[sp]
Nope, not even a little bit ... But here is why ... Doing what I do, I have the unique ability to gain some extremely interesting information. About 18 months ago we ran a series of surveys and one of them dealt with just such a subject as this one.
You might be interested in WHO said WHAT but more interesting to me is [red]WHY[/red] and even WHEN.
It's not anything very complicated either, it is actually a very basic reason. I myself would have to answer along the lines of "As long as they had all the right stuff" it wouldn't matter to me.
But that "RIGHT STUFF" is the KEY to the question.
WHO said WHAT?
Answer: Women clearly preferred Men
AND WHEN?
The largest levels of those women that preferred men as their instructors were at two different ends of the chart. Open Water and Advanced women showed a clear preference for male instructors. Above Advanced BUT below DM showed a drop in any prefs but once again those becoming DM's once again showed a strong pull toward the same thing the Open Water and Advanced showed, the women preferred men.
[red]THE WHY![/red]
This is the part that once we had compiled all this data we found ourselves feeling kind of dumb, and the first thing I did was ask ladydiver about it and she stopped and thought about it and said, "Yeah, I would have to say it makes complete sense". Since then we had made a point of asking others about it and most of the women said that after thinking about it they agreed.
The interesting part to me is the drop off and then later the picking back up of this feeling. The stated reason for this feeling was one of [red]SECURITY[/red]... A simple, yet natural feeling of Physical Strength is what made the difference. Basically, in a nut shell one of the respondents said it best with...
"If something goes really wrong, Whose arm do I want responsible for grabbing me and pulling me to safety? Screw being 'PC', This is no time to play hero, I want the arm that is 3 times more powerful than my own thank you very much!"
DOH! Well duh, Yeah I would have to agree, when I was very young and my father was teaching me to dive, I can admit that I would have preferred my fathers 18' arms grabbing me than my moms ... Especially since the age of 8 I towered over and out weighed my mother almost 2 to 1.
It sure made me think...
=-)