I am a woman, but you need to bear in mind that I'm not a very typical woman (when I take those various personality tests I score all logical/analytical or so far over on the male side as to be pushing Aspberger's :lol: ).
First, there is hand size and upper body strength -- which may or may not correlate with each other. My hands are small, but fairly strong. I can pull pretty much any trigger I can reach. But I'm not going to get a S&W, J-frame, snubby for my carry gun no matter how much I respect the S&W reputation because I can just barely reach the trigger and because while I can, just, pull that heavy, double-action trigger I don't like it.
Some women with longer fingers than mine may be weaker than I am and unable to pull that trigger at all while others may have equal strength and be better able to do it because the gun is a better fit.
Second, many women, especially those who don't have a farm or blue-collar background, don't think of themselves as capable of working with tools and machines. (More and more men even are managing to grow up unfamiliar with tools and handyman jobs too). Guns are often totally outside their frame of reference and thus they feel the need of a guide who is in some way like them to establish a path towards understanding those utterly foreign objects.
Third, many women care deeply about what others think about them -- regardless of who those others are. They don't want anyone to ever see them looking silly. And since the interaction between the sexes has a very large, hard-wired, biological component many women are very concerned, consciously or unconsciously, to never seem ignorant or silly in front of a man. So they want female instructors and all-female classes.
Fourth, modern, western culture exaggerates the power of guns. In movies and on TV all guns go
BANG! and throw themselves back with powerful recoil so that's what people expect. No one has ever told them that a gun firing .22lr just goes
pop or
crack and twitches a bit. 15 years or so ago I was eager to learn to shoot a pistol but still expected an experience like wrestling at least a small alligator and I can vividly recall thinking, "That's all?" after firing the first shot. So there is a definite element of uncertainty, often even fear.
For many women, seeing another woman successfully wrestling the alligator inspires confidence.
Fifth, for some classes and subcultures, there is a lingering element of the idea that women are delicate, that a "manly" activity like shooting would coarsen them and spoil their beauty, and that women should exhibit a sort of learned helplessness as a sign of their femininity (which ends up being a tool to manipulate the men in their lives). Contrary to stereotypes, I see this more often among the moneyed classes than among the laboring classes because farm and blue-collar families are accustomed to seeing the same woman who pitched in competently on a rough and dirty job all dressed up and perfectly ladylike when the occasion calls for it. These women need living proof that shooting won't ruin their hair, break all their nails, or make their boyfriends reject them.
Sixth, because many women tend to care more about what others think they are often more vulnerable to emotionally-based cultural messages that guns are evil.
Seventh, modern, western culture is hyper-sensitive about avoiding danger and pain. Most boys learn that danger is often manageable with good planning and that pain can be dealt with by playing sports, skateboarding, and all the rough and rowdy things that even the most determined helicopter-mommy can't prevent boys from trying.
But a significant number of girls manage to reach adulthood without having ever broken a bone, gotten a cut that required stitches, pulling a muscle, or otherwise experiencing injury and recovery while never taking a risk greater than crossing a city street. They don't know where to begin in handling something that they perceive as dangerous and potentially painful and the sheer unfamiliarity exaggerates those things in their minds. Being with other women helps them explore this unfamiliar territory.
But for all these women who, for one reason or another, benefit from female instructors and all-female classes there are still a sizable number of women like me who have, throughout their lives, frequently found themselves the only woman in a group of guys doing something, couldn't care less about what the people around them are thinking about them, and who need no special attention except to deal with disparities of size and strength or, as came up with my search for a carry gun, issues of body shape and clothing.
