to cut down your self-esteem. And unfortunately women have been attacked from birth. Just look at popular literature: young girl books focus on being a pretty girl; young boys books focus on being a manly boy. But there is another outcome: treating our little girls like human beings instead of little girls. And doing the same for our little boys. Stop buying fisher price model kitchens for girls and tool sets for boys. And let the kids be kids, independent of socialization. Maybe, just maybe, in that androgenous place before the hormones, we can give girls that extra boost to be women unafraid of what it means to be a woman socially, and men the confidence in their personhood to maybe be the one who stays home with the kids later in life.

And by the way, my experience has been that while men do tiptoe around me being a woman, other women make me pay for it. They attack my feminity with fervor. In a way that a man would never, and might not even think to do. And being a minority doesn't help on that front at all. College was rough. And if, when I was a little girl, my dad hadn't ignored the strares and bought me fire trucks, and let me think that Ken doll was way cooler than Barbie, I wouldn't have made it through with even a shred of confidence left.

Thanks for the great comments.

@Susan Johnston, yes, some women can be awful to work for, but I think if the single-sex environment is geared towards professional development and mentorship, you might attract managers and bosses who are interested in creating that sort of workplace environment.

Back later for more feedback..

I was once on a mailing list with a number of high-ability women who had left the workplace to stay home with their children. It was more complex for these women than either "side" tends to admit.

For most of these women, career had been a struggle long before the motherhood decision came up. They found their jobs boring and frustrating - in some of the same ways that men in similar positions also find certain high-ranking jobs to be glorified clerkships. Staying home with children was, for many of these women, not seen as "better" for them or the children in absolute terms but as more meaningful than an unmeaningful career.

Perhaps a bizarre association here, but I think the trend towards doctors and lawyers writing genre bestsellers reflects the same things. People bright enough to be doctors and lawyers but finding the actual day-to-day work intellectually unstimulating!

@ Miriam, interesting example. Although I was focusing on the benefits of a single-sex workplace for younger women, you bring up a good point about women-only environments possibly being more sensitive to the needs of working moms etc.

A few people have brought up how working in a single-sex office could affect women after they leave that office or when they have to interact with male clients etc. Often opponents of single-sex education say the benefits don't extend to the "real world" because the single-sex environment is contrived. But I find that friends who attended singles-sex schools do feel like they have s self-confidence they might not otherwise have, if it were not nurtured in a single-sex environment, so I tihnk there is a spill-over effect.

I've worked with male and female colleagues, I've also had male bosses (5 in total) and female bosses (7 in total). And I don't think it's possible to say that men are this... and women are this... I think it comes down each individual.

Some of my male colleagues were an absolute joy to have on my team as so were some women. Mind you, the most trouble I've ever had was with a catty female colleague, but still I don't feel that's a large enough sample size to draw any conclusions.

I've also had supportive female bosses as well as very supportive male bosses. I had a very cruel male boss when I was training to be a pastry chef. I later had a very cruel female boss in the corporate world.

I stick to it being a matter of personality, not what's under a person's pants or skirt.

@Smith+Fritzy - thanks so much for taking time to respond to my comment. Your answer is very well thought. Although I believe that being able to pin down our differences to one factor - our biology - would make our lives at work and outside much easier and simpler, I do not believe that it's realistic or possible. (the chaos theory doesn't either) Taking from the firefighter example, the first thing that came to mind was: does that mean that a Guatemalan male (average height 5'2") is better equipped to do the job than a Norwegian woman (average height 5'5.9")? I have yet to test this, but something tells me that it depends. This tells me that there's much more at play than gender. I bring this up, because even if it seems far-fetched, the reality is that our work environments are much more diverse than just male and female. As a person, I'm much more than female. Who I am has to do with where I grew up (Colombia), who brought me up (2nd generation Jewish immigrants from Mediterranean and Eastern European roots and a Colombian nanny), where I've travelled (lots of places), what I eat (vegan, mostly raw), where I was educated (US, Colombia, Europe, Australia) and on and on... In my mind it's dangerous to focus on one factor - it only leads to a form of ism. Personally what has made me improve the quality of my relationships at work has been being in the moment. Leaving all filters and preconceived notions (and theories from my anthropology courses at Tufts) behind and relating to men and women, and Guatemalans and Norwegians and.. and.. as individuals.

Until double standards go away, even same sex offices won’t help. It is still acceptable for men to engage in behaviors such as interruptions and foul language where as it is not okay for a woman. The old adage that men are aggressive and women are bitchy is very much played out in my office. Women here cannot even raise their voice without being written up while men routinely use the F word without batting an eyelash.