Intriguing idea for a thread! And married 2 miles, SJC2ISP has quite a point there about your handle...

I'm a woman and solely a leisure traveler, but I think the consensus is right on target that FT posters are mostly male because most frequent flyers are men. Typically, on CO, when I'm in F, I'm often one of, I'd say, three or fewer women in the F cabin. And three is high (this is usually in a 12- or 14-seat F configuration).

I also have a theory on why the info covered by FT is of particular interest to men, as BlondeBomber suggests. To preface, besides FT, I also frequent the Timeshare User's Group (TUG)BBS, and that one is probably the reverse ratio to FT of women to men. The two make for an interesting (and, I hope, not too off topic!) comparison. Along with the fact that I think women are more typically in charge of the kind of leisure travel and family vacations/reunions that timesharing often seems to be more geared toward, my assessment is that smart timeshare trading (I do own a couple) is a one-shot or limited-shot deal---you're always looking for the "perfect" trade for your week that year, but once you've traded all your available weeks, you're done unless you want to buy more (or give back one of your trades to try for something else). But chasing bonuses with the help of FT is totally different---it's just a matter of time until another shows up, and they are almost never mutually exclusive. You can just keep adding new bonus codes. So you could work this into gender stereotypes as follows: stereotypically, women are more interested in the perfect match, and men are more excited by being able to never-endingly accumulate. (I'm sure comparisons could be made here to dating behavior, but I'm not going there!) So that's my idea on why the difference in the two gender weights, even though both these BBSs are devoted to travel.

[FWIW, I also perceive a difference in the interactions on each board that is probably because of the opposite gender weights, but perhaps that's a topic for elsewhere! It does tend to go along with belle's observations though.]

I also think that when it comes to travel games, women are more likely to aim for specific goals, and often goals that involve sharing the reward (like getting a "better" timeshare trade = more space/comfort/convenience for the family on vacation). So I'd be curious to hear from other women FTers who have airline or hotel status---in my case, I make extra effort to stay Elite because F class is comfortable, I fly often enough that that matters, and as a Gold or Plat, I can share it by upgrading (space available!) a friend. Or because I have my eye on a specific reward (right now, F tix to Asia---not playing HoKeY!---for my boyfriend and I). But that's it; for me, it's not the status itself that's important, except indirectly---it's just that I get a more comfortable experience if my airline knows that I have status, and it's easier to redeem the miles that I earn. I perceive that men are more likely to enjoy the game of getting status in and of itself.

However, I think the proliferation of posts on the TUG board definitely indicates that the differences are not anything to do with one or the other sex being more comfy with BBS technology.

Have I thought about this too much? Must have been all that grad school in psych!

[Edited to finish a sentence I accidentally clipped.]

[This message has been edited by chai (edited 11-23-2001).]