Why are there more guys learning Chinese than girls?

[anonymoose]

Or is it just that more Chinese-learning guys surf the net than girls? About 40000 people have registered to use this site (assuming that's where Roddy got all his email addresses from), yet only about 5 of us are girls. This is even more skewed than China's population, which is already 阳盛阴衰 enough.

Even if we discount the 40% of guys who are learning Chinese because of their Chinese girlfriends, and the other 40% who are learning in the hope of getting a Chinese girlfriend, that still leaves a ratio of about 7999:5.

So what gives?

[feihong]

There's a monthly Chinese meetup that I attend, and while there aren't necessarily more guys than girls, among the active learners there are way more guys than girls. I don't really have an explanation for this. In my Chinese college classes there were an even number of both genders.

[ma3zi1]

I will attempt to venture a guess here; please do not crucify me for it.

Men typically have less to fear when it comes to learning a foreign language and moving to another country. Less men are victims of rape, and societies have a long history of being sexist against women. Men are often encouraged, from a young age, to take risks and try new things. Women are often dissuaded from risk for protective and sexist reasons. Culturally, this may result in more risk-averse women.

Worldwide interest in China and Chinese language is a recent phenomenon. I have met a lot of women lately beginning to learn Chinese from scratch. Many of us on this forum may have begun studying Chinese years ago. For myself it was 8 years ago at least, and at that time my decision to study Chinese was a bit shocking to most of my family. They saw this move as risky and unexpected.

Now I'll try that in Chinese, just for practice

冒昧提出一個答案，請別嚴懲我。

關於學外語便出去國外，男生通常遇到的問題比女生的少一點。女生比男生多面對強姦犯，許多社會的重男輕女概念有悠久的歷史。從小以來，很多男生往往受到冒風險、嘗試新事的鼓勵，反而，有些父母常勸女兒避免冒險，因為帶著保護性和對性別歧視的看法。在文化方面，由於以上現象的後果，女生反對冒險的觀念會表現。

世界對中國和中文語言感興趣是最近凸顯的現象。近來，我認識的開始學習中文的女生越來越多，這個論壇網站中的用戶們可能挺久之前開始學習中文語言，拿我來談，已經學了八年多了。八年前，我決定開始學習中文時，我家人都驚訝了，他們把這個選擇視為蠻高風險的、始料不及的。

那，為了練習以下，我要試試用中文寫以上的。

[yonglin]

I think the "internet based" bit about the forums explains a lot. Compare for example with Wikipedia, where they recently found that something like 85% of articles were written by men. No reason an internet forum such as this would be very different.

The "Chinese girlfriend" related stuff probably accounts for a lot more than one would think.

[Shelley]

Hi ya,

I think it is a just because chinese is thought of as a difficult thing to learn. Women are generally supposed to be better at languages than men. Maybe there are just as many women as men learning chinese but not as many women go online about it. I wonder if there is a figure for the total amount of people worldwide learning and what percentage are women.

P.S. I am a women and have been learning for about 25 years for pleasure. Shelley

[anonymoose]

I will attempt to venture a guess here;

Interesting points, but as far as I know, most foreign language courses at university level in the UK at least, have a gender imbalance towards women. I just tried searching for some statistics, without any success (and it's 5am here so I'm not going to waste any more time on it now) but would be interested if anyone can find something reliable. It may just be that Chinese learning is dominated by guys, but then that would seem to invalidate your hypotheses.

[character]

Could just be they don't feel the need to spend time on the Internet discussing it.

Women in general may also be more interested in other cultures/languages -- the Indian film/language forum I'm on is 99.9% women, for example, while most of the Chinese/HK film forums I've seen tend to be male-dominated.

[gato]

It's the girls. Most foreign learners of East Asian languages are guys. You have probably noticed that among heritage learners, there is more of a balance between guys and girls.

[xianhua]

I've noticed that a lot of learners on here tend to have IT or engineering backgrounds - fields often dominated by males. Could it be that the memorisation of thousands of characters appeals more to the technically-minded individual?

Men are also rather competitive souls. A (Chinese) teacher once told me that her language was too difficult for foreigners to learn. I've spent every day since trying to prove her wrong (I'm male).

[gato]

IT/engineering requires much less memorization than many other fields -- such as biology/medicine, which is dominated by women. Women are just as good at memorizing as men.

[Meng Lelan]

About 40000 people have registered to use this site (assuming that's where Roddy got all his email addresses from), yet only about 5 of us are girls.

Is this scientific?

[Silent]

No, it's not scientific, and personally I strongly doubt the figure.

Nevertheless, I can make up a many excuses for an imbalance (assumed it exists). I can also make up a few reasons why it should be different.

A provocative statement, but why would a serious student register here? The forum is predominantly English. I think time spend here has only limited added value when it comes to acquiring chinese language skills. A serious student would probably be better of spending the time on real study. As in general girls are more serious and feel less need to show off their skills there's a fair chance they prefer study above 'showing off' in a forum.

[imron]

No, a poll would be much more scientific.

Currently it looks like 23% female to 77% male.

[gato]

Hehe. Very provocative and serious.

[imron]

but why would a serious student register here?

As a relatively serious student, my answer would be for the sense of camaraderie that comes from people sharing the same pains and joys in the effort to achieve a common goal, for learning about studying techniques and resources that other learners find useful, for the motivation that comes from seeing how other people are improving, and finally, for the comedy.

I don't really think there's that much showing off that goes on here.

[Meng Lelan]

Or this comedy.

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/17114-i-found-a-mysterious-note/

[imron]

It's the gift that keeps on giving.

[rezaf]

Even if we discount the 40% of guys who are learning Chinese because of their Chinese girlfriends, and the other 40% who are learning in the hope of getting a Chinese girlfriend, that still leaves a ratio of about 7999:5.

One group of 歐美women that I have seen a lot at elementary level is middle-aged women who have come to Shanghai because of their husbands' jobs. As they just want to learn some words for shopping and dealing with their 阿姨s, maybe learning Chinese is not that important for them to come to forums.

[Brian US]

My university in a lil old Midwestern town had a good mix of males and females in the Chinese program. Most of the students were learning Chinese for business and I think only the men had long term plans to work in China. The Japanese department was mainly filled with male students who were just interested in anime.

Now if we are talking about other Asian countries, my class has one 50 year old Korean man and over half my class is made up of Korean girls. I don't think these forums are too Korean friendly for them to come.

[rezaf]

That's why I said 歐美, as in my experience one of the biggest groups of Chinese learners are Korean girls.