I think there are several arenas where girls and women benefit when men are excluded; secondary education isn't the only one. A few others to mention:

- Sports and physical competition. Excluding men enables women to compete on their own plane, set world records, etc.

- Restrooms, locker rooms, and the like. Excluding men protects women from unwanted advances, privacy invasions, etc. I know this isn't a popular opinion, but the primary benefit of segregated restrooms is that women do not have to be afraid to go to the bathroom. Besides sanitation, this is one of the greatest benefits to society of having restrooms in the first place. (In areas with no restrooms, such as rural India, women often have to risk being molested when trying to relieve themselves.)

Another unpopular opinion: desegregation efforts in the above areas (including those motivated by wanting to achieve "gender equality" or allow transgender women into areas designated for women only) will result in harm to women.

Though it's worth noting that mass-transit in Japan is frequently packed so tight that if you don't have your hands up, you're literally touching someone else anyway. Not hard to see how that amplifies the molestation problem significantly in Japan even if other countries (presumably) have the same % of men with a propensity towards such actions.

Thoughts?

I agree that all of your explanations fall well on my metaphorical ears. They seem right, and I can nod along while I read them.

But I can't help but have a nagging suspicion that you'd get extremely similar results if you just tossed a random sample of kids into a school after filtering for household income > $XXX,XXX/yr.

I'd also argue that even if you compared gender segregated schools vs a mixed-gender private school of the same price, you'd still be left with a confounding variable of "whose parents clearly valued education enough that they either specifically picked, or tolerated (depending on their views on this matter) a gender segregated school.

Remember that parental involvement is a very powerful predictor of academic success (though I'll admit I don't know if it trumps the predictive power of just socioeconomic class).

How I see it is that the burden is on people who choose to bring children into this world. It’s an important decision. It is the basis of our evolution. The answer to the question re whether my progeny or kin can compete for the same limited resources. Economically lower classes of the population need cohesive and supportive communities that will act as the village..as it were..to collectively raise children. It is the strengthening secret sauce. Community and community support is everything here.

And of course..that’s wildly variable. There is no way to come up with standardized solutions. However, if we look at it as a resource issue..of resource allocation and resource density rather than a species encompassing human collective issue, we can find solutions for all.

It’s difficult to see this as a resource issue rather than a people issue, but smaller tight knit communities with minimal socio economic deltas work better than trying to homogenize large populations inefficiently.

I went to an all boys school with mostly working class boys of color (54% hispanic, 26% white, 13% asian, 6% black -- 75% non-white students ) next to Compton, though, so while I do agree that private schooling is associated with higher socioeconomic class, that was not my experience, and all I gave was my experience.