istory will be made next Saturday afternoon, by 18 women simply getting into two boats. It is nearly 90 years since the first Oxford and Cambridge women’s boat race. But this is the first time that they will be allowed to race on the same day, on the same stretch of water, with equal television coverage and funding. Clare Balding has even abandoned her usual job covering the Grand National to be there.
While the Boat Race is often dismissed as a gathering of the great, the good and the privileged, this is nevertheless a significant moment for women. Rowing was seen as an unfeminine pursuit for years. The first time women attempted a race, in 1927, hostile crowds massed on the towpath to protest, and the women were judged not on speed but “steadiness, finish, rhythm and other matters of style”.
This prejudice remained deeply ingrained; as late as 1962, the boat club captain of Selwyn College, Cambridge, wrote to the university women’s boat club: “I personally do not approve of women rowing at all. It is a ghastly sight, an anatomical impossibility and physiologically dangerous… wouldn’t you rather be playing tennis or something like that?”
It makes me laugh to think of what that captain would make of women’s tennis now – it’s a far cry from the Joan Hunter Dunn image he appears to be conjuring up. Still, we’re now moving beyond those kinds of attitudes – not least thanks to Helena Morrissey, chief executive of Newton Asset Management, the new sponsors of the Boat Race. She demanded equal treatment for the women’s race as the price of her firm’s sponsorship – and got it.
Elitist the Boat Race may be, but it’s become an outlier in women’s sport, which is generally being taken more seriously. In recent years there have been real attempts to boost women’s sport – with high-profile role models emerging such as Jessica Ennis-Hill, Ellie Simmonds and Christine Ohuruogu, as well as campaigns like “This Girl Can”. The result is that Sport England says 6.91 million women played sport once a week in 2013-2014, up 650,000 from 2005-06. So the idea that sport isn’t suitable for women has hopefully been dealt with.
Sadly, although this change is symbolised in the women’s boat race, another iconic university competition has found itself in choppy waters. Last week, Jeremy Paxman asked during the University Challenge semi-final: “Why on earth are there no women left in this stage of the competition?”
This year, just 25 of the initial 112 contestants were women. Yet it’s not that there aren’t enough intelligent women to pick from; in 2014, nearly 58,000 more women than men were accepted to study at university. The makers of University Challenge say it’s not their fault – but the way the universities pick their teams.
There may also be a difference in how men and women approach the contest. Jesse Honey, who took part in the 1998-99 University Challenge and went on to win Mastermind in 2010, says men treat quizzing like a sport, effectively going into training. “When I was the world quiz champion,” he recalls, “I was devoting an hour and a half a day looking at the news in the most minute detail.” (By comparison, his wife Helen, who appeared on University Challenge a year later than him, swotted up by “listening to Radio 4”).
But I think it goes beyond women not dedicating hours to remembering what, for instance, the SI unit of viscosity is. Those who do go on the show say that they find themselves the target of criticism and abuse similar to the kind of sneering the Selwyn boat captain employed in the Sixties – even if it mainly now comes via social media.
Gail Trimble, the so-called “human Google” from the 2008-09 series, was the target of huge vitriol online – and was approached to do a photo-shoot by the lads’ mag Nuts. Jenny Harris, part of the winning team a year later, spoke of being made to feel “women shouldn’t be showing off how clever they are”.
“I think it’s maybe seen as cooler to be a nerdy boy than to be a nerdy girl,” confides one recent Cambridge female contestant. “So perhaps young women are still worried it is just a little too nerdy.”
This all seems uncomfortably close to those early arguments made to dissuade women from participating in sport. If we can overcome those kinds of ideas in one arena, surely it’s time to get past the idea that women can’t be geeks, or nerds – or more simply, clever and proud of it. That taking part in a quiz to show what they know isn’t a signal for them to be roundly laughed at or criticised.
Because what I’d like is for young girls to be able to turn on the television and see women rowing their guts out down the Thames, or slamming down the buzzer to answer which Asian verse form consists of 17 onji – and thoroughly enjoying either pursuit. And may the best team win.