Women in Numismatics

I was in Scotland on business when a guy from the office took me to a game and I was hooked. What is great is that the US now has a rugby league (MLR) and Houston has a team so I was able to see quite a few games before covid. I will admit the skill level is a long way from Premiership but still great to watch watch a game live.

 

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i bought a lot from renata..wow, brings back memories...back when i was a dealer full time (1978-1982,,i remember at the local shows i attended to sell, (southington, milford, wallingford, and a few others, i only saw a few females there, one of them used to buy up all my circ indian cents, lol...

 

For those of an earlier generation who lived in the Philadelphia area the name Catherine Bullowa will come up . Although I already had one ancient coin in my mostly US collection I, as a young man, happened to drop in at her locale on Walnut Street one summer day just to look around and she was kind enough to open a vault and show me some trays of ancients and from that time on I became a major student of ancient coins. Her catalogs on coin auctions was a gold mine and a treasure trove of information in a pre internet day. But, all things considered she was a rarity in the field. My experience, like most other posters, is that numismatics is a study that interests men far more than women. I hesitate in this day and age of gender equality to mention that my own, admittedly anecdotal experience, does confirm my belief that gender interests, to a great extent, not universally, are not just taught and learned but are innate and stem from some kind of biological, evolutionary development. One of my other interests used to be the collecting of antique firearms and even shooting them at a range when possible. Again, few Annie Oakley's in that world. The same in the sport of hunting and to a somewhat lesser disparity in fishing and photography. I am familiar with the arguments that little girls are discouraged from participating in such "manly" activities and given their druthers would be out there involved in these male attractive activities if they were encouraged to do so. Perhaps, but with my activities in these interests having me teach and coach and mentor in these areas, where we are supportive of and encouraging of females in these interests, we usually did not need to encourage the guys to involve themselves and participate. They seemed to take to it in a natural way that was not common, in that women did not show up in great numbers to them and often did need encouragement to do so and remain active in them. As for ancient numismatics, specifically, it may have something to do with its ancillary role in the the study of ancient history, another discipline that until quite recently was a male dominated one. All of this is not meant to exclude or disparage women from field and stream or stamps and coins or explorations and excavations, but it may suggest (not prove, but suggest) that some interests are more likely to appeal to one gender rather than the other and that there is no need to see this as being of cosmic significance, a happenstance that needs correction. I think that children, young people, of both genders should be exposed to many fields of interest and then left unhindered to pursue what interests them whether they happen to align with our own or not. P.S. For those wondering about this, in my own family, all the women, spouse and daughters have their Ph.D's, just not in fields of my interests, but theirs.

 

My grandmother Elsa (1896-1978) was a coin collector. She was my mother's mother and lived in Chicago.

From the late 1940's to the early 1950's she had US coin albums for cents, nickels, and dimes. She acquired coins from circulation but may have occasionally bought coin rolls to look at.

She managed to find some rare coins including a 1909-S VDB cent, a 3-legged Buffalo nickel, and a 1916-D dime. She also managed to save some Indian Head cents including a 1908-S.


United States Indian Head Cent 1908-S

In 1958 she and her husband moved to California to be near her daughter and grandchildren.

She moved away from coins in the late 1950's to concentrate on oil painting and genealogy.

At some time in the 1960's she accumulated a bunch of silver half-dollars and quarters which my mother found in the 1990's on the top back shelf of a closet.

 

@DonnaML

You started a very interesting thread here and I appreciate it very much. It has called for and caused some serious thinking on the issue you have described, i.e. the dearth of female voices in numismatics. I will not bore you or anyone else here with a long diatribe on norms and the breaking of norms. If you are interested there is some great analysis out there by both adherents and critics of Emile Durkheim's notion of Anomie.

Having taught in a university linguistics department for a number of years I can tell you we also explored the notion of Anomie. The context we used concerned those who speak a language foreign to those of the surrounding populations. We equated Anomie to a loss of self. That is our whole notion of who we are may change when we encounter cultures and languages foreign to us but indigenous to this around us. I tend to think this is why so many people who only speak English who visit countries overseas are made uncomfortable in the experience. We are confronted with challenges to our worldview. Some people thrive in this type of environment and others are frightened and actually threatened by it. I like nothing better than being thrown into the midst of a foreign country with a foreign language and having to survive in that new context. I like seeing how others construct themselves in their environments.

Now what does this have to do with their being few female numismatists? Let me start by saying that more are needed. Different perspectives can only inject life and vigor into this hobby of ours. The problem seems to be one of norms. It has become normal for this hobby to be male dominated and there is a long history of this. This particular norm has so been ingrained that it will be quite difficult to overcome. Individual male numismatists will claim they they personally have done nothing to prevent the participation of women this they are both correct and incorrect. On one level they are correct because they personally have done nothing to discourage any individual woman from participating. However, by not challenging the norm they are complicit in the marginalization of women within this hobby.

Deconstructing the norm will take time but calls for a conscious action to address the unspoken reality that the norm has been shaping the participation of women in this hobby (and of course in thousands of other domains) for centuries.
John Gardner had a great quote that seems appropriate here.

"Teachers in education are like fish in water. They swim in it but they don't often look at it".

I think the same goes for historically male dominant segments of society and its many roles. So while many men may say they have done nothing to discourage women in the study of numismatics or as collectors, the very fact that those who have been dominant for so long do not question the norms of the hobby means that they are perpetuating them.

Donna, many thanks for your thoughts on this issue and I hope you will continue to raise this issue. i also want to thank the many posters here who have left so many interesting and thoughtful comments.

 

I am sorry to disagree with your assessment but we are dealing here essentially with a hobby. I do not think males have an obligation to deconstruct a "problem" with women not being especially interested in collecting coins any more than women have an obligation to question why more men are not into quilting or crochet. We are not talking about careers in engineering or physics where something like equal participation by the genders has enormous societal implications. If we are shamed into starting some kind of affirmative action program whereby the hobby is pressured into an equal representation of genders to make up for past "injustices" of few women in the hobby of coin collecting, it's no longer a hobby and I am going back to railroad photography for enjoyment. Why people cannot enjoy a hobby without having to do a "deconstructing" examination of conscience as to its raison d'etre totally escapes me.

 

My sentiments exactly!

 

I tend to agree save to say that to some it is a hobby, but numismatics is not a hobby, it is a field of study, really no different than art history or any other discipline devoted to the study of human endeavours. Some might collect art, others study the history and trends of art through the ages. I minored in art history and studied the history of design (a field far more impactful to human development than one may think...think about the written word), animation, landscape painting and of course the many eras of art from prehistoric to modern.

I don't collect art, I have some of course, but I have seriously studied it. Art is an incredibly important aspect of human behaviour, far more than just pretty pictures, and I would argue that the human tendency to place a value on everything (including an hour of human life) money, physical currency, monetary systems and conceptual representations of value is just as much, if not more, important even if, unfortunately, it has not been treated as such. It just so happens that unlike art through the ages, coins are far more accessable to us thus we are able to aquire those specimens that we study...if I couldn't, I would still study and be interested in the concept of mediums of exchange.

I can tell you that in my art history classes, where women were certainly well represented, I injected the art of the coin as indeed art is just one aspect of currency that numismatics encompasses. As a teacher coins are used as a tool to help visualize the past. The more numismatics is seen as a legitimate area of scholarship I think the more people may become interested in it beyond seeing it as just a hobby, or as one man characterizes it, a bunch of fetishistic coin fondlers. Not that there there is anything wrong with just collecting coins. Like art history I can see the field attracting both men and women as money is, as we all know here, interesting.

Now back to your regularly scheduled program.

 

While I will ignore the more intense statements made, I think the answer is quite simple: those who are passionate about their hobbies wish to learn its history. What caused numismatic collecting to be overwhelmingly populated with men? It’s an interesting question. To me, it’s no different from wanting to understand why Lewis Hamilton in F1 has been so dominating these past many seasons.

I’m going to throw on an edit for fun and say, not only men, but cisgender men. Us LGBT folks seem to be an even larger minority in the community, and it definitely intrigues me as to why.

 

The "why" is for someone else to ponder, from some other field of study. I'm from another, older generation. As such, I find it difficult to understand the reason sex, or for that matter any discriminatory category, need be applied. As long as there are no restrictions as to who can collect, what difference does it make?

 

Completely understand however this forum allows for topics on all areas of numismatics. We the users are allowed to pick and choose which threads we partake in, and if a person feels a thread is for “someone else to ponder” they are free not to join in. I genuinely mean this in the nicest way possible, no malice intended: If a topic does not interest you, simply bypass the thread. Just as most ancient collectors do with the modern coin collecting threads

 

What statistical studies are you referring to, citing, with respect to your statement that members of the LGBT folks "seem to be an even larger minority in the (numismatic?) community? And if so, is there some significance to this finding with respect to the hobby?

 

Same for me, but in my Granddaughter....shes almost 4 and has a better collection foisted on her (by me) than any of my 4 children who have ZERO interest in our hobby. I buy her contemporary US Mint sets.....proof sets, silver walkers, etc, in the hopes she will glean some interest....so far to no avail, as shes not quite 4.

I dont feel there are any real barriers to women collecting, but thats easy for me to say, a guy. I know of the women on this forum, they have considerable knowledge over my own, and would not ridicule such. I cant say as I have seen any type of prejudice or misogynism here either, but to be fair, I am not as sensitive to that as women may be.

I agree with what some said above in that females appear to have more of an interest in other things....cooking, knitting, crochet, cruel, etc, where fewer men seem to have an interest. I dont know why that is, its probably a doctoral thesis for a more erudite mind than my own.

 

From all I've read on this post, IMHO women tend to be more pragmatic and are sentimental about things that really are sentimental, not coins. Also, women tend to make more things with their hands, and these items are truly sentimental. Much more than just cold, hard metal. We need more women in leadership posts just for their reasoning and intuition.

 

That brings to mind for me WWII England in 1940 during the Battle of Britain. It seemed everybody was involved in the war effort. I was an 11 year old schoolboy at that time. Our school participated in the knitting of warm items of apparel for the RAF (as I think all schools did). Boys and girls participated. The government issued the (steel blue colored) wool, knitting needles and patterns (scarves, gloves, socks and Balaclava helmets) to the schools - the teachers provided the knitting instructions to the boys (in those days just about all girls were proficient knitters) and took care of the logistics (distributing materials, gathering up completed items and shipping them off, etc.).

As with most families, my grandmothers, mother and aunties knitted at every possible opportunity - family gatherings, in the Doctor’s waiting room, at home in spare time ..... and so on. It seemed all housewives (and quite a few daughters - and now some sons - carried a knitting basket with needles and balls of wool - and half finished items, wherever they went). So I had plenty of on the job training and help (I always had a hard time joining the halves of socks and Balaclava helmets).

At first there was the usual scoffing and ribbing from the boys: “knitting is girl stuff” - “only sissy boys knit” ... and so on. But all that was quickly put behind with the realization that this was a serious part of the war effort. I became a pretty proficient knitter (most of the boys did) and was proud of it.

Of course when the war was over (actually some time before) the boys went back to playing football (soccer), cricket and scrumping apples and pears - as always.

I am still proud of my knitting, but I have almost forgotten how to do it - let’s see “purl one, knit two ..... “, or something like that.

James

 

James my friend, you are a treasure.

 

Great story! By the way, times have changed: knitting is no longer a universal skill among women. I don't know how to knit. My mother didn't knit either, for that matter. In fact, I don't know a single woman who knits. Perhaps it's a geographical thing?

 

You really mean larger, not smaller? I know many LGBT people; none is a coin collector AFAIK.

 

The ANS has serious "summer seminars" to help training the next generation of numismatists. I could not find the 2019 (or 2020) list of participants--the relevant ANS page has not been updated.

The 2108 ANS Summer Seminar had,
for lecturers, 14 men and 3 women (lecturers include several male ANS staff who repeat from year-to-year. The students are entirely different)
for students, 4 men and 5 women

2017
for lecturers, 9 men and 1 woman
for students, 6 men and 3 women

2016
for lecturers, 11 men and 0 women
for students, 6 men and 3 women