This question occurred to me when watching Jazz at Lincoln Center the other night. The ensemble had one female playing sax, which is unusual for jazz combos. There are many female jazz pianists and singers, but almost no jazz horn or woodwind artists of note. Traditionally, jazz musicians were male, and jazz singers were typically female, but that was just the order of the day. I wouldn’t think it would be a wind issue, and certainly not a talent issue, so what gives?
There aren’t many female guitarists or bassists or drummers in rock bands, either.
Outside of symphony orchestras, where at least half of the musicians usually seem to be female, there just aren’t many women playing instruments in bands (as opposed to singing.)
It’s probably because a female singer is more than just a singer, she’s a true performer - not just her voice, but also her body movements and even her facial expressions go into the performance. The end result is, generally, supposed to be something sexy and glamorous.
Why would a woman want to be a horn player when she could be the star of the whole show instead? It’s just not “sexy” for a woman to play a horn the way it is for her to sing.
Nothing but speculation on my part, but my first guess is tradition. It’s along the same lines as female guitarists in Rock bands, I suppose.
Two opposing forces may be at work:
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the lack of motivation for females to take up instruments that have been dominated by males
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the lack of openings in ensembles for female players to fill.
Both of those forces may be losing traction as Women’s Movement efforts continue to blaze new trails. But the process may take longer than you and I have to watch it get closer to a 50/50 split.
When you consider how many women are in marching bands (or even jazz bands) in high school and college, playing all the same instruments (including Sousaphones) that men do, it’s hard to square the relatively scarcity of active jazz horn players in professional situations.
There’s, uh, Candy Dulfer.
But her shit is so Kenny G. sterile that I almost hesitate to mention her at all.
I have seen Candy Dulfer blow some serious, blistering funk leads when she has been with Van Morrison or Prince!!!
She is the antithesis of “sterile” at least on the occasions when I have heard her live.
She is also quite easy on the eyes…
Yeah, I saw her with Maceo Parker once. I also had a girlfriend who looooooved Candy Dulfer.
Can’t say I was ever impressed. YMMV.
My first though was smaller lung capacities, but I don’t know really.
Why wouldn’t it be a wind issue? It’d be easier for a guy to blow longer and harder more often than not, wouldn’t it?
There’s more to it than that. There’s no comparison between jazz and marching band music - or high school “jazz ensembles” that play cheezeball arrangements of jazz songs, and, say, a jazz quartet that plays in bars. Jazz (real jazz, I should add, because jazz is by far the most co-opted form of music) is more than a musical genre - it’s an entity in itself, with all kinds of connotations of hipness and sexuality that go with that. It doesn’t matter how many band-camp girls in high school played sousaphones and trumpets; in the world of jazz, if a woman wants success, chances are she’ll go the singing route. Simply because there’s so much more glamor in it. A good jazz singer always steals the show, and the band is just background.
Obviously there are jazz groups with no singer - but as I said before, if a woman wants to get into jazz she’s more likely to do so as a singer.
Twasn’t ever thus.
However unfortunate it might be, I wonder how much is rooted in the simple fact that most of the time a woman’s physical appearance is as important to her celebrity as her talent — sometimes more important. A horn is going to block the view of her face when she plays, and brass instruments in particular have a tendency to rather noticeably distort a player’s face while they’re blowing.
I didn’t check every name on the list, feeling pretty sure I could eliminate the guys from the gals by name alone, so I could have missed some. But here are some:
Carolyn Breuer (1969- ), (alto, soprano)
Ivy Benson (1913–1993)
Jane Ira Bloom (1955- ), (soprano)
Jane Bunnett (1955- ), (soprano)
Lindsay Cooper (1951- ), (soprano, alto)
Candy Dulfer (1969)- , (alto)
Scheila Gonzalez (1971- ), (tenor)
Rosa King (and singer)
Amy Lee (soprano, alto)
Erica Lindsay (1955- ), (soprano, tenor)
Somebody might want to do similar weeding out on other instruments.
And instruments that schoolgirls are encouraged to play are usually the delicate, feminine ones — flute, clarinet, piccolo, violin. Not many young girls go for (just to name a few) the tuba or the double bass.
Well, first off, this is purely anecdotal, but when my wife took up the trombone, the band teacher said “Oh, no, girls don’t play trombone; you should play the flute.” If he didn’t want her to play trombone, that was about the dumbest thing he could have said - she put her foot down and that was that. Her parents went to bat for her, and she became a trombonist.
Interestingly, my niece is now a tuba player, and my MIL, the same woman who went to bat for my wife to demand that she be allowed to study trombone, has herself said that it’s a crying shame, a pretty little girl like that behind a big tuba.
So I think there’s more than a little sexism that goes on when kids are picking instruments early on…
I think a number of you have the cart before the horse here. Not very many people say “I want to become a jazz musician; what instrument should I pick up so I can become the biggest star?”. Your choice of instrument tends to come from what’s available, who’s in your family who plays something, what the school has available or what the band needs, what the church has, who is around who teaches something. Most people pick their instruments when they’re still kids, and it’s based a lot more on chance than you might think.
Other female Jazz horn players -
Kathy Stobart interview wiki
Jane Bunnett
Tara Davidson
For the record, I am a female and played trombone from 5th grade through 4.5 years of college.
I was the only trombone player in my class. Out of about 24 different players I was in a section with in different bands over the past 20 years, only 4 have been female.
When I was in middle school and high school, about 40-50% of our jazz ensemble were female. Our school district was known for good jazz ensembles, so everyone was encouraged to join.
When I was in college, I was in Jazz II. Aside from the rotating hot female singers and the couple of female Asian pianists we had from time to time, I was the only female for 4.5 years in an ensemble of 20 or so. Jazz I possibly had more - at least one or two.
There were plenty of females in all of the other university music groups and I’d say an even number of male/female music majors (I was not a music major). I have absolutely no idea why more women didn’t join Jazz Ensemble. No one ever discouraged me nor pointed out that it was a strange thing for a woman to do.
We did, however, tend to wear ties for performances - in ever group from 7th grade jazz on through college. Maybe that’s got something to do with it? 
Interesting stuff. I have to say that I haven’t heard of most of the female artists listed, other than Dulfer (I admit that I had dismissed her as a smooth jazz artist). Come to think of it, the truly “giant” names in jazz are either long dead or in their dotage at this point. There are a lot of very good musicians out there, but few with the name recognition of Gilespie or Davis or Basie. I suppose that any female horn players probably get lost in the other names-you-never-heard-of.
I briefly entertained the notion of a right-brain/left-brain sort of thing, but that just doesn’t wash, even though women seem to be wired differently than men. Also, the wind aspect doesn’t seem to cut it, either. If you’ve put in the hours to become truly good at it, development of wind capacity should come with it, no?
Few or no jazz bassists or drummers, either. What’s that about? Tradition again, I suspect.
Glad you didn’t list Tina Brooks! 
Not sure I would count Lindsay either as a jazz musician or a saxophonist–though she did double on sax, her main instrument was bassoon.
“Chicks can’t blow sax.” – Trombone player I knew back in '83.
Sexism, pure and simple. The world of the small jazz combo is STILL a boys’ club, and female interlopers are considered…weird. Pianists were tolerated sometimes: see Mary Lou Williams, Marian McPartland, and JoAnne Brackeen.
Although Melba Liston, who played alongside Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray on L.A.'s Central Ave back in the '40s, was the cat’s pajamas.
Don’t know anything about brass instruments and little about double bass, but double bass players have told me that playing the instrument is a physically hard, strenous activity - having large, strong hands seems to be a necessity for the job. This would obviously skew the male/female ratio. Thank Og for the electric bass with it’s managable scale length!
Let’s not forget the grossness factor. I played clarinet in high school band and I remember the horn players emptying their valves. Ick, it made me wanna puke. What chick wants to deal with that?
We did have a female tuba player and she rocked the house. She was 5’4" and all of about 125 lbs but she sure worked that thing like a pro.
Tina would have been tempting if it weren’t for the fact that one of my favorite Blue Note albums is his. Mean horn and a tight group and some really neat tunes. He deserves a listen at least, for any who have yet to hear him.
There were maybe ten others who turned out to be guys but whose names made me look. Once the article said “she” I included the link.
There’s at least one other female I didn’t include: Grace Kelly!