Sephera said:
I am not trying to create a division between male and female or any kind of exclusivity. My post that caused quite a few objections was the start of a brain storming.
If we want to look at this from a brainstorming perspective, I think we would be helped by asking some basic questions.
Clearly, there are two aspects of women getting involved in gamer culture. The first is finding the subculture and its activities worthy of interest. The second is finding a conduit into the culture and a social niche within it.
It seems to me that what you are focused on is the women who clear the first hurdle but not the second. I think that some of the friction on this thread is being generated by the fact that some people believe that this group is a small one and that the main problem is the number of women clearing the first hurdle.
One of the problems you are facing on ENWorld is that all of the women here, including you, have managed to do both, to a greater or lesser extent. In my experience, people who circumvent major social barriers are often unaware that they have done so and fail to understand what is holding everybody else back. As a kid, I was dragged to a lot of events of a minority group of which my family was part where millionaires and politicians would exhort the other members of their minority to take up their rightful place in Vancouver's civic leadership. People who had not managed to get around systemic discrimination were never part of the discussion about how to get past barriers to achievement; the only people who were viewed as qualified to comment on these barriers were generally people who did not perceive them at all.
So, it seems to me that I can best facilitate brainstorming by posing the following questions:
1. What obstacles to involvement do women involved in the hobby experience in the present and the past?
2. What groups of women does the hobby under-represent most?
3. What groups of women does the hobby most adequately represent demographically?
4. What kind of RPG systems and playstyles have the highest portion of women involved?
What if rather than have women only spaces, we have a women in gaming space? I think this past year there was a special room for minis, a room for board games, a room for card type games, room for anime, etc. this past year. How are those not segregating? A women in gaming space could use games designed by females or games run by female DMs or something like that.
This could work.
Let me raise a few possible concerns, though. It seems to me that a significant portion of the women who have carved out a niche for themselves in the hobby are individuals who pride themselves on being able to be "one of the guys" and not to need or benefit from this kind of attention. It would be important to think through how this group would interact with such a project.
It seems to me that one could craft such a project more subtly the better we answered the questions above. It seems to me crucial in brainstorming to gather data about the problem before becoming too specific in designing solutions. For instance, I would be prepared to bet that a neopagan oriented space would be a more effective way of gathering women in essentially female space at Gen Con than would something that was more explicit in its objectives.
I wish I had been able to go to GenCon this year, but doctor ordered bedrest (where I'm not supposed to do more than 10 minutes of activity per hour and I spend the rest of the time laying on my side) doesn't exactly make that possible. I do still really want to go and I'm looking forward to bringing my children who at the time of GenCon will be 12 year old daughter, 8 year old son, 4 year old daughter, and 10-11 month old son. And Torin can come, too.
Upon arriving, I think you will find another demography problem Gen Con needs to confront is creating more ways of differentiating adolescent space and adult space. Every bad True Dungeon experience I have heard about involved the phrase, "we ended up with a twelve-year-old in our group."
Unlike others here, I have zero problem with gender- or age-segregated space as long as it's getting some kind of job done.
See you at Gen Con next year.
I think he finally found what he was looking for, but it's neat for me to see how he realizes the link between the references in the movie and the deities in the RPG. 
