Why are there no female Audiophiles?

[kemmler3D]

On the cultural angle, iirc I've seen reports of broader demographics attending audio shows in certain eastern European countries (more women, more younger people). Possibly Berlin also. I'd have to check details. Possible result of historical work patterns, or other societal factors.

Vague recollection here, but when I went to CES there was a reasonable gender split, but when you ventured into the "Hi-fi suites" it snapped right back to the typical "audiophile" ratio. So there's at least a weak anecdote that it's not even an "electronics" thing as much as it is an "audiophile" thing.

 

[Axo1989]

Vague recollection here, but when I went to CES there was a reasonable gender split, but when you ventured into the "Hi-fi suites" it snapped right back to the typical "audiophile" ratio. So there's at least a weak anecdote that it's not even an "electronics" thing as much as it is an "audiophile" thing.

That's an interesting distinction also (I've not actually been to an audio show tbh).

My guess is the reasons are cultural, not biological (so gender-related in certain contexts, but not sex-determined). We certainly have the rich old dude (but not strictly anglo) association with so-called high-end audio which is partly a product of traditional wealth patterns but I expect more nuanced.

 

[tmtomh]

Have you ever heard of one buddy turn to another and say "Oh stop it! ...You are such a misogynist!"?

I am guessing the real definition of that word's meaning has been weaponized, yet most men do not even realize it.

I bet not many members here (or anywhere) can even admit to themselves that 'they dislike women'... let alone that men "hate" women!
It was a trope that became a weapon and don't fall for it, don't even try to defend yourself against such shallow arguments, which are only made to aggravate.
And don't start a sentence with "I am not a misogynist but..."

Misogyny is real. Lots of men around the world like to have sex with women but also don't like women. This is not - or should not be - a controversial statement given the mountains of tragic evidence to support it.

Also, the "weaponization" argument has become used in recent years as a "men's rights"/anti-"woke" talking point - ironic, because it's actually the weaponization of the concept of "weaponization" in order to do exactly what you've done here: deflect from, and question, the actual phenomenon (in this case, misogyny) without having to explicitly deny it exists.

 

[kemmler3D]

My guess is the reasons are cultural, not biological so gender-related in certain contexts, but not sex-determined).

I think that must be a big factor. Certain hobbies and types of gadgets are "for men" and certain things are "for women". Not that they ought to be or even that many people would actually assert they should be, but as a practical matter, they are.

Like, I carry a purse (plain black nylon type of thing) but if I were to start looking into fancy handbags, suddenly that is "for women" - but what's womanly about a bag to put stuff in? What's womanly about wanting nice stuff?

Likewise, there's no law against men wearing makeup and some do. My skin tone isn't that great, admittedly (redness) but I never really think about wearing makeup. Why not? Half-subconsciously, I think it's "for women". (In truth, I'm glad nobody expects me to wear makeup. Seems like a big pain in the ass if you ask me. Men dodged a bullet there.)

Men and women all enjoy listening to music and my wife even sought out a turntable when I didn't really care about having one. However, when it comes to fancier speakers or headphones, that's suddenly a guy thing, her interest vanishes. Same with apparently almost all women. Why should it be so? At some point in the past, it was explicitly "a guy thing". Today, it's not, but the implicit association apparently remains to some extent. If we wanted to change that, what would we do about it?

 

[tmtomh]

Has that gone on here though, where is the evidence for that?

How would you propose to determine this given that PMs are private?

The proper question is, given the prevalence of such behavior online - sufficiently frequent that even several of us dudes here have seen it happening all the time in the public areas of various online forums - where is your evidence that it hasn't happened here, or that it would be somehow unusually unlikely to happen here?

As for what percentage of men would be small enough for it to no longer be a problem ("indistinguishable from noise"), the answer is either (a) zero percent or (b) whatever the person on the receiving end of such behavior thinks.

And as a member of this forum, you should already know that different kinds of noise don't mask each other. Getting unwanted sexual or threatening PMs, or being treated in clearly different and potentially discomfiting ways because of your gender is a different kind of "noise" than some jackass insisting they can hear the difference between digital cables, or a bunch of dudes arguing about whether it's a valid test to run a 20kHz square wave into a Class D amp.

 

[pseudoid]

Also, the "weaponization" argument has become used in recent years as a "men's rights"/anti-"woke" talking point - ironic, because it's actually the weaponization of the concept of "weaponization" in order to do exactly what you've done here: deflect from, and question,

You gotta be kidding me, right? How exactly did I use that word as a weapon by making the premise that it has been "weaponized"?
Has it or has it not taking the media by storm in the last 10 yrs? If that is fairly accurate, then maybe you should bark up piss-on another "woke" tree!

Misogyny is real. Lots of men around the world like to have sex with women but also don't like women.

Yeah, there are a lot of things that are real in this world, but one would hope in the context of this discussion, you should be feeling like you are nitpicking about a small number of such idiots!
Would you kindly provide me the opposite of that word, you have seen as often as your accusation that I am weaponizing a weapon?
Good luck widdat.
I am with Divo!
[sic: Devo]

 

[tmtomh]

You gotta be kidding me, right? How exactly did I use that word as a weapon by making the premise that it has been "weaponized"?
Has it or has it not taking the media by storm in the last 10 yrs? If that is fairly accurate, then maybe you should bark up piss-on another "woke" tree!

Yeah, there are a lot of things that are real in this world, but one would hope in the context of this discussion, you should be feeling like you are nitpicking about a small number of such idiots!
Would you kindly provide me the opposite of that word, you have seen as often as your accusation that I am weaponizing a weapon?
Good luck widdat.
I am with Divo!

"A small number of such idiots" - no sale. They're not idiots; it's not that they're clueless. That's not what misogyny means, and it's not a tiny phenomenon.

And as for "taking the media by storm in the last 10 years," I have no idea what you're talking about.

 

[pseudoid]

"A small number of such idiots" - no sale. They're not idiots; it's not that they're clueless. That's not what misogyny means, and it's not a tiny phenomenon.

Oh! Okay!
I think my original post - that so far you are still and relentlessly nitpicking at - had stated it was a "PSA".
I also think that my original post - also provided definition and the "meaning" it has taken on.
But, go right ahead and pick away!
BTW: did you find that word I asked for yet?

 

[Axo1989]

Have you ever heard of one buddy turn to another and say "Oh stop it! ...You are such a misogynist!"?

Last week (post-work dinner with three male colleagues). One offered a disparaging assessment of Gerwig's Barbie and the others agreed (but none had seen it iirc). I said "that's because you're males, right?" So, a more polite version. I mean, I knew they weren't RWNJs, all industry scientists, but I was mildly surprised. Fortunately for my working relationships—but not for their self-reflection—the conversation quickly segued to Oppenheimer.

 

[Axo1989]

BTW: did you find that word I asked for yet?

Are you actually asking for misandry?

 

[Travis]

From about 5 years ago, in audio engineering:

Why Aren’t There More Women Working in Audio?

Like with many STEM-oriented fields, music production and sound engineering are dominated by men—though that’s very slowly changing.

www.theatlantic.com

(First 5 articles are free I believe, otherwise a paywall)

Quote from the article (emphasis supplied):

"Since training an engineer from scratch is a lot of work, the industry is increasingly turning to colleges to teach audio professionals. Which brings up another possible reason for the lack of female producers: Women don’t take as many music-engineering classes. At Berklee, for example, only 15 to 20 percent of students in engineering classes are women, Rogers says. According to an AES convention paper presented in 2016, male students regularly outnumbered female students 5 to 1 at the Recording Engineers Institute in New York. This year, the University of Colorado’s Recording Arts Program reported seeing 45 female applicants compared to 170 male applicants.*

From just a year ago:

Audio engineers are almost all men. This Seattle program was created by women to change that

The music industry is packed with men, but the disparity is especially apparent among audio engineers. These Seattle women are working to change that.

www.seattletimes.com

Quote from the article (emphasis added):

"The music industry in general is packed with men, but nowhere is the disparity more overwhelming than behind the glass of the audio engineering room. A 2021 report from the University of Southern California, with funding from Spotify, found that while women only make up 21.6% of recording artists, and 12.6% of songwriters, they account for a meager 2.6% of producers and audio engineers (whose jobs are not necessarily interchangeable, but are often grouped together). A 2016 survey from the Audio Engineering Society found 7% of its 12,000 members worldwide identified as women, though respondents could opt not to share gender."

 

[pseudoid]

At the Lackland AFB, .... upon winning a very large communication upgrade contract, we were invited to discuss the needs of specialists.
An all day event, with lunch at the mess hall and the whole nine yards of life at a base... During lunch, one of the officers, in jest, turned to one of my counterpart EEs,

offered a disparaging assessment

by saying "I would drink the water you bath in!"
I thought to come to her aid and said "how do you know she don't pee in the bath water before getting out?" It warmed up the lunch table a bit but later she told me that (pee) part was more embarrassing than what he had said! Oy!
Yes, she was a brilliant mind and quite pretty but had been fending off engineers all her life.

 

[pseudoid]

Are you actually asking for misandry?

NO! I was asking how many times you have heard it in the last 10 years!

 

[Axo1989]

NO! I was asking how many times you have heard it in the last 10 years!

Ok, I'd say misandry exists of course. Any polarisation of gender roles probably requires it (not desirably). But the baseline societal power dynamics are different, so the consequences are also. We don't need to address the socio-economic impacts of misandry so much. It thus plays out less in societal discourse, and in media. I doubt it's significant to the male=audiophile association. I'm not sure of your reason for asking however.

 

[tmtomh]

Oh! Okay!
I think my original post - that so far you are still and relentlessly nitpicking at - had stated it was a "PSA".
I also think that my original post - also provided definition and the "meaning" it has taken on.
But, go right ahead and pick away!
BTW: did you find that word I asked for yet?

Keep calling it nitpicking.

 

[theREALdotnet]

Quote from the article (emphasis added):

"The music industry in general is packed with men, but nowhere is the disparity more overwhelming than behind the glass of the audio engineering room. A 2021 report from the University of Southern California, with funding from Spotify, found that while women only make up 21.6% of recording artists.[…]"

My response would be, “so what?”

Why do they make this sound like some big injustice or discrimination?

What if I told you that only 19.2% of human resources managers in Australia (average salary AU$130k+) are male? What about registered nurses (average salary AU$82k+)? Only 13.3% male. Should we set up a program to redress this imbalance? Of course not! More people tend to end up in jobs they want to do, and fewer in jobs they have no interest in.

 

[Axo1989]

My response would be, “so what?”

Why do they make this sound like some big injustice or discrimination?

What if I told you that only 19.2% of human resources managers in Australia (average salary AU$130k+) are male? What about registered nurses (average salary AU$82k+)? Only 13.3% male. Should we set up a program to redress this imbalance? Of course not! More people tend to end up in jobs they want to do, and fewer in jobs they have no interest in.

Given that we need a lot more nurses, yes on that score. As for HR managers, how do you think the context of all managers stacks up? Cherry-picking for the status quo may make a tasty pie, but it would be an over-simplification to assume all women have opportunities to end up in the jobs they want to do in all fields.

 

[Travis]

This is a gross generalisation, but: men are interested in things, and women are interested in people.

It may be a generalization, but it's supported by over 60 years of research.

While undoubtedly a statistical generalization and not necessarily appliccable on an individual basis, there exist several studies which support this conclusion.

Yes there are, going back to late 50s,, it's known as the "people vs. things gender difference." Now the studies are zeroing in sspecifically in STEM, and the latest research and studies are looking at specific areas within STEM (e.g., engineering, and medical services). The following article is an example of this:

Frontiers | All STEM fields are not created equal: People and things interests explain gender disparities across STEM fields

The degree of women's underrepresentation varies by STEM fields. Women are now overrepresented in social sciences, yet only constitute a fraction of the engi...

www.frontiersin.org

From the Conclusion Section of the paper:

"We found drastically different levels of gender differences in basic interests within STEM fields. Large to very large gender differences in interests favoring men were observed in engineering-related fields (d = 0.83 for Engineering—professional level, d = 0.89 for Engineering Technicians, and d = 1.21 for Mechanics and Electronics). Small to moderate gender differences in interests favoring men were observed for mathematical careers (d = 0.38 for Mathematics, and d = 0.23 for Applied Mathematics). Gender differences in interests vary largely in the sciences, ranging from moderate, favoring men, in Physical Sciences (d = 0.56), to non-significant (d = 0.19 for Biological Science, d = 0.14 for Science Technicians, and d = −0.04 for Medical Science), and to small to moderate, favoring women (d = −0.33 for Social Sciences, and d = −0.40 for Medical Services). These findings provide refined information about men and women's interests in sub-disciplines of STEM."

"The current study found the percentages of women within most STEM fields to mirror the gender differences in basic interests in those fields, lending support to the preference-based explanation for gender disparities in STEM careers."

What was important about this paper is that they point out the caveat that you can't simply stop at the people vs. things analysis. They found that women are still underrepresented in engineering, and point to factors other than people vs. things (emphasis added):

"For example, in mathematics and sciences, the actual gender composition is closely aligned with gender differences in interests; however, there are discrepancies between the projected percentages of women based on interests and the actual gender composition in the engineering-related fields and Medical Services."

"These results indicate the existence of other factors that escalated the gender disparities in these STEM careers. A few potential factors suggested by the literature include preference for work-life balance (e.g., Ferriman et al., 2009), gender stereotyping and gender role schema in individuals' career decision-making (e.g., Konrad et al., 2000), and implicit bias in employers' selection process (e.g., Moss-Racusin et al., 2012). It is beyond the scope of this article to provide a detailed review of these alternative factors contributing to the gender disparities in the STEM fields (for a comprehensive review, see Ceci et al., 2014)."

So people vs. things does actually explain a lot of the difference is career choices, but not all of it.

 

[tmtomh]

My response would be, “so what?”

Why do they make this sound like some big injustice or discrimination?

What if I told you that only 19.2% of human resources managers in Australia (average salary AU$130k+) are male? What about registered nurses (average salary AU$82k+)? Only 13.3% male. Should we set up a program to redress this imbalance? Of course not! More people tend to end up in jobs they want to do, and fewer in jobs they have no interest in.

It's totally fine if 100% of a given occupation are men, or women. What's not fine is if a gender imbalance in a profession can be traced to institutionalized practices or barriers that tend to discourage members of one group who are otherwise interested. For example, women's success and persistence in STEM fields in college is much lower than men's. This is not getting into how many men vs women are interested in STEM majors - this is differences in persistence and thriving among those who pursue STEM fields.

Research has shown that women get fewer mentee opportunities are given fewer opportunities to participate in work that would get their names on co-authored publications, and so on. Some men in STEM are consciously sexist, but most of the issue is unconscious bias and gendered expectations and assumptions placed on young men and women.

Once again, these concepts shouldn't be alien to ASR members - we're well aware of confirmation bias, and we're familiar with the idea that our own perceptions are not necessarily as reliable as large-scale research data.

So no, it's not just about what individuals want or what they do or don't have interest in. And if you were commenting on audio, you'd never make an equivalently simplistic assertion.

 

[Deleted member 21219]

.... but it would be an over-simplification to assume all women have opportunities to end up in the jobs they want to do in all fields.

Would it not be an over-simplification to assume that anyone .... male or female, old or young, of any religion, education or ethnicity ..... has an opportunity to end up in the job that they want to do in all fields?

Jim