Nancy Bunin wrote:

>Second- Since joining the list a couple of weeks ago, I have observed that
>98% of communication is by men.  I'm puzzled- are there many more men than
>women who like classical music?  iS it just that men have grabbed onto
>another electronic toy, the internet, with more joyful vigor? (Doubt it, I
>belong to a dog breed list, and most respondents are women, and there are
>more on the early music list).  Something to think about.

It is peculiar, but this is the case on pretty much every electronic forum
devoted to classical music, and since I have been on the net for about 13
years now, I've seen quite a lot of mailing lists, newsgroups, bulletin
boards, web sites, etc.

I think I read that the percentage on women on the Internet is getting
quite high - not yet 50%, but somewhere in the 30s.

It seems that many women attend concerts - perhaps more women than men -
but supposedly women are not much into buying CDs or "collecting CDs".
I buy mostly via mail-order, but those who go to CD stores do indeed see
very few women there.  Once in a while you can read about this phenomenon.
Nobody has a good explanation for that.  (Money or lack of it can't account
for all the disproportion we see.) But if it's true that women, on the
average, don't buy many CDs, then that would partly explain their absence
from many electronic forums.  Most of discussions here and elsewhere
revolves around performers, various recordings of the same

>Third- I'm amazed at the breadth of some respondents' collections.  How do
>they finance this?? And after financing their collections, how do they have
>the time to really listen to it all? Surely not all can be independently
>wealthy- or made a killing in the market.  Please let me in on the secret,
>if only regarding time management for music listening!

To a large extent, both are a question of priorities.  Personally, I can
spend a few hundred dollars at a time on CDs, scores, books, and some other
things, but it would be entirely outside my frame of mind to spend the same
amount on clothes.  Other people have opposite priorities.  Similarly with
time.

Furthermore, there are some people on this list who reviews CDs and get
free review copies.

-Margaret Mikulska