BBC News today featured an article called Why don’t girls play guitar?

Let’s ignore the fact that it is a “journal style” headline, and some girls do play the guitar, and some of them actually kick ass, if you think about Jennifer Batten, for ex, (she was always an icon to me, from this point of view, because indeed, girls do play the guitar but how many play solo electric guitar? At that level, I mean!)

So, this post is not actually about Jennifer Batten, even if I proposed to myself to cover something about her, soon, but about the preferences that boys and girl have when it comes to picking up a musical instrument.

Here’s what the study that BBC uses says when it comes to learning an instrument:

Boys play:

• electric guitar 81%
• bass guitar 81%
• tuba 77%
• kit drums 75%
• trombone 71%

This sounds like a pretty decent rock band. What are the tuba and trombone doing there?!!

Girls play:

• harp 90%
• flute 89%
• voice 80%
• fife/piccolo 79%
• oboe 78%

Well, it may be related to social preconceptions, or just to the fact that there are some physical constraints here, such as a girl having trouble playing tuba due to dimensions, or just about the fact that being a girl may be associated to being softer, quieter, nicer, AND NOT PLAYING THE DAMN LOUD, METAL GUITAR!!!

Later edit: can it be for real that  90% of the girls play harp? I ask this because I don’t know any girl in my relatively close social neighborhood who play the harp. Actually I don’t think I know any girl who play harp while I know a girl here who plays bass guitar in a rock band. 

See the article here

Hmm, so, how many girls do you know playing an electric guitar and how many playing the harp?

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