Cool - so does anything else need to be done Lory or will you take care of it ?
Phil
MODERATOR AT YOUR SERVICE
"If you're going to do something tonight, that you know you'll be sorry for in the morning, plan a lie in." Lorraine
MODERATOR AT YOUR SERVICE
"If you're going to do something tonight, that you know you'll be sorry for in the morning, plan a lie in." Lorraine
I am not grasping this can some kind person put this into words that an IDIOT, ie me, can understand.
A sketch may help, preferably in crayon.
As I see it, I am now booked with Maxine and Fletch, I don't know what the Bat will feel about this.
DTS XXX XXX
Depends how gender balancing is implemented. If it is 1:1 ratio I personally think it doesn't work. Having been to a few weekenders I have noticed that for the workshops there seem to be more men than women, mainly because women are out shopping or busy doing something else. Each to their own preferences I guess.
The ratio balances out during the freestyle when everyone is out dancing.
Personally I would like to see a ratio of 1:1.3 (100 male : 130 female). Mainly because many women can lead compared to the number of guys that can follow. That's my opinion, I am sure others will have a different view on this topic.
Much as I hate economics, this is really a fairly simple case of supply and demand.
Gender balancing was introduced because there were too many women and not enough men; the demand for leads vastly out-weighed the supply. From all accounts, this wasn't very satisfactory for anyone.
This was addressed by gender balancing. I don't know exactly what formula is used, but I expect it would be some sort of ratio of men to women in booked tickets. This introduced a greater scarcity of supply of women's tickets compared to the demand. This has had a couple of consequences, including:
- Women-only tickets selling out very early, meaning people have to plan well in advance for the weekenders.
- Women booking and paying for a non-existent man, just to get a ticket. This skews the market by upsetting the planned gender balance. If all tickets sell out, then it might also prevent some men from being able to go at all.
The possible solutions to a market disequilibrium are rather obvious. You either decrease demand or increase supply.
To decrease demand, you increase price. If there was a premium of 25% on the prices for follows, this would both reduce supply and increase revenue. One would have to be a little clever to get around discrimination laws, but that's not insurmountable. The other major issue would be the reaction of the market (ie the average punter) to the price differential. Again, this can be managed in a number of ways.
To increase supply (of leads) is trickier. Again, you could decrease the price for leads. Or offer other incentives that would increase the number of leads attending. This is less likely to succeed as there are simply fewer men dancing across the country than women.
All of these solutions are quite a bit trickier to implement and to manage (both from a logistical and from a PR persepctive) than simple quotas. But they are alternatives.
It's much fairer selling tickets 1:1 ratio IMO - then you'd be able to have men following if they wanted and women leading without too much hassle over gender balance issues.
I lead, but don't choose to at a freestyle so for me I'd be pretty p****d off if I went to an event and had to spend the night dancing with women and being restricted to my 'moves based' leading rather than getting to dance with lovely men.
In workshops I've been to, it's always single males or couples places left at the end, so obviously ladies in my area aren't keen shoppers (?!). However at Splash in some of the classes I did, the ratio was not far off your 1:1.3. Shame for me as I'd have liked to have led in some of the classes, but felt it wasn't right when there were men over.
This is al very well but dancing will never be gender balanced because there are more women in dancing than men. I was chatting recently to a member of Ceroc who told me that he had ben offered sex, violence, money and all sort of bribes for a ticket at weekends.
When women book ghost men just so they can get to a weekend then try to sell tickets without accommodation, the gender balancing will be out.
Traditionally women book early and men kind of leave it until the last minute. It is nearly the situation that men could leave booking put a request on the Forum and find a frantic woman to book with.
I believe Ceroc are looking into this, however the general shortage of men in dancing will always be a problem. Whats the answer? I don't know, I am just thankfull that as a man it doesn't really impact me that much, I sympathize with women having problems booking weekends.
DTS XXX XXX
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