[joeriel]

What are you observing? If you are talking about rock instruments, you are probably correct.

My son is highly involved in his high school band (concert and marching), and the gender breakdown is very instrument specific. A lot more girls play flute and clarinet while a lot more boys play sousaphone, trombone, and percussion.

Part of it is physical - not that many girls can march around with a heavy sousaphone. But I do think there is a bias that pushes girls and boys at a young age when starting out towards certain instruments.

[tjr]

I'm observing my own personally biased sample set. :-)

- I played in a jazz band in college: across all of the department jazz bands, probably 95% male participants.

- Attending the local symphony: approximately half and half, and I do seem to find the male/female ratio in classical music performances tends to be more balanced.

- Perusing musical instrument stores across the country: predominantly male shoppers.

- Listening to recorded music: I don't consciously (or, I think, even unconsciously) select music based on the sex of the artist. Most music I've listened to has been produced either mostly or entirely by male participants. More specifically, I listen to a lot of jazz and jazz-related genres of music; it's rare that I even encounter a female performer in those genres. (Rare, as in, maybe 5-10% of the time.)

- Playing music in local bands: most other participants have been male.

I personally suspect that high school band participation is, at least in some cases, driven by external motivators besides intrinsic musical interest. In my (again anecdotal) observations, many people who were actively involved in high school bands put their instruments away more or less permanently after high school.

Anyway, again, I have no concrete statistical data, and I certainly agree that high school participation is more balanced.