I disagree (scroll down in the link for pertinent information). Many of the women who did play were trained enough to play a few chamber pieces for the entertainment of guests. Can you provide cites that back up your statement?
Oppression of women in previous centuries cannot be ignored in considering the dearth of female composers or great painters or writers, etc., unless one chooses to ignore that oppression. Do you believe it did not exist?
I, too, disagree with you musicjunkie. And its not really because I’m a woman. I’ve read a good deal about history, and know a little bit about music history as well. Women were taught the following things (with a few exceptions) cooking, cleaning, baby-care, a few piano songs for entertainment, maybe reading and a couple other nessesities for entertaining guests and maintaining the up-keep of the house. Women weren’t allowed to go to school to be educated, so they learned everything from their family (mostly moms aunts etc). Now, I’d just like to remind you that the time we are dealing with now is the classical music era, mostly in the 1700’s and 1800’s (maybe a little before).
As for the menstrual cycle playing a part, I’ll have to check back on that, but I don’t really see why it would. 
P.S. Here’s a quote from Spider Woman’s link :
“Women were given few occupational or artistic opportunities. But there are plenty of women composers today, and some of them are quite good.”
Ok, I admit defeat I said what I said because of what I see in a day to day basis ( the N’Sync thing ) and because I believed women were given a good musical education. Aparently I was wrong on the latter and the first don’t stand on it’s own.
Now, I must say again that I’m not a sexist and about the “biological” thing, what can I say other than there are biological reasons to a lot of different behavior beetween male and female. I believe this was one of thi cases, I was wrong and stand corrected.
If you are interested in doing further research on this topic, you might try AltaVista or Google, which are two of my favorite search engines.
I don’t think there are many, if any, behavioral traits that can be soley attributed to biology. The nature/nurture controversies have been going on for years, and make for interesting debates. See ya around the boards.
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