I have a bunch of hobbies, which range from female dominated to a solid mix of participants. However, for a hobby that has a good number of both men and women involved, there seems to be a gap in the participation and achievement levels in a way that mostly alings with gender. A friend of mine mentioned we would have to look at how men engage with hobbies.
Do you feel that the ways men and women engage with hobbies generally, but especially when they share the same hobby still differs?
There’s obviously variation, but I’ve noticed even within relatively solitary hobbies women tend to be more inviting. If a female friend enjoys thread crafting or painting they are more likely to invite me to join than a male friend. I have a few friends that paint and generally the men will show off their work and accept a compliment, but if you were to compliment a female they will offer to teach you or show you a trick they learned or something. I’m not sure if that’s related to gendered socialization, what they are seeking from the hobby, interest in hanging out with me in particular, or something else entirely, but it is something I’ve personally picked up on.
As a guy - I feel like it would be presumptuous to offer to help someone simply because they gave me a compliment. They would need to express a desire to be helped for me to do that.
I’d say yes and no. There’s generally some difference with who’s doing woodturning in the basement or people who go to the old lady’s knitting club. Other than that, I’ve had a lot of hobbies where I didn’t spot any difference between how people approach it due to gender. Like a mixed sports club, or volunteer work for example in a youth organization. You’ll have different kinds of people there. But not due to gender.
There’s some hobbies where gender wouldn’t inherently matter but sexual dimorphism comes into play, obviously lots of strong capable women exist but there’s also lots of women like me who don’t pursue physical strength and it limits my participation in some hobbies I might have otherwise enjoyed. Like wood working for example, large projects requiring hand strength or heavy lifting etc would be something I would pass on even if I found it interesting
Yeah having to struggle to do something really dampens the joys of doing said hobby.
Fair enough. Sometimes I wonder, though. For example I see a fair share of women in the indoor climbing centre. And most of them have more hand strength than me, at least relative to body weight, because I’m sitting infront of the computer half of the day 😅 And it’s certainly less fun for me until I do sone more work-out. I guess luckily, most of the hobbies aren’t all about physical strength but come with quite a substantial element of skill as well, or dexterity or intelligence.
the women who do hobbies don’t engage in any different ways than the men do.
the difference in engagement is more about personality type. whether you are vain or not for example, will go a long way to how you engage with a hobby and others in said hobby.
men and women however, do engage in different hobbies and activities, mostly due to gender bias about what is an ‘appropriate’ hobby for their gender to have. how many straight men do you know who tailor their own clothes for fun. Age/resources also have to do with it. many hobbies are financially unattainable until later in life how many single 22 year old women do you see at the open track day vs single 50/60 something men?
and in a hobby in which there is unequal participation or one that requires certain physical strength/skill, there will be a big gender disparity due to the level of participation and play.
which is precise why the USA sucks at men’s soccer, but is great at women’s soccer… because relative to other countries our men don’t participate much in soccer and our women do. but we are getting better at it as soccer has become more popular over the years, esp with boys.
and there are other hobbies, like running or pickleball or watching TV, which have a lot of gender/age/etc parity, because they are so accessible and are not gender-normed.
but more broadly, women are more social than men, and their hobbies are often more an excuse to socialize, than men, who socialize less and focus more on the activity itself.
more broadly, women are more social than men, and their hobbies are often more an excuse to socialize, than men, who socialize less and focus more on the activity itself.
This is the part/steorotype that is tripping me up. The hobby pretty naturally contributes to an accumulation of skills. However, generally women are the more skilled participants. Like significantly more skilled. Like there are whole competitions where the finals are entirely women.
What hobby is this?
There is no doubt a history that would explain why this is. Perhaps it was simple more popular with women over a longer period of time, etc. Hobbies wax and wane over time, and sometimes are also regional, cultural, or age-specific. Certain kinds of dancing, for example, only really are practiced among certain cultural groups and genders.
I mean, there is a reason the WNBA only became a thing 5 years ago, when technically it existed since 1996. And that thing is star-power. Personally I never knew the WNBA existed, until Kaitlyn Clark became a celebrity.
It’s a type of partner dancing. For the most part, people don’t tend to participate longer than about 5 years, and the pandemic was a built in radical reset. Prior to the pandemic there was a (fairly successful push) to de-gender dance roles. We’re still seeing people choose dance roles that align with traditional gender norms. It’s just wild to me that even if you look at skills that both roles should be gaining (musicality, body control, solo dancing within the style) followers are significantly ahead.
dancing is overwhelming woman centric and has been since forever, especially in the USA. it’s also largely limited to more affluent people.
very very few young boys are encouraged in dance. so yes, women would basically have huge advantages because of gender and institutional pressures.
ever dancer i have ever known was a very affluent woman. I’ve never known any male dancers. the only guys i knew into dance were the super uber nerds into contra dance, and yeah, they were not people who were physically coordinated in any way.
but dance has so many styles etc. the ratio of female to male ballet dancers is like 20 to 1.
the reason men don’t dance is because it’s considered effeminate.
The ratio of competitive hip hop or breaking seems the opposite of ballet?
That’s interesting. Is it followers of all genders that get ahead, or women get ahead andthey are mostly following? What dance (if you don’t mind saying)?
I do mind saying.
So this is where it gets hard to talk about. The people who do the best best, generally end up doing both roles. Most of them are women who follow either primarily, or in majority but also lead. Some are men that primarily lead but also follow. I know some women who primarily/exclusively lead, only one (cis) man who primarily follows (but he has had competitive success in other dance styles following, so maybe yes)
I mean, as a general rule, you learn better in low pressure, reactive scenarios. High pressure scenarios where you must make descisions tend to be bad for learning intuitive skills. I wouldnt be surprised if mostly following is the best way to improve at dancing.
Anyway, to your point - as a guy, my desire to engage with partner dancing of any sort as a hobby would be driven by a desire to have fun and meet hot girls to sleep with. Competitive dancing might be kind of fun to watch sometime, but I simply don’t have any interest in competing myself. If I can dance well enough to have a good time and flirt with hot girls, my goal is accomplished and I’m not going to put huge amounts of effort into improving. I have rocks to climb and a motorcycle to fix instead.
My wife will smoke with with most hobbies unless its intellectual. She has much more drive and obsession than I and I tend to enjoy myself more by relaxing. So like things that require rabbit holey research without much else coming from it except the knowledge (she can rabbit hole for her hobbies if there is a return on doing it) and puzzle like things im better at. Almost anything else she will be.
My husband is like your wife. He’s very happy to find a rabbit hole to go down and will spend hours researching or working on a specific thing and is very driven.
I’m very come and go with my hobbies and more relaxed about it. I may spend 15-20 minutes on one and then move on to another.
I think each hobby and person is going to have some different nuance to this, but in general I think there’s a split. Physical hobbies where one is face to face with peers are more likely to be engaged in similar ways if there’s mixed genders, I think. Co-ed community sports are generally going to have the same vibe from place to place and from gender to gender, or community gardening, volunteering, etc.
However where I think things are much more likely to be different is when one can hide behind the anonymity of the internet. Gaming is hugely divided by gender and how one interacts with things because of that (and age, partially). I feel like if social media or reddit is considered a hobby, then that’s going to have similar divides between genders. I know for sure there can be division in online TTRPGs.
Granted, the online bit might be partially biased as I’ve experienced no end of harassment online for being a woman, but I think the world sees it in general. Gaming is insanely toxic and girls are pushed out or to different genres because of that toxicity that seems to fester with young men in those spaces.
women play games overwhelmingly. they just don’t identify as gamers. they make up the bulk of casual game players though, esp on mobile. They are they buying hardware specifically to play games on. They do however, poor tons of money into micro-transactional game apps, visual novels, and other non-traditional console/pc gaming types of game software. I remember the height of Candy Crush, when like every third person on the subway car was playing it and they were overwhelmingly women.
god my sister in law probably puts 10x hours in wordle and that kind a thing on her phone than I do on my playstation. but due to social perception one of those is seen as harmless distraction and the other is anti-social.
I think it largely depends on the hobby and how general you want to be about it. I was talking with my wife about this a few years ago and we came to the conclusion that I had a lot of examples of my dad finding solutions to obstacles on his own to where I feel like I can solve almost any issue solo, it’s just a matter of how much time and resources do I have to give. Her upbringing was that a service had to be called and a temporary solution put in place. The temporary solution worked but was miserable in the meantime. Also she wasn’t part of the temp or permanent solution whereas I was “holding the flashlight”.
It’s also interesting because my sister experienced the same examples as me, but because I was here and willing she kinda just lets me be dad in fixing situations now. I think there’s an eagerness that men bring with often misguided confidence until they do it enough to get good and my wife would say she wants something to be easy from the beginning before she’ll confidently take on the task without me. This is going to be very different couple to couple though, since I can recall a lot of men who act helpless about problems within my ability to control. Often their wives take on that role instead and they seek women who do that sorta stuff because it’s a great team dynamic.
Probably rambling too much for the TLDR to be, “it depends” my bad
