Feminism: chat
Eggheads quiz - lack of women in the questions!
nestoftables · 25/06/2021 18:20
Don't usually watch Eggheads but I am now 17 minutes into the half hour quiz show and many rounds in, and only one question so far has mentioned women in either the questions or answers. Rounds on sport, film and TV and science etc. and so many questions about men!
MotherOffCod · 25/06/2021 19:07
Counting the ratio is really revealing on these things.
A year back I started counting the ratio of women’s to men’s in the sports section of the guardian front page online.
It was 6 months before the first time there were an equal number.
And the modal ratio was 5:1 over a year
Marginally better lately, but it’s got a long way to shift to get close to parity.
There has never been more on women than men on any occasion I’ve checked, which is most days.
AuntieStella · 25/06/2021 19:12
It's one of the reasons why I like Pointless. Yes, it can vary between episodes, but there are a good number of questions on women's sport, and questions on artists, scientists, writers etc always feature both sexes.
And they have questions on things that are (arguably) female-dominated pastimes such as knitting, dressmaking
nettie434 · 25/06/2021 19:24
@CrossPurposes
Quizogyny is a brilliant and apt description CrossPurposes. Apparently many more men than women apply to be on quiz shows. I am sure the type of questions that are asked reinforces this. Pointless does better than most at having a broader range of topics and I think the gender balance among contestants is more even.
The other thing that is really noticeable in Pointless is that if there is a question on eg tennis players, you are likely to do better (that is choose an answer selected by fewer people), if you choose a woman player for your answer. It's not just sport. The same would apply to questions about politicians or Oscar winners.
stillcrazyafterall · 25/06/2021 19:33
A fair few years ago I was on a game show, four contestants, I was the only female. I got knocked out first, c'est la vie, not the first time, but when watching it later EVERY question was really male orientated, (and I was an engineer so lived in a male world). I was quite annoyed after watching it, it was so patently obvious 😡
AuntieStella · 25/06/2021 19:38
The other thing that is really noticeable in Pointless is that if there is a question on eg tennis players, you are likely to do better (that is choose an answer selected by fewer people), if you choose a woman player for your answer. It's not just sport. The same would apply to questions about politicians or Oscar winners
Very true.
OTOH I saw a man choose women's athletics as his jackpot question and hit 3 pointless answers with champion women javelin throwers. We can't patch the whole world, but seeing a round like that gave me hope that you can get entertaining airtime for all sorts of stuff, and good on (peaktime) Pointless for being one of the best.
Impossible (lunchtime BBC quiz) is usuallyma reasonable mix too
CrossPurposes · 25/06/2021 19:40
To be fair I didn't invent the word: www.etsy.com/uk/shop/Quizogyny
AnnaMagnani · 26/06/2021 10:40
It's noticeable on University Challenge that they have a lot more 'Women Answers' rounds - often the contestents aren't very good at them
DH and I found it v obvious and apparently it's a conscious effort by the question writers to make it more balanced, and get more female quizzers.
ginghamtablecloths · 26/06/2021 16:12
On the re-runs of Millionaire (yes, I know I'm pathetic) they sometimes have a question for the 'fastest finger first' which is female friendly with more women contestants - still a man gets through first.
On The Chase the Beastie Boy has been felled by a knitting question.
AuntieStella · 26/06/2021 16:29
@newnortherner111
Question setters are not usually named,
There was a QI Elves team on Only Connect (and perhaps other shows). They set the questions for QI and are researchers for other shows too. One of the team of 4 on the show was a woman, and from the 25 on their website, 8 are women.
I have no idea if this is typical.
To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.