Hey guys,

Daniel Simu - 2016-01-14 17:42:24 UTC - Parent #

Hiya,

I am a bit biased against these kind of gender studies, excuse me for that. Collecting data can never be bad, so I hope you succeed.
However, I am a bit disappointed already by your tiny article.

..." and more generally, (women) are not as respected in the juggling community."
How did you draw this conclusion?

And, are you taking in account, when you say that female jugglers get less appearances in festival shows, that there are generally less female jugglers available? That specifically at juggling conventions it is those with high technique who thrive (unlike at circus/theatre festivals or other stages), and that women are not so well represented in this genre of juggling?

I personally feel like female jugglers have an advantage over male jugglers in shows. They are rare and unique, and wanted.

I have a female friend who got into a Gandini production, though she could hardly juggle compared to the male auditionees. Gandini needed a mix of male and female performers (7 male 2 female for this particular show) and there simply were no better female candidates available. With less skill you can still get into the big gigs.
The same happened in my circus school, in one of the auditions (not mine), a female juggler was allowed into the school. We were all very surprised, as she wasn't very good in a lot of areas including juggling, compared to the other auditionees. The juggling teacher replied with something like "lack of female jugglers, need to stimulate, high market value".
Also, I have been taking part in the organisation of some juggling convention shows. Always the topic 'female juggler' pops up, where we are desperate to add some more femininity to the show, but we don't know who. When we first make a list of our favorite acts, not many girls seem to make it, but in the end we always find a way to include one or two.

Now I am not saying that the above is necessarily bad, but it makes me extra sad to see that people start research about how girls are negatively treated unequally.

What about the possibility that on average girls are less interested in juggling?

LukasR - 2016-01-14 18:12:28 UTC - Parent #

i don´t think the research is irrelevant at all but i think juggling convention gala shows are basicly the least important place to look at... why ?

a) nobody earns money doing that, instead you waste a fine convention day rehearsing... not performing at juggling conventions is not a disadvantage for anyone

b) as daniel said alot of conventions will take any performer who meets the gala show standart and there´s rarely a selection process other than.. who lives close, whos available, whos at the con anyway, oh sorry but we don´t need that prop anymore

c) it´s so unclear if this is a research about the hobbyist juggling szene or the professional performer juggling szene

d) if this were about hobbyist it´s so weird because i don´t think most of them want to perform on a gala anyway, also most of them don´t care about beeing respected as one of the top jugglers in their field

e) if this were about the professional performer szene it is in my opinion wrong to isolate juggling from other circus and variety disziplins. would you say that males are disrespected in ariel acrobatics or ballett ?

i think this research would make way more sense for "high profile circus festivals (demain, carlo etc) variety shows, paid television gigs, performers in big circus companys etc.

DawnDreams - 2016-01-14 18:23:50 UTC - Parent #

That would be awesome to see you run that study!

Mini - 2016-01-14 18:35:34 UTC - Parent #

Dawn

it seems your coming into this with your bias already quite well defined. Is this one of those days where your looking for data to justify your own opinions?

I have programmed many gala shows, and been on the organising side of many more. i have never seen any gender bias exhibited at all. acts are chosen on their artistic and technical merits, regardless of gender.


sorry to disappoint


Mini

DawnDreams - 2016-01-14 18:42:45 UTC - Parent #

Hi Mini,

I did my own observational study of 6 festivals (mostly in France) last year and noticed about 17% were women on stage. This included ALL women, including language interpreters. EJC was the only festival that represented women at 45% - which was awesome.

It is super refreshing when I can see equal representation.

This notion you present that the gender balance seems to be equal is unfortunately common. Geena Davis runs Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media and on an interview on NPR she states “[There is a] disturbing study, where they looked at the ratio of men and women in groups. And they found that if there's 17 percent women, the men in the group think it's 50-50. And if there's 33 percent women, the men perceive that as there being more women in the room than men”.
Her theory is that, in movies, women are seen on screen at a ratio of 5 men to every 1 woman and it creates a bias in our everyday perception.
here's the link.
https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=197390707

Anyway, collecting data is collecting data. We will see if my theory proves true or false, right?

^Tom_ - 2016-01-14 21:21:50 UTC - Parent #

Actually Dawn, if you read carefully, Mini never said that there was equal gender balance (i.e. 50-50), but rather that there was no bias when picking acts.

I would go further than that and say that I've been involved in discussions as a show advisor where we were specifically trying to think of more female performers who might have been available in order to avoid having a male dominated show.

Brook Roberts - 2016-01-15 16:56:46 UTC - Parent #

I've certainly had the experience of show organisers discussing female acts with the explicit goal of getting more to bring the balance of the show closer to even. And separately, trying to ensure that you don't just achieve this goal by bringing in hoopers/aerialists, but include a female juggler too.

Richard Loxley - 2016-01-15 12:57:16 UTC - Parent #

I agree that there seem to be more women in juggling now than when we started. But my perception is it is still not equal.

My gut feeling is that the gender balance in my juggling club and UK conventions is 30-40% female. But I'm interested in that study Dawn mentions that such perceptions are wrong. Perhaps the number of women might actually be lower, and it's the increase that makes me think it's more balanced than it is?

I'll try to do some informal counting at the next couple of conventions to see how accurate my impression is.

Do any conventions record gender balance in attendees? If so that could be interesting to see.

In my local club, I can think of 4 women and 4 men who turn up almost every week. I can think of many more men who turn up occasionally, but very few women who turn up occasionally.

I've also noticed in unicycling clubs, where the balance is almost 100% men, that occasionally women will turn up and try it out, but it's rare for them to stick around for more than a week or two. I've suspected that not having other women there puts them off. Anecdotally it seems that if two women start coming in the same week, they are more likely to carry on.

I used to do Street Dance. In my first classes there was one other man, the rest were women. I found having him around very comforting as a beginner. Eventually he left and I carried on. It is intimidating being the odd-one out in such circumstances, but I'd been doing it several months by then, so it was just about manageable.

I wonder if something similar is happening with our juggling club - that you have to really want to do it to overcome the discomfort with a gender balance - hence the dedicated regulars are fairly even male/female but the less dedicated occasional people are more biased to men?

Brook Roberts - 2016-01-15 16:59:29 UTC - Parent #

This seems more plausible to me. We often see a similar problem with props at our clubs - if we have no diabloists/contact jugglers/whatever then it's hard to get any more - a beginner has less people to teach them, and a more advanced person doesn't have the same community aspect of turning up.

Obviously, if they just want a practise space and some social interaction it can work out, but otherwise I think it's pretty off-putting. (similar for beginner jugglers, etc)

York Jugglers - 2016-01-14 18:37:13 UTC - Parent #

oops! should be www.chocfest.net

Orinoco - 2016-01-14 19:45:33 UTC - Parent #

Katie Struthers! I can't believe I missed out Katie! I'm sure I've missed out more...

Never make a list, I know this, why did I even try?

York Jugglers - 2016-01-14 20:08:44 UTC - Parent #

Don't forget Mamph (Sam Heasman) who organised many Chocfests as well as quite a few BJC Public Shows (and much more)

York Jugglers - 2016-01-14 20:09:54 UTC - Parent #

Oops! You hadn't, I was just looking for her full name.

Orinoco - 2016-01-15 13:08:03 UTC - Parent #

In my defence I have sadly never been to either of those conventions! I have no doubt there are many ladies involved in many regional festivals that I have never been to who are equally deserving of praise. There are of course many men also deserving of such praise.

Mïark - 2016-01-14 20:27:39 UTC - Parent #

This link was meant to illustrate my point in that post

Al_Bee - 2016-01-15 13:32:20 UTC - Parent #

I agree. In the slightly different world of stand-up comedy there is an issue with representation of women comedians and I've seen examples of adverts for performers with explicit comments about not wanting more than one female performer in a line of of 6-8 comedians; women comedians being told not to do stuff about women etc. From my experience as a show watcher at juggling events I would love there to be more women in the shows but I seriously doubt that the guff I've mentioned about comedy regularly (or ever) happens (in the UK convention circuit anyway).

Little Paul - 2016-01-15 16:46:25 UTC - Parent #

All that stuff about female comedians does (unfortunately) happen - in gigs with a paying audience, put on by an often male promoter who is concerned primarily with getting paying punters through the door.

It is changing in the UK (and I think Sandi Toksvik has a point when she says that the only way to get more women comedians on TV is to put one of them in the chair for a regular prime time panel show - which she's doing with QI) - although much more slowly than I would like.

However I think a juggling *festival* show is a different environment entirely.

Quite often, performers in festival shows aren't paid, are paid expenses only or paid a token amount. Very rarely are they paid market rate. The promoters are more concerned about being able to get enough acts to fill the show at a price they can afford, and within those limitations booking the most interesting acts that can fill the bill.

Does the budget make a difference to which acts are approached? Perhaps not. Does it make a difference to which acts accept the gig? Quite possibly.

I think if you're going to gather statistics on which acts appear in shows, I'd also like to see stats gathered on the acts were approached but turned down the gig and the acts which accepted but then pulled out.

Hypothetical situation:

If I book a show and approach 9 women and 1 man, and 6 of the women either turn me down or pull out at the last minute - and I fill their slots with men who said yes on the day... I end up with a show with 7 men and 3 women, which looks like I'm an evil sexist pig for putting on a male dominated show.

Was the end result my fault if it differs drastically from what I set out to book?

I fully acknowledge my white, male, middle class privilege in this debate... but I do look on Dawns work and wonder "If I was asking the same questions about representation of gay performers would it be as interesting a question?"

To be honest, I really don't think it would be.

Little Paul - 2016-01-15 16:46:42 UTC - Parent #

Good lord that was more rambling than I intended.

DawnDreams - 2016-02-14 15:31:19 UTC - Parent #

Yes, I include all women on stage. The above data even included the sign language interpreter, because it's easier to include every single woman than to debate the definition of juggling.

DawnDreams - 2016-02-14 15:32:46 UTC - Parent #

This is great information, thanks!

lukeburrage - 2016-02-17 15:43:23 UTC - Parent #

Back in about 2007, at the Dresden juggling convention, I thought there were more ladies than men, so started counting in each room/venue I was in. Consistently men were outnumbered about 60/40. Back then it was still new to me, as in the UK it was normally that ratio but the other way. Today the male/female ratio at Germany conventions is always so equal I don't notice it.

It's Him - 2016-01-19 10:58:42 UTC - Parent #

That would be Dee who posted today about the stats society Xmas quiz!

Looking at the trivia for conventions on juggling edge and just sampling acts and compères should give quite a good historic indication of female:male Are there any convention acts that share the same name? If not then unique female:unique male is also fairly trivial computer search. Whether that number gives you any indication of whether the acts were juggling is a different matter. E.g. in the first MKJC show Seth Rider performed an act where he chucked a lot of balls and clubs on stage and then proceeded to collect them all with kick ups. No actual juggling was performed. Was he a juggler in this instance?

Nigel

^Tom_ - 2016-01-19 18:01:20 UTC - Parent #

I can see how this would help to assess the gender balance, but I'm curious how (if) you would assess the question of gender bias?

If the community itself has gender imbalance (I think it does), or gender segregation (again, hula hooping is an often quoted example), then what should a "fair" show look like?

Should we strive for balance, or just try not to discriminate?


And whether we would expect the community to be more balanced?

I can believe that almost all-male juggling clubs could be a put-off for potential female new members as mentioned already in this thread.
On the other hand, the conversion of existing members of the juggling community to kendama, for example, seems (to my uninformed eyes) to be far more common for male jugglers - and I can't think of any inherent reason for it.

I'm just wondering whether cultural/choice factors will be distinguishable. And as the initial question relates specifically to show performers, I'm wondering whether or not this should be taken in relation to a background distribution of jugglers, of performers, or of the entire population. If we want to do this exclusively for jugglers in juggling shows, or all performers in juggling shows, this would almost certainly make a difference.

DawnDreams - 2016-02-14 15:36:30 UTC - Parent #

in nearly every reply found except for Charlie's.

bad1dobby - 2016-02-15 01:25:26 UTC - Parent #

FFS Dawn - it's called robust discussion! You expect to throw around accusations of bias and not have people challenge you?
If you're going to claim you're being patronized whenever someone disagrees with you, I'm not at all surprised you don't feel much respect from the juggling community.

Mïark - 2016-02-15 18:03:57 UTC - Parent #

Feminists aren't self-righteous, self-righteous people are. Sadly these people who get/seek attention damage things by making the rest of the world think they are typical of ideologies like feminism even though they are a minority.

Little Paul - 2016-02-16 07:20:04 UTC - Parent #

self-righteous people also tend to be more visible/vocal than non self-righteous people - so there is an inherent confirmation bias.

its like the whole "cyclist vs driver" thing. Cyclists can often feel that "all drivers hate cyclists, they all try to kill me" - it's easy to notice the one driver who cut you up or who forced you into the gutter, but it's hard to remember the 100 drivers you encountered on the same journey who didn't.

NB this bias occurs equally in "feminists" and in "anti-feminists" because guess what - we're all human.

Richard Loxley - 2016-02-21 17:37:40 UTC - Parent #

Oh, and the other information Dawn asked for:

Type of stage (renegade, open, Gala**):
main show (I suppose "gala" is the closest)

Name of Festival:
Bath UpChuck 2016

Country:
UK

Type of festival (Juggling fest, Flow Festival, Passing convention, etc):
billed as "juggling and circus skills convention"