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 think that might be the core of it, Gertrude.

Tolkien is definitely for men though. It's all blah blah, let's argue over this daft ring and be sad about how we all want to king. Women have got better things to worry about.

Want to BE King!

Last round was good. So mainly ok on the feminist front?

They don't have many cooking rounds which I would have thought is more of a female subject.

Is it not sexist to assume Football is for Men and Cooking is for Women....

Yes toast. Can't help thinking female protagonists would have confiscated the ring saying 'if you can't play nicely none of you can have it'. And then made them all say sorry & shake hands before tea.

Yes, women read more literature and men read more non-fiction. I know that to be true from studies and reports done by both bookselling/publishing companies and libraries.

I still believe that men and women of the same social class/educational status have more knowledge and hobbies/interests in common with each other than men do with othet other men of different class/education and women ditto.

It's sexist to say football is for only men and cooking for only women. I don't think people on the thread are doing that.

There are certain pieces of information that are overwhelmingly gender specific. I personally adore the moments when a very female-skewed question comes up on University Challenge and a panel of eight boys stares blankly with glazed eyes until Jeremy gives up, and I say to DH "This is why you shouldn't pick single sex teams!" Obviously there are some men who know who Anne Shirley was, or who Pauline's plain friend was in Ballet Shoes, or what a leg-o-mutton sleeve is, but it's really very few. I did once have one male friend who'd read A Little Princess but he had some kind of lexical fixation and had read absolutely every book he'd ever had access to.

Anyway, lay off Pointless, and the questions on University Challenge at least cannot be faulted - they have fewer sports questions than any other quiz and the bulk of their repertoire comes from standard academic disciplines.

I was actually a contestant on Pointless a few years ago

and won the trophy, no big deal, wanna make something of it

Our categories were:
Countries entered into the Eurovision
Directors
Locations of books
Swimmers
Shipwrecks
Halle Berry films

Not particularly gendered either way I would say, and actually I was told I had carried my male partner through. knobhead was useless

I suppose there are only so many categories researchers can choose from and as our culture is heavily male focused, the questions reflect that.

Did you get to hug Xander and/or Richard?

Literature questions regarding books written by women will be easier for 100 random women than 100 random men as statistically men are less likely to read books by female authors.

In terms of more academic questions 100 random women will do better at the subjects girls are more likely to take at school/Uni eg languages and biology out of the stem subjects.

It's so frustrating on this thread that some people cannot distinguish between anecdote and evidence.

I personally know a lot about f1. But I've never come across another woman who also does.

Sport questions women would do better on would be ice skating & gymnastics.

As for tv, shows like call the midwife, sex and the city and desperate housewives are going to be known better by women.

And since mothers do most childcare they are more likely to know child related questions.

It's not 'sexist' to say these things. It's an observation on the gendered roles and behaviour we have in this patriarchal society.

Someone made a good point earlier about how men's knowledge is more highly valued. This was so evident on last night's pointless celebrities where the Canadian woman was teased for her knowledge of Lindsay Lohan, kirsten dunst and Anne Hathaway films.

And yes we should expect pointless to be a more 'neutral' quiz show. Given its show time it probably has more female viewers than male!

I've got Pointless on, and the round on right now is 'forenames of supermodels'.

I'm watching now too.

This astrology round is probably quite woman-friendly!

3 out of 4 rounds have been on entertainment! It's not usually that biased.

Sorry, didn't mean feminine or masculine bias, just meant they are all in basically the same category.

I'm watching university challenge to see how it compares tonight.

An economics question so far.

Considering sending in a list of questions on MN acronyms. You do see it come up sometimes but it's all obvious ones like 'DH' or 'LOL'. Which aren't even MN specific.

Watching again. They've just had a sports round. Identifying commentators from their pictures. 3/5 were women.

Once I was in a pub quiz that had both 'Sport' and 'Football' rounds - I asked that the next week they set 2 rounds that were biased in favour of women... the rounds were 'Calorific Values' and 'Perfume Houses'.

Personally, as others have said, I feel it is more damaging to perpetuate the idea that there are 'male' and 'female' subjects. I was raised by my parents with little focus between boys and girls interests. From a young age I watched f1 with both my parents, had the opportunity to try ballet/gymnastics/various music lessons and equal focus was given to all subjects - english, maths, science, geography, history. They encouraged me to keep up maths at a levels, to give balance and emphasised the importance of this for daily life and all careers. I much prefer (and read more) non-fiction books and biographies, and DH and I spend most of our joint time together watching engineering / historical / geographical documentaries or news channels.

Rather than calling for quiz shows to introduce more 'female' subjects, I would prefer to encourage my DC to experience and pursue a wide variety of interests and not to be constrained by stereotypical ideas of what they should be interested in as determined by their sex or gender.