Lack of Female Representation

You have to go way back to understand this. We will start with one simple fact, men and women are different. They have different physiology and different instincts. Men have to be strong and powerful. They have to win or they are dead. This is the way we evolved. Men have to be strong and vicious. Vicious means loud and colorful. The idea is to scare the crap out of your enemy. Study ancient cultures. 
Women on the other hand being as a group smaller and weaker survive by being smart, quiet and good at hiding. Women hate noisy situations. They can not hear danger coming. They have to be up high so they can see danger coming. Just ask any women why they like SUVs and they will tell you they like being up higher, makes them feel safer. Men have to be powerful and loud. Not only do noisy situations make women feel uncomfortable but because their ear canals are smaller they are more sensitive to high pitch sounds and distortion. My wife is my favorite distortion meter. When things are nice and clean she will tolerate much higher volumes. When she complains about the volume if I switch to a BBC (Gundry) curve she is happier even if I do not change the volume. My daughters are the same way but my son in law is a true rocker, turn it up!  You also see differences in the music the sexes like. Women are more interested in emotional content, men in abstract music. Go to a King Crimson concert and you will see perhaps 10 women in the entire crowd.
Our need to be bigger, better and scarier is probably the force behind the need for ever better performance. Our problem is bigger and better is interpreted by expense. If I can buy more expensive gear it makes me bigger, better and scarier which makes us happy. Thus we buy ever more ridiculously priced equipment. Thank you Mark Levinson for figuring this out! On the other hand this makes for a healthy used market. 

my wife will join.

The dearth of females into our hobby is something I've thought about for years, even posting about it on this site. Women don't appreciate music any less. But when it comes to the gear, they don't seen to care. The WAF (wife acceptance factor)  has become a long-running joke. Maybe it's for the same reason that fields such as engineering have only recently been open to and attracted more females. Perhaps years of socialization are at work here. Women were either discouraged and/or intimidated by what they perceived as too technical to pursue. I've yet to have either a girlfriend or wife to care much about my gear. These were smart women (my first wife had an IQ of 155). The gear just held little or no interest for them.   

@ghasley

My God, at least he answered the question rather than attacking someone. And for the record, I agree with ncbassplayer. 

My wife couldn't be more different than me, in culture, religion, politics or interest. She is all woman and understands we have different hobbies. I help her with her plants, vintage furniture, learning woodworking and watching murder mysteries while she tolerates my (ugly to her) music system. 

She does, however, love the sound but it isn't something she sits and listens to so we have smaller systems in the garage and yard for her to enjoy while doing stuff. I recently bought her an AirPod Mini system for the bathroom/ closet and she is in love with the looks AND sound.

My wife enjoys our system as much as I do. She doesn’t care much about the gear though and isn’t happy about the $$$ spent to get it.