Klarinet Archive - Posting 000863.txt from 2000/05

From: George Kidder <gkidder@-----.org>
Subj: [kl] Gender bias - Survey?
Date: Thu, 18 May 2000 21:50:24 -0400

Dear Friends,

At long last I have had a chance to examine the responses to the gender
bias survey, and I here report the conclusions that can (maybe) be drawn
from this. Sorry its been so long, but things got hectic just when the
responses stopped coming in.

The question can be rephrased as follows: In the musical groups you play
in, how many clarinetists are male and how many are female?

There were reports on 21 organizations that had numbers that I could
tabulate, two other responses that give rough ratios or other information
that I could not be sure I was interpreting correctly, and a lot of
responses with this subject header that followed the thread into such
topics as the perceived gender of the clarinet itself. In these
organizations, there were 156 positions reported upon (not necessarily 156
different players, since of course when one person reports on two
organizations with which he/she plays, there is at least this much
overlap.) Of these, 99 were female, and 57 were male, for an overall
average of 35% male.

To provide some attempt at statistical analysis, I formed the percentage
male for each reported group, and determined the mean ratio of males to
total (0.3504) and the standard error of the mean (0.0562) If there were
no gender bias, one would expect the mean to be 0.50. From the mean and
the SE, one can calculate the probability that the observed mean (.3504) is
different from 0.50 due to chance alone - - that is, the fluctuations are
big enough and the difference is small enough that one would expect this
much deviation from 0.50 to occur even if there were no bias. The result
of this analysis is a probability of 0.0150 (1.5%) that this result is just
random chance. (Two-tailed test, for those who enjoy these things.) In
scientific work, we usually require that the probability that our result is
due to random fluctuation be less than 0.05 (5%) before we say that chance
is unlikely to have caused this effect, but feel much more confident if
that probability is less than 1%. The present data fall between these
benchmarks, and taken at face value seem to indicate that there is a
disproportionate number of female clarinet players relative to their male
counterparts.

Michael from DownUnder reported that about 75% of the posters to this list
were male, which reflects a gender bias in itself. But we were not asking
for this ratio, we were asking these posters to report on their findings,
and I see no reason that this should bias our responses. (Of course, a
male could not be reporting as a member of an all-female orchestra, but we
had none of these, so far as I know.)

There was a lot of other interesting information in these reports which I
could not summarize (which sex was in first chair, other instruments, etc.)
and some other interesting observations. One thing that I wish I had asked
was the age of the player reporting. From what I can deduce from internal
evidence, the school bands and orchestras seem to be weighted toward female
clarinetists, while groups with members in the 50 and up category have more
equal distributions. Along these lines, Hausmann reports:

"I have not made a study by the numbers, but in travelling around the state
as a school services rep for a music store, I must admit that I notice the
gender bias thing is apparent in MOST school bands. Very few male
flutists, although most of them are in top or near-top chairs. Few male
clarinetists, but the chair distribution is not so clear. Many of the
bands are somewhat female-dominated anyway by high school, since the boys
tend to drop out to do team sports instead. Also, when we go into schools
to do testing and fitting for beginning bands, most girls seem to ask
almost AUTOMATICALLY to try flute and clarinet, but few boys do. The bias
development PRECEDES us! To get ANYBODY to play low brass is like pulling
teeth. I assume they have made a mental measurement of the size of the
instrument as compared to their seat on the bus and done the math! My
son's high school band hasn't had a tuba player in years, not even in
marching band! They get by on a couple of bari saxes and bass clarinets.
(There IS one in the middle school now, as I recall.) Low brass players
seem to be predominantly male, but not by a great margin. Probably the
BEST school tuba player in the area is a girl!"

Bill also reports:

"The clarinet's transformation into a "girl's" instrument seems to be
something that has happened only within the last 30 years or so. When I
was in high school, the split was nearly even, and among adult players I
know it remains so. But in schools TODAY clarinets sections are
overwhelmingly female. The reason may be as simple as the size of the case
one must lug around!"

Finally, there may be differences depending on the part of the world we are
dealing with. I think most of the responses were from the USA, but even
here, the 4 submissions from Montana (all by the same member) were
overwhelmingly female-biased, to an extent not seen elsewhere. A more
careful survey would take geography into account, as well.

My pseudo-scientific conclusions: It is probably true that females are
over-represented among clarinet players. This trend seems to have
developed over the past 20 to 30 years, so that organizations with older
members have more equal sex ratios than groups such as school bands.

And my completely unscientific guess as to the reason for the lack of males
taking up the clarinet: When I was young, the clarinet was an instrument
of popular music - big bands, swing, Dixieland, etc. all had clarinet
players of note, and the overwhelming majority of these were males. Thus
there was a continual male role model for clarinet players, and a
corresponding acceptance by the peer group of a male playing the clarinet.
The clarinet seems to have disappeared from the current popular "music"
scene - it doesn't make enough noise, I guess! So the role model if gone,
and with it the acceptance of the instrument as a proper one for a male.

If anyone wants the tabulated data, I can send it privately. It would go
better as an attachment, which means not through the list.
George Kidder
Bar Harbor, ME

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