Music and Gender

I have definitely noticed a gender difference in a lot of music. In high school, I was in two district choirs-- one year I was in the SATB, the next year I was in the SSAA women's choir. I thoroughly enjoyed the SSAA choir more, and I am a fan of all women's choirs (yay Converse!). I was also in a children's choir for about 8 years. It was always the same choir, but I moved through different sections as I got older. When I got to 11th grade, I graduated to the Chamber Singers, which included guys who's voices had dropped. We were able to sing more complex pieces, and I've noticed that while there are also very hard pieces for women's choirs, I've seen more of them in SATB choirs.
I know that in the singing world, male singers are precious, valuable things that are often hired more than women. Part of that is, admittedly, that there are simply more sopranos in this world than anyone could imagine, but the male singers I've known personally through high school who also went on to sing in college were not held to the same standard as many of the sopranos I've known.
I'm going to backtrack a bit and talk about middle school. In middle school, you had to participate in art or band, and because I completely lack artistic talent, I chose band. I played clarinet because it seemed easy-- at least the stuff we were doing in 6th grade was. I wanted to play trumpet but didn't have the gall to (this was a long time ago). In my middle school band, there seemed to be the girly instruments-- flute, clarinet, some saxophones-- and the boy instruments-- percussion, trumpet, trombone. There were crossovers in each of those instrument groups though. In high school, I decided I wanted to play the tenor saxophone in the jazz band, which was mostly male dominated. I felt empowered playing an instrument that I'd seen only males play. The saxophone was also as tall as I was, and it was impressive that I could even hold it up.