Where are the female Audiophiles?

I think your estimate of 2 percent women is too high. I've never met one in over 30 years in the hobby. It's not as if women don't enjoy music, and they certainly patronize live music events. I know many women musicians and singers. I postulate there must be some difference between male and female brains to account for the audiophile disparity, though I don't know what it is. A parallel in the animal kingdom can be seen in birds. Male birds sing; females don't -- though females judge male bird vitality in part by their songs, so they are in a sense audiophiles. Perhaps, however, it's the audiophile hardware -- women don't like it. Thus, men have recognized the WAF, wife acceptance factor, when it comes to spousal acceptance of playback gear. It may also be about the need for control. What is this hobby if an not an attempt to create a perfect virtual world over which we have absolute dominion? Men want one; women don't care. Men are into things; women into people and relationships. My wife has often remarked, when forced to listen to my system, that the experience "is better than being there. It truly transports me to another place." After listening to one cut of an album, she invariably leaves to return a phone call -- an experience which she obviously finds more engaging. I, on the other hand, cannot abide a phone call that lasts more than a minute. Male brains and female brains: different.

Pzuckerman,

Perhaps that's as close to a perfect response as we are going to get.

My counterpoint question is, Why do women shy away from competition, even when they can win?

I recently read the following:

Research indicates that even at a task that women clearly perform as well as men, they are less likely to choose a competitive setting, more likely to underrate their performance when they have to guess at it, and perhaps even more likely to shy away from receiving feedback. “If women shy away from competition and men compete too much,” the authors wrote, “this … decreases the chance of women succeeding in competition for promotions and more lucrative jobs.”

Their conclusions were based on a rigidly controlled experiment in which male and female subjects indicated a willingness, or lack of willingness, to have their work rated in a competitive -- in this case a tournament involving the solution of simple math problems.

Men and women performed the tasks about equally well, she and Vesterlund found, but women at all ability levels were less likely to choose a tournament setting.

There was no follow-up questioning to determine why the subjects (University of Pittsburgh undergraduates) made the choices they did.

As you accurately stated, male brains and female brains; different.

A woman will shop for hours to find a great price on something she did not go out looking for. A man will go directly to the store, buy exactly what he wants in a matter of minutes, regardless of price.

Male brains and female brains: different.

Is there an echo in here??

Cheers,
John

John, I knew you would pop up in this thread !

AudiogoN, or anything audio related = Me

Home Shoppers Network, or anything related = Wife

Happy Holidays folks !!

Albertporter, you write:
"My counterpoint question is, Why do women shy away from competition"

Excuse me, but when I look around I see many successful competitive women.
Women who run countries (Margaret Thatcher) or who want to (Hillary).
Women who run major companies (Margaret C. Whitman at eBay)
Women who compete in sports, just look at the Olympics.

So I disagree, I don't think women shy away from competition, I think they shy away from high-end Audio and I can't understand why.