Why Aren't There Female Audiophiles?

[Robin L]

There are many women musicians. How do they want their music to sound?

And what is the proportion of female studio workers? I have no idea.

I was a recording engineer for the Woman's Philharmonic, something like 30 years ago. I also did lots of recording of Kitka, an all-female, acapella choir. I think I ran across a nearly 50/50 mix with the musicians I was recording in the 1990s. I don't think the issue of "How they want their music to sound" was any different than any other musicians. Musicians want to hear their part in the proper perspective, for the most part. Some are keen on "audiophile" issues, most are more concerned with hearing their part. I don't think there are many differences between male and female musicians, the musician part usually dominates above and beyond anything else. One might think there would be a higher number of audiophiles among musicians. There is, but it still was a minority. One situation really brought that home to me: assisting in an interview with a famous conductor, in his music room. A harpsichord, a viol and a cheap all-in-one stereo, with CD player, small speakers, all on the floor in a corner. Said conductor having produced a number of Audiophile LPs/CDs around that time.

Back when I was doing recording it sure felt like an all-boys club. I suspect there are many more women in audio tech now than then. I sure hope so, as I only ran into one woman doing the same sort of recording gigs I was, some 30 years ago. My understanding was that there were a few others back then, but this was in the San Francisco Bay area. I really expected to encounter more audio engineers of the female persuasion.

 

[Thomas_A]

I was a recording engineer for the Woman's Philharmonic, something like 30 years ago. I also did lots of recording of Kitka, an all-female, acapella choir. I think I ran across a nearly 50/50 mix with the musicians I was recording in the 1990s. I don't think the issue of "How they want their music to sound" was any different than any other musicians. Musicians want to hear their part in the proper perspective, for the most part. Some are keen on "audiophile" issues, most are more concerned with hearing their part. I don't think there are many differences between male and female musicians, the musician part usually dominates above and beyond anything else. One might think there would be a higher number of audiophiles among musicians. There is, but it still was a minority. One situation really brought that home to me: assisting in an interview with a famous conductor, in his music room. A harpsichord, a viol and a cheap all-in-one stereo, with CD player, small speakers, all on the floor in a corner. Said conductor having produced a number of Audiophile LPs/CDs around that time.

Back when I was doing recording it sure felt like an all-boys club. I suspect there are many more women in audio tech now than then. I sure hope so, as I only ran into one woman doing the same sort of recording gigs I was, some 30 years ago. My understanding was that there were a few others back then, but this was in the San Francisco Bay area. I really expected to encounter more audio engineers of the female persuasion.

Thanks for the answer. Not sure if I got any wiser regarding gender distribution in recording studios, but perhaps there are some here active in studio forums nowadays that could give some input. Are there more females in studios or such internet forums compared to here?

 

[valerianf]

Our hobby is made of a combination of hardware and software. During my long career as EE i met very few women engineers in these two domains. It is sad but human life is what it is.
By the way my wife prefer listening music with her phone or in the car.

 

[H-713]

It's the very same reason why there are so few women in engineering. It's a field dominated by men, and a good number of those men are unbelievable sexist pricks.

It starts off in pre-school. Any young girl who dares to be interested in technology or tools or science is going to have to put up with an unbelievable amount of crap from her peers and from adults. This continues through grade school and high school. It should be no surprise then that the percentage of women in high school who are interested in this sort of field is small- they've spent the last 10 years being told by just about everyone around them that they shouldn't be interested in it.

From what I've seen, it gets worse in college. If you thought engineering school was hard as a guy, imagine if most of the people around you, including many of your professors, believed that you didn't belong there, or that you just got there "because they wanted to make the class look more diverse" or that you "slept with the admissions manager". Many of them (particularly classmates) will be vocal about it.

If you do make it through 4 (okay, let's be real, 5) years of that, then you get to face the very same discrimination and BS trying to get hired, and then there's a good chance that you're going to put up with the same abusive garbage that you put up with through college for the rest of your career, knowing that you're going to be making less money than a guy doing the same job.

So if you ask me, the question isn't why there aren't more women in engineering / audio, but rather, why in the hell would any woman want to put herself through this?!?!

I'll close this by saying that if you don't believe this is a problem, then there's a good chance that you're part of the problem.

 

[escksu]

2 traits which most men have including myself, ego and arrogance. Esp. when behind the computer, stakes are low, so say all you want...i would say women has less of ego. I could be wrong but thats what i feel.

Now, i am getting toned down and put them aside. Afterall, arguing on the internet is not going to get anything out of it. So, rather spend the time and energy on better things. Why get angry when you only hurt yourself??

 

[Wes]

It's the very same reason why there are so few women in engineering. It's a field dominated by men, and a good number of those men are unbelievable sexist pricks.

It starts off in pre-school. Any young girl who dares to be interested in technology or tools or science is going to have to put up with an unbelievable amount of crap from her peers and from adults. This continues through grade school and high school. It should be no surprise then that the percentage of women in high school who are interested in this sort of field is small- they've spent the last 10 years being told by just about everyone around them that they shouldn't be interested in it.

From what I've seen, it gets worse in college. If you thought engineering school was hard as a guy, imagine if most of the people around you, including many of your professors, believed that you didn't belong there, or that you just got there "because they wanted to make the class look more diverse" or that you "slept with the admissions manager". Many of them (particularly classmates) will be vocal about it.

If you do make it through 4 (okay, let's be real, 5) years of that, then you get to face the very same discrimination and BS trying to get hired, and then there's a good chance that you're going to put up with the same abusive garbage that you put up with through college for the rest of your career, knowing that you're going to be making less money than a guy doing the same job.

So if you ask me, the question isn't why there aren't more women in engineering / audio, but rather, why in the hell would any woman want to put herself through this?!?!

I'll close this by saying that if you don't believe this is a problem, then there's a good chance that you're part of the problem.

While I agree with everything you say, there are some differences in brain function between males and females.

And I don't mean just in humans, but in nearly all mammal species. I know of only one exception and it is a species in which males do not disperse but stay near their birth place.

These differences relate spatial skills like maze running, including certain areas of mathematics.

Of course, this is a statistical probability and does mean that men cannot become lawyers or participate in other careers that rely on verbal skills. Nonetheless, expect that gender ratios will never be exactly equal in various pursuits or will only be completely equal with a great deal of social "push."

 

[voodooless]

I'll close this by saying that if you don't believe this is a problem, then there's a good chance that you're part of the problem.

I’m sorry, but I’ve not seen this, not when I was in pre-school in the 80’s, not now with my daughter. Neither after. Not in college either, and that were two male dominated studies I attended. Neither have I ever seen any entrenched sexism. Idiots are everywhere, so sure, if you look, you’ll find them.

I don’t want to invalidate your observations, but think they are not universally applicable.

Does that mean I think women have it easy in male dominated domains? Are there no problems? Could things be better? Sure there is still plenty to improve. So let’s focus on that in stead of pointing to people and calling them problematic. That never solved anything.

 

[David Harper]

I’m sorry, but I’ve not seen this, not when I was in pre-school in the 80’s, not now with my daughter. Neither after. Not in college either, and that were two male dominated studies I attended. Neither have I ever seen any entrenched sexism. Idiots are everywhere, so sure, if you look, you’ll find them.

I don’t want to invalidate your observations, but think they are not universally applicable.

Does that mean I think women have it easy in male dominated domains? Are there no problems? Could things be better? Sure there is still plenty to improve. So let’s focus on that in stead of pointing to people and calling them problematic. That never solved anything.

I'm sorry but I have three daughters and I HAVE seen this.

 

[voodooless]

I'm sorry but I have three daughters and I HAVE seen this.

Like I said, I’m not denying that. But it also doesn’t invalidate my observations.

 

[board]

I call these two pages of comments very ignorant. I would have thought that it would have been answered quite easily in the first page. Here it is. Women are not stupid enough to believe the unscientific garbage that audiophiles love. Men are just a lot dumber in this regard. If you think you are not that dumb, that proves that you are. There, Answered.

Women are on average more spiritual and religious than men, which is even less scientific than audiophilia, since you can be a scientific-minded audiophile, like most people on ASR are, while it's not possible to be religious without believing in something unscientific and supernatural.
As I mentioned in my earlier comment, one of the most well-established differences between men and women is that when you compare the two sexes, men are more interested in things and systems than people, and women are more interested in people than things and systems. So, the most irrational women tend to believe in spiritual/religious things with a connection to people, such as zodiacs, magic crystals, tarot cards, and various religions, while the most irrational men use their irrationality on things and systems, such as how they believe an amplifier changes its sound if you put a piece of paper underneath it (and yes, a man has said that exact thing to me), although of course many men are religious as well.
Additionally, on the subject of actual intelligence, IQ, the average IQ for men and women is the same, but there are five times as many men as women with an IQ of 130, and the reason why the average is still the same is because there are also five times as many men as women with an IQ of 70. So, while it then in some sense would be true to say that "men are more stupid than women" it's also just as true to say "men are smarter than women", since both are true, but the most correct thing would be to say that the average IQ between men and women is the same. The explanation for this difference in IQ between men and women is that the shape of the bell curve of the distribution for IQ, and essentially everything else you can measure (including height even), is wider for men, whereas it's narrower and it clusters more around the center for women.
So, saying that men's interest in audiophilia is due to stupidity is not a very good argument, since we're talking about group averages here. And honestly, it's a lame argument, offensive even, to say that an entire sex is more stupid than the other. If someone had said "women are more stupid than men" to argue a point, they would possibly have been banned. But when you say "men are more stupid than women" it's apparently okay.
Although I do believe that many audiophiles are actually above average in IQ, even the audiophiles I really, really don't like, then it's most likely neither their intelligence nor their lack thereof that explains their interest in audiophilia.

 

[q3cpma]

Additionally, on the subject of actual intelligence, IQ, the average IQ for men and women is the same, but there are five times as many men as women with an IQ of 130, and the reason why the average is still the same is because there are also five times as many men as women with an IQ of 70.

It's mostly bull, but differences do exist; and because of the shape of bell curves, the effective result is similar: way more area-under-curve shifts at the extremes even with the same SD but different mean. See Sex differences in means and variability on the progressive matrices in university students: A meta-analysis by P. Irwing and R. Lynn (DOI:10.1348/000712605X53542) for a quite comprehensive (statistically speaking) result.
The abstract is as follow:
A meta-analysis is presented of 22 studies of sex differences in university students of
means and variances on the Progressive Matrices. The results disconfirm the frequent
assertion that there is no sex difference in the mean but that males have greater
variability. To the contrary, the results showed that males obtained a higher mean than
females by between .22d and .33d, the equivalent of 3.3 and 5.0 IQ conventional points,
respectively. In the 8 studies of the SPM for which standard deviations were available,
females showed significantly greater variability (F(882,656) = 1.20, p < .02), whilst in the
10 studies of the APM there was no significant difference invariability (F(3344,5660) = 1.00, p > .05).

Anyway, the amount of bullshit in this thread is quite incredible.

 

[LeftCoastTim]

Anyway, the amount of bullshit in this thread is quite incredible.

Because it's full of men.

 

[q3cpma]

Because it's full of men.

I do count the pathetic self-flagellating men in "bullshit", though (yeah, I know it was a joke).

 

[voodooless]

A meta-analysis is presented of 22 studies of sex differences in university students of
means and variances on the Progressive Matrices. The results disconfirm the frequent
assertion that there is no sex difference in the mean but that males have greater
variability.

No, it does not. The study was about students, not the whole population! If you take your bell curve, chop off the left side, and then make a new one, it changes things. So if the men’s curve is wider, the chopped version will not have the same median and mean as the women’s one. What you said and what @board said can both be correct.

 

[Wes]

Low female participation is due to the lack of pink DACs

 

[LeftCoastTim]

I do count the pathetic self-flagellating men in "bullshit", though (yeah, I know it was a joke).

Haha.

I find that men tends to be much more emotionally invested in their "gear" than women. Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS) runs in both genders, but women don't generally spend hours discussing the minute differences between their shoes.

I believe women on average have better prioritization where they put their emotional investments in.

 

[tomchris]

I believe women on average have better prioritization where they put their emotional investments in.

You mean like women's emotional investment in shoes and handbags?

Everyone has some emotional investment in their respective interests/hobbies/jobs, regardless of sex.

 

[Blaspheme]

Low female participation is due to the lack of pink DACs

I'm neither female, nor a woman, but I did want the Pink Faun streamer the moment I saw it. I don't actually need a(n arguably over-engineered) streamer, maybe they'll sell me a selection of faceplates? I like the orange one too.

 

[LeftCoastTim]

You mean like women's emotional investment in shoes and handbags?

Everyone has some emotional investment in their respective interests/hobbies/jobs, regardless of sex.

That's not what I said.

Men and women both have emotional investment in their hobbies, but men focus much more on the gear.

 

[tomchris]

You said:

I believe women on average have better prioritization where they put their emotional investments in

It is the "women on average have better prioritization" that I contest.

Speaking of shoes/handbags, in particular, collecting numerous shoes and handbags - many go unused, isn't something that I would classify as "better prioritization". Whenever I have asked why, the usual response follows "it's Chanel" or "They're Louboutins" etc. I have never heard women dwell on technical details or make a passing comparative analysis on any of their gear.

I would not classify a superficial, status-oriented approach to any subject as "having a better prioritization", but rather showing a lack of insight or knowledge in a particular field, which is not something to admire or aspire to.