[Tango-L] Gender Imbalance in Tango

[Stephen.P.Brown@dal.frb.org]

Astrid wrote:
>the gender balance in Tokyo is about 50:50, or rather samll shortness of 
>women, while in tango there are about 3 women for every man. The two have 

>nothing to do with each other.

I would think that at least three factors could affect the gender balance 
for tango in a city.

1)  The cultural attitudes toward women and men participating in such 
activities;
2)  How the teachers filter the population to create the tango community;
3)  The gender balance for *single* men and women in the city.

I'll expand on the third point a little:
In most U.S. cities, the vast majority of tango dancers are single. 
Estimate I've seen place the number of single people dancing tango in most 
U.S. cities around 75-80%.  If most adults in a city are married, the 
gender balance for single adults may be quite a bit different than for the 
population as a whole.

If the pool from which tango dancers are drawn is not gender balanced, it 
would seem as though the lack of gender balance should affect 
participation to at least some degree.  Arguing otherwise would require 
claiming that the cultural attitudes and/or filtering are so strong that 
they completely dominate any potential gender imbalance.

With best regards,
Steve