Where are all the women audiophiles?

[Deleted member 87496]

Whenever I'm at a wedding or some other celebration featuring music and a dance floor, women are the first ones out there, often times dancing with each other, no male within 20 yards. From these anecdotal observations, it seems women truly love music, so much so they'll jump at the chance to move and gyrate their whole bodies to its rhythms and beats at the risk of looking foolish (Elaine, anyone?).

If that's remotely correct, why are there so few women audiophiles (best estimates are 5-10% of us)? Is this a good thing - better for men to be men among men - or would the hobby be better off with more women being part of the community, doing measurements, commenting on threads, going to audio shows, providing greater attention to visual aesthetics, etc.

What are your thoughts? BTW, anyone know how many registered members of ASR identified as women? Might be a good place to start. . Thank you in advance.

 

[Ramon Cota]

BTW do you know of any loudspeaker designed by a woman ?

 

[respice finem]

IDK what would, could, or should have been, it is how it is and isn't likely to change any time soon...

Women are usually less interested in technical things. Yes, exceptions exist, but still, they are exceptions.
Then again, why should they? There are enough men to take care about technical things.

A Polish joke: A woman calls the police: My car has just been stolen!
Cop: What car was it? Woman: Silver metallic.

 

[Somafunk]

If that's remotely correct, why are there so few women audiophiles (best estimates are 5-10% of us)? Is this a good thing - better for men to be men among men - or would the hobby be better off with more women being part of the community, doing measurements, commenting on threads, going to audio shows, providing greater attention to visual aesthetics, etc.

We’ve been and done this discussion before but I’ll repeat myself,

Because it’s an inherently misogynistic hobby/pastime as clearly evidenced by the likes of Jana (videographer) or Joyce (Linsoul) and others who have expressed the vile comments they regularly receive

Women have generally got better things to worry about than pontificating over audio.

 

[antcollinet]

Please let's try not to turn this into the typical thread full of sexist tropes, jokes and generalisations.

Want to know why women don't participate here and in other forums, or heavily male biased communities, just look at the threads where women are discussed.

My view - any community is always better with diverse participation - for all forms of diversity. It broadens the mind, don't you know.

 

[respice finem]

IDK about misogynistic, but I have the impression that women mature, while men just grow older.

 

[DanielT]

There are a lot of talented female acousticians. But of course they don't have to be audiophiles.

Top 10 Women Reshaping the World of Sound

In honour of International Women's Day, we'd like to highlight 10 amazing women, who have left an indelible mark on the industry of sound.

www.rockfon.co.uk

Seven great female acousticians on Twitter - Acoustic Bulletin

In celebration of International Women's Day, we'd like to put the spotlight on a handful of all the fabulous female acousticians out there

www.acousticbulletin.com

Then we have women in pro audio:

Women in Pro Audio: Jenny Joo

In this Women in Pro Audio interview, meet Jenny Joo (Zhu Junlin), an inspiring sound engineer for Rightway Audio Consultants in China.

www.l-acoustics.com

The Five Percent: Profiles of Women in Audio - SoundGirls.org

The Five Percent Profiles of Women in Audio

soundgirls.org

Pro audio women and/or female audio engineers don't have to be audiophiles. If by audiophiles we mean having a hobby of fixing good home hifi sound.

But Melinda Murphy is an example of a female audiophile, though. She mostly concentrates on talking about her vinyl collection, but now and then she throws in some talk about hifi. She also goes to hifi fairs, so yes, she falls into the category of a female audiophile:

Melinda Murphy

Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

www.youtube.com

Having said that, one tree, one Melinda, doesn't make a forest, but still.

 

[antcollinet]

especially if you live in the UK . People reportedly get arrested for online joking so be very careful what you post online .

*offensive expletive removed* - no they don't.

Stop believing nonsense you read on line - especially from the usual suspects.

 

[Pareto Pragmatic]

I assume they are listening to and enjoying music. My wife likes music, cares not one bit for any numbers or measurements or tech. What she cares about is hearing something in a well known recording that she never heard before, she cares about things sounding "like they are right there".

But I do appreciate the basic feminist question of, "what about the women?" so let me add just a touch more.

Not the well worn ground of the topic. No, shirt sizes.

If I want a dress shirt, there will be numbers for neck size and sleeve length, and likely 2-3 different cuts (tapered, straight). From the numbers I know how it will fit, no need to try anything on.

A woman's size 12? Darned near meaningless. Might be 10, or 14 in another brand.

So, I would say that one factor is that women are used to numbers NOT telling the story, men are used to numbers telling the story, in many every day life situations. This leads women to looking at sizes as a rough estimate, and what matters is how THIS garment fits THEM, not the size number.

Yeah, not a main factor, not a central one, but I wanted to offer something that likely has not been said in the umpteen other threads. And of course there ARE very quantitative oriented women out there. In my experience, they usually don't call attention to their knowledge. Which leads me to this: the proper question, in my mind, is not where are the women audiophiles. It's why don't women audiophiles participate in the audiophile community beyond very minimal numbers? To answer that, find the few that are public, and read some of the comments they get. Or just guess what those look like at times. "Not worth it" is likely the reason.

 

[Digital_Thor]

We’ve been and done this discussion before but I’ll repeat myself,

Because it’s an inherently misogynistic hobby/pastime as clearly evidenced by the likes of Jana (videographer) or Joyce (Linsoul) and others who have expressed the vile comments they regularly receive

Women have generally got better things to worry about than pontificating over audio.

Better? To who? Everyone has different interests and hobbies, but there's a trend, which is not always obvious.
My experience is that we all desire and long for an exciting emotion that best possibly relieve us from any daily distress that we all have some sort of.
That emotion is usually controlled by hormones which most definitely is gender specific, but most definitely also age dependent.
I believe it is important that everyone accepts and become honest what they're good at and what your not good at, and then aim for a maching partner that actually loves your happiness for your passion, because then there might be a chance that it works the other way too. She might be into pottery, horses, plants, painting, colouring everything and so on... Which you might not care shit about.... But you love her and the smile she brings when you acknowledge her passion... Because she definitely knows that you don't care... But she loves you for trying

 

[JayGilb]

Many women pursue technical careers only to leave due to the behavior of their male peers.

For almost all of recorded history, humans have lived under patriarchal rule, we’re barely a couple of decades away from when women were expected to have babies and cook meals for their men.
Give it time, my daughter is a genetic scientist working on cancer cures, so the tide is slowly turning. I believe we will see many more women become audiophiles in the near future and it’s up to their male counterparts to welcome them.

 

[whereisbrian]

We’ve been and done this discussion before but I’ll repeat myself,

Because it’s an inherently misogynistic hobby/pastime as clearly evidenced by the likes of Jana (videographer) or Joyce (Linsoul) and others who have expressed the vile comments they regularly receive

Women have generally got better things to worry about than pontificating over audio.

I totally agree with you. It's a predominantly male environment with all that entails. An electric train for adults

 

[Mart68]

Back in the 1990s I had a girlfriend who did appreciate us having a quality hi-fi system although she had no interest in why it was good. Just that it was. She also had no objection to large, unfinished DIY speakers sat in the living room.

When we split up she got a turntable and speakers, and she asked me for an amp so I gave her a Kenwood receiver. She came back three months later to say 'I don't think this amp is good quality.' I realised at that point that I had created a monster.

Did not hear from her for 25 years then a couple of years back, totally out of the blue, she contacted me on Linked In. I gave her a call and after the usual preamble and catch-up, she hits me up for loudspeaker advice.

 

[Sono]

[Women eagerly dancing to music but not giving a fuсk for HiFi]

The explanation to this is easy I believe:

Regarding any sort of communication, women care much more about content than about form. (This is a truly good thing of course.)

Glancing at the image below, a typical woman might react with lots of heart smileys, while a typical man might instinctively wonder if the »V« is inverted somehow

 

[DoctorRobert]

If I were a woman with enough interest in hifi-subjects to be joining ASR, I would not reveal my gender. As a woman online you easily end-up with all kind of responses you did not ask for, mostly not pleasant, maybe even more so in a male dominated place. So I guess we will never know if there are any women on this forum. I still hope there are some.

 

[Matt_Holland]

A Polish joke: A woman calls the police: My car has just been stolen!
Cop: What car was it? Woman: Silver metallic.

This is not an accurate joke. A woman would never describe the colour as metallic.

 

[Talisman]

It's the same thing with photography; photography forums are packed with men talking about spec sheets and sensor features.
There are tons of women photographers, but they're only minimally interested in technicalities; they enjoy photography in its artistic sense.
In the same way, women enjoy music; they're not obsessed with speakers, dispersion diagrams, sinads, sbir.... They enjoy listening to the music they like, whatever it is.

Honestly, they're better than us at this; they give more importance to the important things.

 

[Gary_G]

Probably listening to music instead of trolling an audio forum.

 

[DSJR]

Back in the 1990s I had a girlfriend who did appreciate us having a quality hi-fi system although she had no interest in why it was good. Just that it was. She also had no objection to large, unfinished DIY speakers sat in the living room.

When we split up she got a turntable and speakers, and she asked me for an amp so I gave her a Kenwood receiver. She came back three months later to say 'I don't think this amp is good quality.' I realised at that point that I had created a monster.

Did not hear from her for 25 years then a couple of years back, totally out of the blue, she contacted me on Linked In. I gave her a call and after the usual preamble and catch-up, she hits me up for loudspeaker advice.

I had a dear lady-friend who had the Quad system I enjoyed so much over the years. When we first knew each other, her rig was a Goldring-Lenco GL75 with Shure 75-EJ, Armstrong 626 receiver and JBL L26s which sounded great on their own but less so in comparison with others. It was she who first played me Phaedra by Tangerine Dream, this recording blowing my head off (it never properly re-attached itself ) and playing said record again recently, I got the same goose-bumps I always do. We attended a few shows and trips to London 'Tottenham Ct Road' dealers in the mid 70s (oh, and Tubular Bells from master tape in the Sony Centre of the time) before I went to work in a West End store (a distant high-end descendant still exists fifty years on). She passed away a few years back, but I have to say that she was only one of a tiny handful of keen lady audio-gear enthusiasts I ever knew.

My better half couldn't care less about my 'crap' cluttering up two rooms in the house (hardware as well as CDs and records) but she loves music and is grief-stricken that a good few of her heroes have now passed away.

 

[RexrothPigeon]

A woman would never describe the colour as metallic.

why's that?