Boy on the Girls Maths Olympiad Team?

[DarkDenim]

ThePosieParker tweeted this. Outwardly niche but the poor reserve girl that didn't make the team because a boy was apparently chosen instead of her. I checked and that competition was set up specifically for girls because boys dominate the prestigious IMO teams.
It just beggars belief 🙄

I saw this too. I really thought that the Supreme Court ruling would put an end to such nonsense.
UKMT is a great charity & most secondary school kids will sit one of their maths challenges at some point during their school careers. What on earth are they thinking?

If so, that is terrible.
There is evidence that girls do better in maths, and crucially, are more confident in it and other STEM subjects where they are in single sex education. So to have their parade rained on like this is really damaging.

Fucking hell. Others have articulated it better, but I stand by fucking hell.

This is another thing where i am now thinking we need to put boys in all the teams, and let them win everything. And then hopefully, finally, the parents and teachers and everyone else will put a stop to it.

But the boy might well not win and then everyone will say "aha see, there's no advantage so why separate the sexes". Like they did with that "no thank you" olympic trans weight lifter, I forget his name, who lost bigly against the women.

Not the point if the boy wins or doesn't win. Still shouldn't be there

Edit - had to look it up, the guy was called Laurel Hubbard and it was Sarah Robles who said the no thank you.

As a woman in STEM and mum of teen girls this makes me so angry

Honestly they don’t want women and girls to have anything for themselves

Was the lad a bit too thick to make it onto the boys team or were they just using him as a ringer or what?

How did he get from classroom to Girls Math Olympiad?

plot twist - turns out he won a gold medal at last year's IMO so far from being thick he's already been crowned as the best boy at maths in the UK.

Can only assume that the less prestigious girls' competition is being used as a girlhood validation tool. It's not like he needs the 'widening participation' to be recognised for his maths ability

As if anything could make it worse, this actually does. Pfft!

This is really bad. A male relative of mine was on the boy's team last year, I'll ask him what he knows. It makes a difference potentially for stuff like Uni interviews. Would be another thing in your favour for Oxbridge, etc. So that could really affect her.

These are their regulations

2.4. Contestants must be female. The Annual Regulations may require Observers C to be female. There are no restrictions on the gender of other Participants and Observers.

However, look at page 8 here for why this is pointless. https://www.imo-register.org.uk/2023-egmo-report-emily.pdf

https://www.egmo.org/egmos/egmo14/regulations/

However, look at page 8 here for why this is pointless.

Gender at EGMO

Another thing brought to the Jury was whether or not to make clearer the gender-based criterion for competing at EGMO. Currently, the General Regulations state ‘Contestants must be female’ and ‘Each invited country is entitled ... to send a team consisting of up to four contestants’. EGMO in general cannot dictate how the countries choose their teams, but there was a proposal to specify a ‘loosest possible criteria for who is eligible’, which would have been some combination of ‘anyone identifying as female,’ ‘anyone not identifying as male,’ and ’anyone assigned female at birth.’

Many people contributed to the discussion, with ideas on how to make EGMO welcoming and suggestions from their own national girls’ Olympiads. The general consensus was that ‘the EGMO Jury is not qualified to define “female”, and the General Regulations will do as they are for now, but we’ll keep this discussion in mind for the future.’

I should add, for any young trans mathematician who is keen to compete at EGMO, that the discussion was overwhelmingly positive. Many leaders were keen to share their experiences of how they managed to simplify the process for trans students competing in girls’ national Olympiads. For example, the Mexican leader brought up the example of the Mexican girls’ interstate Olympiad, which follows a very similar format to EGMO. For this contest, any team Leader wishing to bring a student whose documentation doesn’t say ‘female’ should write a little note to the Jury asserting that they’re not male, and that’s that. Though no decisions were taken this year at EGMO, I can imagine that, if a decision is ever taken to update the General Regulations, it will be something very similar

So, in summary, this is an event for girls, but any boy is welcome if he wants to pretend to be a girl. These people sound insane.

For example, the Mexican leader brought up the example of the Mexican girls’ interstate Olympiad, which follows a very similar format to EGMO. For this contest, any team Leader wishing to bring a student whose documentation doesn’t say ‘female’ should write a little note to the Jury asserting that they’re not male, and that’s that.

Mexico, hey?

"Mexico has one of the world’s highest femicide rates, with about 10 women violently killed every day. The rate of women’s killings has increased by 137% since 2015 — four times that of other homicides."

https://inkstickmedia.com/progress-without-protection-for-women-in-mexico/

I expect the Mexican girls' Olympiad is like this.
Mexico: 15 fake transgender candidates disqualified from election | Mexico | The Guardian