Fortunately breaking down this barrier benefits everyone, regardless of sex. Feminism benefits all.
If we imagine a world where men and women hand-sizes were statistically equal, ought we be interested that some people have smaller hands and are under-represented in Piano competitions? If so, shouldn't a study that looks purely at hand-span as the variable, without regarding gender or ethnicity, ought to be equally useful as as impetus for change in both contexts?
Edit: Though interesting to note that there's been some effort at balance in terms of national acclaim, but if smaller handed competitors had access to scaled keyboards, it's possible that their would be better international recognition of female players.... or it could expose a gender bias.
Saying that women, on average, have smaller hands than men is as sound as saying women, on average, have a higher likelihood of getting pregnant during sex than men.
But saying that it's the most compelling argument is where it arguably becomes full on sexist.
Truth of the matter is most concert pianists and serious competitors have absolutely gigantic hands that most people do not posses. With very few and rare exceptions.
And that the current piano size is way too large for most people, esp. if they actually would like to excel at it. Or at a minimum a very large portion of the population, incl. geographic areas where people tend to be shorter on average.
Is that true? I wouldn't have thought so, at all, and a few minutes googling "do most concert pianists have huge hands" digs up a lot of sentences like "Plenty of world-class pianists have small hands, including Alicia de Larroccha and Vladimir Ashkenazy, and yet they seem to be able to cope with the most physically demanding works in the repertoire." And sites talking about how it's a misconception that classical pianists have or need huge hands.
Jazz pianist with huge hands here :-) Huge hands often goes with height, and I have never noticed classical pianists are unusually tall. I can't think of any who are. Maybe people are thinking of Rachmaninov (6 foot 6). One would expect classical pianists to look like towering basketball players if, as you say, they mostly have absolutely gigantic hands. But I'd say there are many more under 6 feet tall than over it.
If I got a penny for every time Larroccha gets mentioned in the discussions about small hands and alt sized keyboards I would be a millionaire.
First of all, nobody, ever in their right mind would bring up Larroccha when talking about greats. Frankly the only times Larroccha would get brought up... is when talking about pianists with small hands. Severely limited repertoire.
Secondly, isn't that curious that they don't mention what the actual reach of Ashkenazy was? Well, it turns out that he doesn't have small hands, merely on the smaller side when taking the absolutely gigantic hands of every other concert pianist as a reference point.
I've heard by some people that Horowitz had small hands too (compared to whom, a 7ft tall giant who can reach a 15th?)
> most concert pianists and serious competitors have absolutely gigantic hands
which I still doubt, unless you have data supporting that. Depends on what you mean "absolutely gigantic" and how you define "serious competitors" etc.
Also, almost every sentence in your reply uses exaggeration, so it does seem you allow that to yourself but insist others speak accurately. Maybe this is just a case of that, not to be taken literally. It seems so. And nobody apart from you mentioned limiting that matter to "great" pianists - a straw man.
http://smallpianokeyboards.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Ri...
Never "small". If we are talking about "greats" it's even more so. You can't be with a small hand span.
Not sure what kind of more evidence you need.
From this, it seems clear that internationally acclaimed pianists typically have quite large hands.
The site points out that adult men are affected. It also points out that it makes it more technically difficult for children learning: forcing them to learn unergonomic things that will not be necessary as their body grows.
But yes, it disproportionately affects women, which is an additional reason to be concerned.
What the data shows is that between two groups with very different hand size distributions, the one with (on average) larger hands has a tremendously easier time playing. So, while some people will argue hand span is a secondary factor, in fact there is a critical need for smaller keyboards.
- the observation that a specific group is hurt by something
- the claim that individual bias against that group causes the hurt, or that the inverse group is to blame for the hurt
And to make things harder, sometimes people cause trouble by saying things that are deliberately ambiguous between those two, or sometimes saying one thing and sometimes saying the other. That's frustrating when it happens.
But in the opposite direction, it's also easy misinterpret someone as though they're saying the second thing, when they're really trying to say the first thing. And when someone gets misinterpreted like that, that's frustrating too. I think a pretty good compromise is to try to assume people are saying the first thing as much as possible.