Are There Any Female Coin Enthusiasts?

I do not know the answer but have noticed it also.
I started collecting in 1971 and have gone to my share of coin shows and coin shops over the years. Maybe 1% of the dealers/collectors/friends who are collectors are female.Why that is...
John1

We have quite a few women here.

What some women collect https://lifestyle.allwomenstalk.com...collections/

Maybe it's self-perpetuating. When all you see is a specific demographic, you tend to shy away when you're not in that demographic. The few and small local coin shows I've attended there has never been a single woman dealer. I recall one husband-wife team selling coin supplies, and that's it. Some couples as customers, but I don't think I've ever seen a solo woman customer either. Woman probably perceive it as a "man cave" type thing and stay away. Which of course is too bad.

We usually have around 30 attendees at our weekly LCS Bid Board (been the case for years), but unfortunately none are women.

It's been a subject of much debate: why is coin collecting such a male-dominated hobby?

I've seen several theories put forward, such as "men are instinctively better at obsessive finish-the-set collecting" or "men are instinctively better at 'hunting' for bargains or elusive coins" - all of which are, frankly, rubbish.

I think kbbpll is close to the mark: it's a self-propagating stereotype. Your archetypical "coin collector", in the public eye, is an older white guy. If those three adjectives don't belong to you, then you're in the minority among coin collectors.

It began long ago, when coin collecting was the domain of the wealthy elite - the "hobby of kings". And "the wealthy elite" were predominately old white guys. And once a hobby that is entirely voluntary becomes dominated by a single demographic, then people who aren't of that demographic feel "fish out of water" when they try to take part. It takes generations to overturn a systemic bias - and that's when people are trying to overturn it. Numismatics, as a whole, isn't really trying very hard.

When a husband and wife enter a coin store, the coin dealer will likely assume that it's the husband who is the collector of the pair, and start talking with him - even if it's actually the wife that's the collector (and it is very, very rare that both the husband and wife are collectors). The dealer does this because 95% of the time, it's true - stereotypes don't propagate if they aren't proven true more often than not. But for that 5%, they're going to feel ignored and left-out.

If a woman goes to a coin club meeting and there's 20 guys there and no other women, she's likely going to feel isolated and like she doesn't really belong there - which can be propagated by those 20 guys, who don't know how to react to a woman invading "their space" and don't go out of their way to make her feel welcome. She will likely leave and not come back - and then the next woman going to that coin club isn't going to see any other women there either.

Women who face nothing but discouragement and discrimination as a coin collector, aren't going to stay coin collectors - remember, this is all voluntary. I imagine most women face enough discouragement and discrimination in their lives without voluntarily signing up for more. They'll go off and find another hobby where they are more welcomed.

It doesn't have to be this way, and we know it doesn't have to be this way because it isn't this way in some other parts of the world. Britain, New Zealand, and Western Australia all seem to be doing a much better job than the US, Canada and Eastern Australia at attracting and keeping women in the hobby. It's not 50:50, but more like 70:30 - which is a much healtheir ratio than 95:5.

Ideally, we want to be bringing the culture, of both coin collecting and of society as a whole, to the point where the response to the statement "I'm a coin collector and I'm female", is "What possible difference does that make?". I think the Internet can do its part to change this. The Internet allows gender anonymity - you don't have to tell anyone you're a woman, if you don't want to. I think the statistics here on this forum are about 70% "male", 10% "female", and 20% "unknown/rather not say" - which is a lot better than the 95:5 seen in organized numismatics.

I'm sorry, I just can't get behind the notion that our gold-standard reference point is coin collectors who attend organized events and coin shows. If you define the "normal" population that way, you walk straight into the No True Scotsman fallacy. I think show attendees are outnumbered 10:1 by casual collectors who watch podcasts, read free online articles, and buy very few (if any) coins. That is the real population of coin collecting hobbyists, encompassing all collectors. If coin show demographics deviate from that sample, then they are the exception, not the rule. Maybe in 1987 those two populations had a 1:1 correlation, but times have changed.

To my thinking, a better question would be as follows: why haven't the new demographics of coin collectors decided to attend shows?

Since I haven't been to a coin show in 35 years, I will take a stab at that question. 1. I coin roll hunt. Regularly buying coins isn't my style. 2. Coin shows kill a whole day of time, driving, gas, lunch money, and I have no idea if there will be anything even remotely interesting when I arrive. 3. The Internet has tremendously more interesting stuff available 24/7 in bite sized chunks. 4. Honestly, it is super awkward to browse wares while a person is standing there watching you.

I don't know about females going to coin shows etc or being involved in numismatics, but I have been selling mainly Australian error coins on ebay since May and just looking through my sales details I have 91 customers with a male name and 37 female named customers.
In this day and age that doesn't necessarily determine gender, it's just an observation.