From: ted@dgbt.doc.ca (Ted Grusec)
Subject: Re: why no women composers (was Re: FINAL FINAL THOUGHTS !!
Organization: The Communications Research Centre
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 92 16:16:09 GMT

In article <1992Dec13.091332.21344@u.washington.edu> fujimoto@carson.u.washington.edu (Bryant Fujimoto) writes:
>ted@dgbt.doc.ca (Ted Grusec) writes:
>
>>There is no shortage at all of women pursuing careers in music.  And
>>everyone should pursue whatever career they are drawn too.  The
>>original question was something like, "why are there so few women
>>composers".  It doesn't mean there aren't any, only that there are


>>evidence, as I understand, is pretty good at this point for a
>>gender-linked mathematical and spatial ability.  That too is not
>>finally proven, but it has been actively pursued by good researchers,
>>many of whom have been women.


>
>My own impression of the evidence, which is admittedly not very
>thorough and ends around 1980, is that the evidence for gender-linked
>math and spatial ability studies was very weak.  
>Since a good part of this debate is about the relative importance of
>genetics and enviroment IMHO any useful experiments must control one
>factor and vary the other.  Studies on identical twins, separated
>at birth and raised apart from each other hold the genetic component
>constant, and vary the enviroment.  However, such twins are rare, and 
>in any event offer no information on gender-linked differences. 
>The other class of experiment where you vary the genetics and control 
>the enviroment is, IMHO, extremely difficult with humans.  Boys
>and girls are raised differently, therefore even though they may
>live side by side, they are in different enviroments.  For example,
>in one study it was found that teachers spent more time teaching
>girls reading than they spent teaching boys, and the situation was
>reversed for math.  
>Since you have the opposite impression about the state of research
>on gender-linked math abilities, I was curious if the research you
>referred to is more recent than any I have heard about, and how
>the researchers managed to eliminate the effect of the enviroment
>on the men and women (or boys and girls) which they studied.
>Thanks for any insight you can offer on this.

No, I have no more recent evidence.  I was just stating the impression
I was left with after the last few times I had read about it, or
discussed it with people doing research in related areas.  Your points
about the problems in establishing gender-linkage are highly
pertinent, and I am quite willing to accept that the math-spatial
thing has not been firmly established.  About women composers, the
curious thing to me is that there is neither great money (by most) to
be made by composing, nor does composing carry "masculine" stereotype
baggage, and also, there are very many women who are professional
musicians with no barriers that I am aware of on the basis of gender.
Therefore, if composing was not gender-linked, why wouldn't there be
"equality" of numbers?>  Any evidence, or insights, anyone?
-- 
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Ted Grusec - Communications Research Centre, Ottawa, Ont., Canada