Carol....let's just deconstruct what you're saying here.

 

If we were to take the words "female" and "male" and "women" and "men" out of it entirely, would it sum up one of the major issues in editor retention?  I'm going to be honest, I've read a genuinely disproportionate number of insulting edits made by women (as a percentage of overall edits by editors I know to be women), and it's something that needs to be kept in mind; while the overwhelming majority of editors are male, I've not seen any evidence that a male editor is any more or less likely to behave badly than a female editor.  It's just more obvious because they outnumber us 10 to 1.