I agree that there seem to be more women in juggling now than when we started. But my perception is it is still not equal.
My gut feeling is that the gender balance in my juggling club and UK conventions is 30-40% female. But I'm interested in that study Dawn mentions that such perceptions are wrong. Perhaps the number of women might actually be lower, and it's the increase that makes me think it's more balanced than it is?
I'll try to do some informal counting at the next couple of conventions to see how accurate my impression is.
Do any conventions record gender balance in attendees? If so that could be interesting to see.
In my local club, I can think of 4 women and 4 men who turn up almost every week. I can think of many more men who turn up occasionally, but very few women who turn up occasionally.
I've also noticed in unicycling clubs, where the balance is almost 100% men, that occasionally women will turn up and try it out, but it's rare for them to stick around for more than a week or two. I've suspected that not having other women there puts them off. Anecdotally it seems that if two women start coming in the same week, they are more likely to carry on.
I used to do Street Dance. In my first classes there was one other man, the rest were women. I found having him around very comforting as a beginner. Eventually he left and I carried on. It is intimidating being the odd-one out in such circumstances, but I'd been doing it several months by then, so it was just about manageable.
I wonder if something similar is happening with our juggling club - that you have to really want to do it to overcome the discomfort with a gender balance - hence the dedicated regulars are fairly even male/female but the less dedicated occasional people are more biased to men?
by Richard Loxley, in response to this post 2016-01-15 12:57:16
