Pointless- a feminist issue?

[Hakluyt]

I am addicted to Pointless- and many other quiz shows. It struck me yesterday that many of the questions seem biased towards traditionally male interests.

Now obviously there are many women who are interested in Champions League Football and Formula 1, but I do think it's safe to assume that it is more likely that men will be able to answer on these and similar topics and they come up a lot.

For the life of me, I can't think of any topics that women would be more likely to answer on- Chick Lit, I suppose? Anything else?

I only saw Pointless regularly when I was vainly trying to breastfeed my son three years ago, but based on what I saw then, I think you're right, many of the questions have a distinct gender bias.

Or maybe the allied assumption that premier league/champions' league football counts as 'general knowledge', which I think is problematic...

But then the cultural centrality of PL football annoys me anyway, especially how much space/time it takes up in the news media. And that coy little bit on the weekend news where the newsreader smiles and says to leave the room if you don't want to know the results they're about to read out... It makes me think of obsessive, remote-hogging man-children shrieking at the TV.

I wouldn't see 'chick lit' as at all comparable.

I've pondered this. I think they do well in making many of the sport questions actually "name a country" and the ones requiring naming players are usually in the final where there's a choice of different categories. I suspect women often do better on all the literature questions and the social history (it's not mainly military history like say University Challenge), and on identifying film stars - lots of questions on Oscar-winners, films with $actor who appeals to women, etc. And the odd question on fashion designers, embroidery terms, clothing. Royalty comes up a lot and is probably more of a female interest, also soaps. Sitcoms probably both sexes.

I suspect they make an effort to have nearly 50% female contestants given most quizzes have mainly male applicants. They do handle disability pretty well, subtly panning away when someone is presumably struggling to get into their chair.

Yes, I agree about disability- I was very impressed by the way they dealt with a blind contestant in Two Tribes recently.

I might watch a couple of episodes with an open spreadsheet and see what emerges. How many answers are women would be interesting for a start.

I've been complaining (to myself/friends/family, not the tv companies ) about this for years!

It is so true.

All these shows are so biased towards male interests. Why don't they ever have questions on

-what age does a child start school
-what age do children start to walk/talk
-how much is a pint of milk
-how much is child benefit
-how many brands of the pill are there
-what immunisations do DCs get

Etc etc

Even when they do sports questions it's never women's sports like how many players are there in a netball team, or what women's team won xyz tournament

Then men get to feel to feel superior because it's usually them winning these shows (didn't paxman make a comment about no women left on Uni challenge?)

(My DS regularly winds me up by saying boys are smarter than girls because they win these shows)

Absolutely maud. And the fact that "football" is news- women's football is niche.

I agree, OP (although Pointless may not be the worst at this). I think it is linked to what Maud says and how often what is culturally central is also male dominated.

"Even when they do sports questions it's never women's sports like how many players are there in a netball team, or what women's team won xyz tournament" yy

You might have a point, but I don't think it matters too much, but the 'men's' interests questions score highly anyway (football, motor racing - although all the Grand Prix fans I know are female, not male), whereas 'women's' questions like literature and theatre score much lower and you're much more likely to get a pointless answer in the final on something like Booker Prize winners. It works in our favour!

That should say 'because' not 'but'...

Actually if you know your women's sport you can score very low or even pointless because their 100 people will likely be 50/50 men/women. When there's a question like 'medal winners from the last Olympics' - it will all be female athletes that are pointless answers (for better or worse).
They do have quite a lot of questions like that - same for tennis players, winners of majors in the last ten years or whatever, the lowest scoring answers are always the women.

I am sorry but if a a quiz sought to regain the gender balance by asking questions about school age and pints of milk I would be more than a bit . I would like to hear some questions that would be considered gender balanced but sadly they are likely to be selb based.

Yes, it's a good point too that the female answers are the lowest scoring.

Recently there was a oscar category question and afaicr the top answer was best actor.

Know your female Olympians & tennis players and you will do very well.

There was a dinosaur picture round recently and I was surprised how low the scores were. Do women know their dinosaurs from all the kids books on the subject?

I bet if they had a category on the calorie content of food the women would win!

I may have watched Pointless a bit obsessively - since a couple years back when HIGNFY etc hit the news about too few women, it's been noticeable that Pointless always has a woman as one answer when there's a list of people with clues, often more even when the women are much less well known. I do wonder about the male/female split of finalists and winners of the jackpot, as the money often needs obsessive knowledge of bands or sport, but then I usually would get the money for Booker Prizes, politicians, or London Transport. If I ever did get on I'd look up recent female tennis players as no one ever remembers Eastern European ones, and Mercury prize winners. And almost all actors were in either Peter's Friends or the Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus or Madagascar 2...

Personally I would be shit hot on F1 and utterly clueless about chick lit.

I think you are barking up the wrong tree a bit with this. If you want to categorise interests into stereotypically masculine and feminine, I've seen plenty of rounds on children's literature, children's TV, fashion, cookery (plus typically women do better on rounds about literature in general). And there have been a lot of really interesting women in the answers to various rounds recently -- several where I've thought shamefacedly that I really ought to know her name and probably would have done had the question been about the male equivalent (and yes, where there's a question with a lot of possible answers the answers that are women almost always score lowest, which is a useful rule of thumb).

I think the money only often needs obsessive knowledge of bands or sport because those are the categories that teams tend to go for. When they are brave and plump for "Norway" or something then the actual questions are often quite easy. The music final rounds are something of a poisoned chalice even if you are an obsessive fan, and the sport ones you tend to need to get lucky with it coinciding with the more obsessive bits of your interest (there was a sport final round once where I could have rattled off at least ten or twelve pointless answers off the top of my head because while no one in their right mind would describe me as obsessive about sport it happened to be about an area that's mildly obscure to their answer panel but I knew a bit about and a bit was quite sufficient).

-what age does a child start school
-what age do children start to walk/talk
-how much is a pint of milk
-how much is child benefit
-how many brands of the pill are there
-what immunisations do DCs get

I am a mother and can only definitely answer one of those which is the first one. On ages children do things - can't remember the particular and very vague about the generality.

I have no idea what milk costs or how much child benefit is. Even when we were in receipt of it it was paid direct into his father's bank account not mine and I doubt either of us could have told you how much it was.

^that

Post is missing the point so spectacularly!

It's all very interesting. I do think there is an element of "men's" knowledge being general knowledge and women's knowledge being niche. It's on a par with the default human being a white male- and anything else being an anomaly.

I don't know about men's knowledge being the default knowledge. Women seem to achieve higher academic outcomes in the main. Here in Ireland they had to introduce a 'special' exam for prospective medical students that included rediculous things like spatial awareness to redress the fact that women were taking up the vast majority of places in medicine on the basis of the state exams. They felt it was important that there was a gender balance in medicine funny how long it has taken to come to that conclusion

Questions such as 'what is the price of milk' etc are missing the point, because they're not Pointless type questions.

I have noticed that Formula One and footie get a lot of questions. Though other sports like tennis get a lot too.

Films, telly, music, politics, history and geography all get loads of questions, and are not noticeably gendered.

Has anyone actually done any count of types of question, and what is perceived as gendered? (Bet there'll loads of confirmation bias unless/until that's done).

I love pointless. I think someone asked Richard Osman, self confessed feminist, a similar question about sports rounds. He questioned the assumption that Sport is for men but acknowledged that sport was a great category for pointless as it's full of lists. So I think the format of pointless lends itself to sports questions as there has to be multiple correct answers.

It's funny that pp thinks the price of milk is a female question as that's often put to politicians to show they're out of touch. Maybe they'd still get it wrong even if they were ordinary blokes!

I don't think this just applies to pointless though. It's all quiz shows.

Especially university challenge.

There are even whole quiz shows that specialise in 'men's' interests esp sport eg question of sport, they think it's all over.

Where are the quizzes with mostly female contestants/panelists that specialise in 'female' interests?

I vaguely remember the quiz 'telly addicts' - that was probably more equal?

Well I only watch Pointless atm but I'm happy to keep an eye on the questions and report back.

How much is a pint of milk?
I don't bloody know
I cant remember the last time I bought a pint
Dh is on shop duty
I don't even know how much child benefit we get. It goes straight in the bank
I do know my F1 and a fair few footballers. I don't read chick lit, so I would be rubbish on that butwwould ace a round on Stephen king

^that

Post is missing the point so spectacularly!

What point were you trying to prove. I'm not the only person who queried it.

*There are even whole quiz shows that specialise in 'men's' interests esp sport eg question of sport, they think it's all over.

Where are the quizzes with mostly female contestants/panelists that specialise in 'female' interests?*

University challenge is made up of people at university. Husband gets the science questions right as he's got a physics degree. I get music and Greek mythology and we're both pretty hot on literature, I know far more about 19th century British political history than he does but he probably is better on post 1945 history than me.

I don't watch sports quizzes but seem to recall on the odd occasions I've caught the end of them that women appear. I hate sport but I'm sure the many,many women who compete in all sports at all levels will not agree it's a women's thing.

What are "female interests"? that we could have a special interest quiz on? I know a fair about the golden age of Edwardian children's book illustrators but in my experience seems to be a unisex enthusiasm.