To think University Challange is sexist

[Uhohmummy]

Rounds on tonight's episode include "women and their husbands" and a picture round identifying male cricketers.
As usual, there's just one woman in the 8 contestants.
It surely cant be the case that most male students are cleverer than women so why aren't there more women on there each week? DH thinks it's because they just don't apply but I think there must be some other, possibly soft, barriers to women applying.
I'd be interested to hear if anyone agrees (or not).

When I was at university they selected the team after endless testing so I assume it was the brightest who got through, it wouldn't make sense to disadvantage the team by selecting a weaker person, whichever sex.

And to be honest, I couldn't recognise a single female cricketer (to be fair, I didn't recognise the England male cricket team either even when they were on the table behind me in a restaurant once..)

There have been a few articles about this with interviews from some previous female contestants e.g. www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11508953/University-Challenge-The-real-reasons-why-women
I watch it most weeks but I don't think I'd want to be on it!

I went to one of tonight's unis and there were mock university challenge quizzes and other general knowledge test to ensure you sent the best competitors. Yabu to claim its sexism.

What is the issue with a round on "women and thier husbands"?

You'd need to know the proportion of applicants who were women and the ratio in the College or University concerned.

If women "just don't apply" there will be reasons for that, it would be remiss just to shrug and ignore it imo.

Article sounds interesting Made but the link doesn't work. Would you mind reposting?
whirly I'm not suggesting women aren't chosen because they are women, more that there seem to be multiple reasons why they probably aren't applying in the first place (perception they won't succeed, treatment in media of previous female contestants, etc). And it isn't the fact that it was male cricketers, it is the fact a whole round consisted of identifying male cricketers. in my view men are far more likely to know the answers to questions like that. The questions seem skewed in favour of men.

AssassinatedBeauty exactly. Is it that women aren't women applying? If they really are not applying then why not? And if they are applying in equal numbers why aren't they getting through?
My issue with the women and their husbands round is that it sounded patronisingly. Why not just call it "influential couples in their field"?

Was on uni team. We were all "geeks" - more "geeks" are male.

I was the only girl on the year, possibly only 1st year but not the only member of the uni fencing team (another geek activity in my day!)

(sorry for the additional "women" above)

Isn't it more that the nature of the questions favour male ability to recount tedious facts rather than the female tendency to actually analyse facts? Certainly when courses have a larger coursework element, female outcomes improve. The current trend of doing away with coursework and having exam-only testing is to reverse the perceived unfairness as girls are doing better than boys academically (the horror!)

When I was at Uni there was a general call out to try out for the team. Mainly male students applied, females who applied had a better chance of getting through. But most female students had better things to do with their time (study, societies, career activities etc.).

As for questions - I remember a round on architecture and one on art and not enough on science for our more science team.

Selection was in house quiz paper picking a couple of teams then UC itself selected the teams after that. Not sure male/female composition was a factor.

As a vaguely sport interested female due to media coverage I have far more chance of identifying members of the male cricket, football and rugby teams than the female teams. Tennis, gymnastics, skating and equestrian sport are much more balanced in their coverage...

It's because a lot of the questions are like science and engineering. If more questions were about embroidery and dress making I am sure the teams would move toward equality. The question is, how better would the audience be served, and the teams appropriately tested if serious accomplishments were excluded in favour of relative frivolity..

'One or two student stunners not enough for breast hungry mumsnet'

Ok I'll stop

Sorry about the link, if you Google 'women University Challenge' it's the second result

It's because society doesn't encourage young women to show off their intellect amd hence push themselves forward to apply for something like university challenge. Yes women are at university, and very successful there, but I don't imagine things have changed much in 15 years since I was there, and imagine tutorials are still full of young men holding forth, while the women quietly get on with studying and getting good degrees.

I think the Telegraph article covers a lot of the main issues and makes a lot of sense. Part of it is certainly what @Thenorthbloodywellremembers describes.

It's interesting if you look at TV quizzes where there are teams and the composition of teams. Lots of reasons why either people don't put themselves forward and also the question types asked.

Other shows like Only Connect are interesting as they are more 'thinking' and making connections as opposed to pure facts.

No. No, it's not.

It might also simply boil down to the fact that males are in general more competitive maybe?

I knew two people who were on University Challenge teams (one male, one female and from different universities) and the teams they were on both only had one woman.

As to the OP - I saw tonight's episode.

There was one round about male cricketers and one round about women and their husbands.

The rest was geography, science, music, literature and so on - not really seeing the bias?

Happy to be corrected though.

Do you think that men, in general, being more competitive is something that should be accepted as the reason, so we shrug our shoulders and say well it's ok, it's to be expected. Or should that be looked into, and maybe consider why men seem to be more competitive and confident in their abilities? Should we not want women to also be competitive and confident in their abilities?

I do a lot of pub quizzing and I'm often the only female there.

Ok seems like most think IABU - fair enough. I did ask!
Crowdie yes those were the 2 rounds I was complaining about. Clearly not every round is inherently sexist. It's bad enough to me that 2 were.
I don't agree that more men are geeks or men are more competitive/like quizzes more by nature. I do agree men are more likely (and encouraged) to put themselves forward.
Thanks for referencing the article, Made. It's interesting reading. Interesting too that it ends with the fact the BBC said it would ask universities for more support to ensure diversity in the show’s candidates next year. Doesn't seem to have been very successful!

I'd guess that there are fewer females on the teams because the people who are really into competitive quizzing - and invest a lot of time in to it - tend to be male and the standard team selection process at colleges favours those people who have a lot of experience with this sort of quizzing. It's historically a male dominated thing which probably makes some women more hesitant to get involved.

It's also worth mentioning that many of the women who have been on the show in recent years have faced a lot of scrutiny, sexual comments and harrasment online. I imagine that this also dissuades a lot of excellent female quizzers from applying to be on the tv show.