Paxo: University Challenge isn’t sexist ... men just care more about quizzes!

JEREMY Paxman has suggested the reason University Challenge is dominated by men is because ‘more males than females care about quizzing’.

following this year’s all-male final – the third in five years – its host said the gender imbalance must be a ‘question of taste’.

However, he added that he would disagree with any proposal to ‘engineer’ the series to improve diversity, saying: ‘It is what it is. I suspect that — like football or darts — more males than females care about quizzing.’ In the latest series of the BBC 2 show, which ended on Monday, 78 per cent of the contestants who made it to the televised stage were men. And in the last five years, 95 per cent of finalists have been men.

It prompted women’s equality campaigners to accuse the university quiz scene of being ‘hostile to women’ – calling for quotas to ensure better diversity. female underrepresentation on the show has not been lost on Paxman, who asked in the 2015 semifinal: ‘Why on earth are there no women left in this stage of the competition?’

But writing in the financial Times yesterday, he said: ‘As for the testicle issue, since we know that intelligence is not determined by gender, it must be a question of taste.

‘The teams are not chosen by ... university authorities but by the students.’ On whether rules should be put in place to improve diversity, he said: ‘Long experience has convinced me that the contest cannot be engineered at any stage.’

Monday’s final, won by Balliol College, Oxford, was watched by 3.2million people. Paxman, who has hosted the series since 1994, said its continued popularity was proof that ‘we do like [clever-clogs]’.