University challenged Why quiz shows will never be gender neutral
A gender-neutral quizzing world? Women have better things to do, says Gyles Brandreth
In my experience, quiz nerds are usually male – and as a rule (though it’s dangerous to generalise) in appearance more like Mr Bean than George Clooney. On the whole you’d think of them as more geekish than gorgeous, a theory not disproved when watching University Challenge, which critics have this week decried for its lack of gender balance among contestants. “We have an issue getting women to apply,” explained Bobby Seagull, who captained Emmanuel’s team during 2016-17; Rosie Mckeown, who competed as part of last year’s winning team from St John’s Cambridge, described the “hostility” female contestants often face on social media once the show airs, and “an issue with women underestimating themselves”, as being the key barriers to its male-dominated panels.
But is it so bad that quizzes have become a kind of “safe space” for male fact fans? Who, I’m sure, know the word “nerd” first appeared in print in 1951 in a story by the American writer Dr Seuss (while the word “geek” comes from the Low German “geck” meaning “fool” or “freak”).
My own experience in this arena is extensive. I was the quiz team captain at school, while in my 20s, I founded the National Scrabble Championships and became European Monopoly Champion. I’ve edited a quizzer magazine and hosted an assortment of quiz shows on radio and TV. I’ve even taken part in Celebrity Mastermind
– where the three male finalists all ended up ahead of the lone woman.
I can tell you that with almost any quiz, you will find men rather than women entering the lists at a ratio of 2:1 – and when it comes to the victor’s laurels, 90per cent of the time it’s the men who come out on top.
Why? Some believe it’s because men’s brains are hard-wired differently, storing and retrieving information in a different way to women. On top of that, according to the stereotype, men are
more comfortable with facts than feelings, with Mars beating Venus in the intergalactic iteration of University Challenge.
I’m not so sure. I reckon it’s much simpler. I think men are just more likely to be nerds – in my day burying themselves in reference books (aged 10, I seriously tried to learn the contents of Pears Cyclopaedia by heart) – or, nowadays, losing themselves on their phones or computers in the hopes of digging up and mastering abstruse information. Their pasty faces and poor complexions are explained by the lack of natural light they get. Indeed beneath the bedclothes, young male Scrabble players are notorious for spending hours mastering the twoletter word list: young women being far less likely to see the value in knowing that qi (as an alternative spelling to chi) is allowed.
Obviously I am clued up on twoletter words myself: I know that a zo is a type of Himalayan cattle, and my wife knows it, too. But, tellingly, she wasn’t as excited as I was to discover that za is permissible in Scrabble, as a colloquial abbreviation for “pizza”. “Get a life!” was her response when I told her.
The truth is that you can’t really be a quiz buff if you’ve got a proper life. You simply haven’t got the time, and you’ve better things to do.
That said, my wife was at St Anne’s College, Oxford, in its all-female days, and she was first reserve when St Anne’s appeared on University
Challenge. She knows a lot – the women from St Anne’s do. Another frequent criticism of University Challenge is that there’s a shortage of women in the final rounds. As a rule, that’s true – but when, a couple of years back, there was a show featuring an all-female team of St Anne’s alumnae (Dame Mary Archer, Dr Janina Ramirez, Jacky Rowland and Rebecca Morelle), they trounced their opponents by 130 points.
That’s the point. When it comes to quizzes, women would win every time. If they could be bothered.