Music and Gender

I've experienced music in many different settings such as church, marching band, theater, and vocal ensembles...some all female and some mixed.
In churches where there was a traditional choir I didn't notice much of a gender role difference, but in the churches that had praise bands the instrumentalist were male and the soloist was normally female. When I was 14 I wanted to play the flute, but I was told I had tuba lips, "Girls don't play the Tuba..." I said; so I joined the color guard. In marching band, the brass and percussion section was predominately male, while the woodwind section was full of ladies--who didn't have tuba lips. I performed in the Suessical the Musical, of which the main character is the Cat in the Hat... well...many believe that the cat should always be male, and there was a big dispute over it; the female who auditioned for the role may have had the better voice, but the cat is a man...just saying--weird.
When it comes to choirs, I enjoy the diversity of voices; all female ensembles...um, not so much. As far as the difference in gender between voice types, it seems basses and sopranos always think they're the most important part of the ensemble (which probably explains why every man wants to be a bass and every woman wants to be a soprano(it seems)), whereas, the tenors and altos are always the "can't get rights" (I don't mean this in a negative way; the inner voices are more difficult than the melodic soprano or profound bass line, they take more time to get right and great harmonies don't exist without them).
As far as western art music goes I've noticed that in operas, mezzos almost always have the secondary or villain role ( of course there are some exceptions), sopranos the lead, and it doesn't work out the same for their male counterparts.