I suspect, at least in the case of grown women, that traditional gender roles plays a big part of the answer; women still typically bear the majority of child care responsibilities, and are probably too tired at the end of the day to think about being up in the wee hours looking through a telescope, as much as they might want to. I can't say for sure, but I suspect the interest may be there in more equal proportions, but it certainly manifests as being highly skewed toward the male end of the spectrum. As for younger women, it seems (to me anyway) that the interest is at least as high as for young males. In my own experience with the HS star parties I've done the last few years, there's typically a handful (2-4) students that hang around long after the others have left, showing greater interest and enthusiasm to see more, and, somewhat surprisingly, more often than not the majority of these enthusiasts tend to be young women. The astronomy teacher at Timpview HS is herself a young woman (in her 20's); perhaps her presence in that role tends to encourage more YW into her classes...? I honestly don't know. /R ________________________________ From: Chuck Hards <chuck.hards@gmail.com> To: Utah Astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Tuesday, August 20, 2013 6:51 AM Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Astro Apps Very true, but girls toys, for the most part, tend to be on the uninteresting side, at least to boys. Boys had telescopes first and girls were "me too!" so we let our monopoly go out of the goodness of our hearts and a sense of fairness. Not too many girls took us up on the telescope thing, judjing by the statistics. Get out there and recruit, Joan. Seriously, there were more women in my old car club, percentage-wise, than in SLAS. Not just wives of members, but members outright with their own sports car. Astronomy just doesn't seem to have the following with women that many other hobbies do. This is strange because there are many professional women astronomers. There seems to be a disconnect between the hobby and vocational side of the science. That said, last time I accompanied my wife to the fabric store (in the role of manservant, to carry her items), I was the only guy there out of perhaps a hundred customers total. It must not have been on the day Charlie Green usually goes, or he was there early for the door-buster specials. ;-) On Mon, Aug 19, 2013 at 1:12 PM, <jcarman6@q.com> wrote:
They talk about boys and their toys - well they ought to talk about girls and their toys too - at least in the 21st century. Besides us girls have our own telescopes too.
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