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Notes -
What thing do women enjoy doing as leisure which involves the largest social organization? For men it’s probably something video game related: guilds with up to thousands of players, clans with dozens, or some large joint Minecraft projects, etc. What is the largest social organization that organically develops among women? I’m thinking it may be something related to fandom, eg k-pop fandoms probably organically develop into large organizations. Or maybe true crime communities that work in unison to piece together information across thousands of individuals. It’s interesting that these are both evolutionary — either loyal devotion to the männerbund, the tribe of virile men, or else village gossip, ensuring the safety of the community.
Daughters of the American Revolution.
190,000 active members.
The activity is ancestor worship, roleplaying corporate positions, dress up, and pin collecting.
That's meant to be tongue in cheek, my mom is in the org and roles her eyes at some of the stuff they do, but also likes the social interaction.
My mom is the one that verifies peoples genealogy and then organizes a signoff party where the local chapter all signs off on the new member. She recently got some of her sign-offs rejected because she apparently used the wrong blue ink pen. She was livid with these ladies.
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When you start talking evopsych, you really have a way of making it sound like a sneer. I also think it’s foolish to model 1000+ member associations like they’re under Dunbar’s number.
Anyway, I’ll submit SCA, which I think is very female-heavy and more of an organization than any fandom.
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Sunni Islam, Roman Catholicism, or maybe Christianity as a whole is the organization with the largest amount of organic female voluntary adherents. Groupies for God, if you will.
I was thinking more about those that are totally controlled and managed by women, at every level, but I think certain female monastic orders could fit in here. And you’re right, it is similar to a devoted fandom
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Groupies 100% if they haven't already been swept into their partner's activities.
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Maybe something like the American Contract Bridge League, about 130,000 members, mostly older women. Bridge used to be a very popular semi-organized past-time among housewives in the 1940s--1970s.
Okay, I think that beats my example.
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I think you're right that it's groupies/fan clubs. Even before everything went online there were massive networks of fan clubs for each popular performer.
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The Women's Institute has about 170,000 members, although these are really hundreds of individual chapters (a la Freemasons) so not sure if it counts.
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Maybe political activism? Demonstrations and activist orgs seem to attract a lot of women.
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Sports fandom? Tailgating, making big ol' tifos, that sort of thing?
Isn’t tailgating usually just a dozen or so people though? A somewhat low-level organization
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