Weather, Women and Dancing

As I approached the dance place last night, I met one of the other blokes. He said that given the ice and snow, he expected a shortage of women. I thought he was probably right.

We were both wrong.

Sure, overall dancer numbers were way down but there were more women than men. Thinking about it, I realised I'd made this false assumption about women's attitude to difficult travel conditions before. However, when I look at other activities such as getting in to work, the image of men being bold risk-takers stacks up pretty well.

So, is it possible that some women make a special effort to go dancing when the weather is dreadful and risky? And why? Here are a few ideas:

• Women who dance are special and are less worried about risk than average?
• Women expect fewer other women to turn up and want to go where they think they are unlikely to be wallflowers?
• Men expect fewer other women to turn up and don't want to go where they think they are going to have to compete for partners?
• Women prefer to dance with bold, risk-taking men?