women in Quiz Bowl

[studentjournalism101]

hi.

I'm a student journalist who has a couple questions about women in quiz bowl. Please include your age,name,gender and quiz ball team, if possible. Thank you for your cooperation! Below are several questions:

Why are there so many fewer women than men in quiz bowl (especially considering so many coaches are women)?

Are there differences between the way women play and the way men play?

Are men and woman treated differently in quiz bowl?

Are the questions, like trash, more geared toward a male players?

Is the atmosphere of quiz bowl sexist?

thanks again - Georgia Richardson

[MLafer]

i think dan passner can answer these

[Gonzagapuma1]

quiz ball

[The Time Keeper]

Paging Ryan Westbrook to thread #5371.

[Auks Ran Ova]

quiz ball

[Down and out in Quintana Roo]

I will say that i have heard many many teams make sexist comments during competitions, especially for the "all girls team." There is often an aura of low expectations surrounding female players too, clearly a sexist attitude. And that "they only know Literature" or equivalents.

[First Chairman]

Georgia,

I'd refer you to the Special Discussions section. Also, feel free to email me.

[Blackboard Monitor Vimes]

As the only female to have replied in this thread so far (16-year-old from Gov B, btw), I personally don't think it's that big a deal. Guys tend to be more aggressive, and being a good quizbowl player requires being aggressive. That's why girls are underrepresented. That's also why it can be difficult for teams to get multiple girls, as several aggressive girls in one place can result in a fairly hostile environment. I have seen several schools (e.g. State College, Cave Spring) where this is definitely not the case, as what I've seen of them has been female-dominated. As for there being a lot of female coaches, I'd say the numbers are fairly even and also irrelevant. State College has a female coach and very few male players; Collegiate has a female coach and 1 girl (that I've seen). As for playing style, I've observed in myself and several other female players (though certainly not all of them), a tendency towards caution. I've never seen a female player win a neg prize. That ties into the aggression thing I mentioned above. I will admit that if there is a girl on a team, she is usually their lit expert, but that's not always true. However, I'll quote a teammate who commented in practice one day: "Guys don't read." Players like Daichi from WJ, Nick from Dorman, and Doug from Stuyvesant obviously contradict that statement. I don't think I've been treated differently, but I interact very much like a guy and have some difficulty getting along with other girls. The trash I would say is even; I have a male teammate who gets the Desperate Housewives, etc. questions and I handle the sports. It would be making fairly wide gender assumptions to say questions are unbalanced. Since I've never had problems, I wouldn't say the atmosphere of quizbowl as a whole is sexist. There may be guys who object to losing to girls, but you find that in everything. People talk about the issue of the lack of women in quizbowl a lot, but I really don't think it's relevant.

[The Atom Strikes!]

I think that Sarah's aggression hypothesis hits the nail right on the head. However, I also think that certain people may put off some female players from Quizbowl.

[Blackboard Monitor Vimes]

I think that Sarah's aggression hypothesis hits the nail right on the head. However, I also think that certain people may put off some female players from Quizbowl.

I'd like to add to that, actually. Aggressive females are often athletes, and sports leave little time for quizbowl. Annalisa and Joanna (Gov '07) were field hockey players and would largely disappear at the beginning of the season, and I "retired" from our basketball team to focus on quizbowl. It is possible to do sports and quizbowl, but it's a lot of work. This may also account for some of the disparity.

[catsasslippers]

Hi, I'm Nina (18, Stuyvesant A). I'd like to apologize for the next thing I say before I say it. I beleive there are fewer women in quizbowl because on the whole there are fewer women with very high IQ's compared with men. In addition, teenage girls tend to be more concerned with whether or not they are considered "nerdy" than their male counterparts.

I don't really see too many differences between how men and women play because everyone plays differently. All the better players, male and female, seem more agressive, but I don't think it's an issue of gender.

I don't beleive the trash questions are geared more towards male players considering I have heard more than one question on things like America's Next Top Model (I know of only one male quizbowl player who watches the show, but I won't say who it is) that are clearly easier for the average girl to answer.

I don't beleive that quizbowl is sexist in the least. If anything I beleive good female players in quizbowl are even more highly respected.

[Blackboard Monitor Vimes]

I don't beleive that quizbowl is sexist in the least. If anything I beleive good female players in quizbowl are even more highly respected.

It's a more unique occurrence, which makes it more awesome. Nina (and any other girls who wander into this thread later), on a tangentially related note, do you think female players tend to be more competitive when they play against each other? Playing State College tends to frustrate me to no end...I've beaten Nick Clusserath on lit questions, but I've never beaten Laura (I'm pretty sure that's her name...State College's captain).

[aestheteboy]

At my school, there are many more men than women on (non-sports) competitive teams, such as quizbowl, math team, debate, and mock trial. I'm not sure why this is the case (aggressiveness is probably a part of it), but it's not an isolated phenomenon true only for quizbowl. I do wish more girls played quizbowl though.

Also, I'd like to just say that being good at quizbowl is really not an indication of high IQ, merely an indication of intellectual curiosity and decent memory.

[catsasslippers]

Also, I'd like to just say that being good at quizbowl is really not an indication of high IQ, merely an indication of intellectual curiosity and decent memory.

Which are not at all associated with IQ. Where would I get a silly Idea like that.

To be honest I'm glad there are not a lot of women in quizbowl--it's part of why I enjoy the game. There is a lot less drama, and a lot less general silliness.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

Girls?!?!?!?

[JohnAndSlation]

I also will definitely agree with the aggressiveness theory. Honestly, I think that's the major difference between male and female players. The team at my high school rarely had any shortage of girls, but many schools rarely have any girls on their teams. The only reason I can think of is the fact that there are simply so many guys on teams that it's a little bit intimidating to end up being the only girl.

[BuzzerZen]

I beleive there are fewer women in quizbowl because on the whole there are fewer women with very high IQ's compared with men.

First of all, this is probably false. Show me your study. Second of all, there is nothing close to a consensus that IQ measures anything about intelligence at all. Kind of like the SAT. So this is a strange suggestion.

[First Chairman]

I thank the Sarah and Nina for their input. Hopefully the girls from State College could see this thread... I was going to save this for a Special Discussion but...

In my opinion, the reasons why women and minorities are underrepresented in quiz bowl reflects similar underrepresentations in math, science, and technology fields. It's not that women or minorities are not as smart, but there is something to be said about the competitive nature of the game. Competitions like MathCounts, Spelling, and Geography Bees do an internal audit on the demographic breakdown, and once you get to a phase of selective competition (winners make the next round), there is a skew towards boys. Academic Decathlon also has a disparity, but from my experience at the state level (Ohio), the gender parity is a bit closer to even in general.

I wish fancynancy were back online. She was one of the best girls playing in NC last year before moving on to college. She had experience with Alabama middle and high school quiz bowl before being part of a team at an all-girls school. You might want to search the board to get insight on her posts.

That said, I have done my best over the years to quantitatively observe the circuit. Of course, no one here fills out surveys (I've tried informal ones twice), so everything I say is anecdotal and subject to correction. On the other hand, what I see mirrors the issue of disparity in academia and industry science. First, the game is highly dependent on writers, and the demographic of the writers and editors in recent years has been almost exclusively male. I'm not in the college circuit to know, but I cannot recall a woman being named chief editor of any of the major nationals in high school or college (TRASH I haven't kept up with them to know; Carol from Tennessee in the late 80's probably was an editor, but was she chief???), despite knowing of the few women who can write solid questions. I do not recall many women running question-writing companies (though some like Sue Korosa will write their own questions for their own tournaments). If there is something that really raises questions to me, it's this dearth.

I could name maybe a few people of minority profile who have ever been a TD (Samer being one of them) of a national, though I know a few women have been TD at a few high school or college events. NSC this year will have Jessie Bykowski and Tricia Southard as TD and Assistant TD, who along with Allison Manzuk (who has been an NSC TD) have been in the leadership ranks for PACE; we are interested in seeing more girls in our ranks once you graduate from high school.

That said, the issue is extremely complex. Why women do not rise to leadership positions in management/business or law shows that the issue is influenced by society somewhat. But within our own community, women stay in quiz bowl because of the environment imposed by the team and the coaches; the attrition that happens at the hs-college transition is one where lots of casual players get weeded out, but it appears more women choose not to play quiz bowl in college. It could be because of societal pressures, new interests, class pressures, the more subjective nature of team leadership, or the lack of a tangible reward or recognition for being involved. But it could also be their first few experiences with practices or a few competitions when they experience the questions. What worries me is stereotype threat where the questions get to be so impossible (in their perspective) that they feel dumb and conform subconsciously to the societal stereotype that women and minorities aren't supposed to be so smart. Everyone sees what the leaders do and how they act, and some people just drop out because they don't want to associate with or become like the leaders.

No, I don't believe that women or minorities are intellectually inferior. I think they and all people need an environment that supports all learning in all aspects of intelligence (including social intelligence, logistical or managerial experience, and so on). But there's a reason there's a dearth of women going into engineering but an overflow going into vet school (it is really tough to get into vet school). Somehow, we have to come up with ways to become more welcoming to a more diverse community of incoming college students (which will become more diverse over the next decade) and reflect the diversity of this community if we can nurture them to positions of leadership. This is probably the one area where I'm not sure whether this community -- especially in college ranks -- has the ability to do that.

[The Atom Strikes!]

What's all this talk about minorities being underrepresented in Quiz Bowl? I can think of at least three minorities (foreign-born people, Jews, and Asians) that are very highly represented, especially at the higher end of the game.

[Blackboard Monitor Vimes]

What's all this talk about minorities being underrepresented in Quiz Bowl? I can think of at least three minorities (foreign-born people, Jews, and Asians) that are very highly represented, especially at the higher end of the game.

From what I've observed, I believe Dr. Chuck is referring to the small amounts of African American and Hispanic players.

[TheCzarMan]

At least in the NY/NJ area, the only school I know of that brings blacks to tournaments regularly and uses them is our team. I've rarely seen another team with one on their team, let alone playing on any of the teams.

[grapesmoker]

Which are not at all associated with IQ. Where would I get a silly Idea like that.

To be honest I'm glad there are not a lot of women in quizbowl--it's part of why I enjoy the game. There is a lot less drama, and a lot less general silliness.

Oh look, it's exactly the kind of sexist comment that keeps women out of quizbowl.

[Nine-Tenths Ideas]

Men accusing women of being sexist to women... Welcome to HSQuizbowl! Everything is crazy here!

[BethSaxton]

While I think there is some truth to quiz bowl playing women being a bit more aggressive than the female masses, I think part of the reason is that more men play is that men are much more likely to become focused on one activity to the exclusion of all others. In collegiate quiz bowl it's the male players who have been known to throw body and soul into being a "top shelf" player sometimes even to the detriment of their education, you know, the reason they were in college in the first place.

QB is a full year activity, there is no season end part way through the school year to allow for focus on something else. It is usually nearly impossible to practice and compete on a top team and still participate in drama, sports, or other time intensive activities. I would guess that in general teams with a large number of females don't practice as often as other teams.

And, I say this as someone who married a teammate, it takes a certain type of girl to be comfortable in the geek boy atmosphere that pervades quiz bowl. I assume there is a male majority at Star Trek conventions and role-playing game clubs as well.

I don't think that trash is sexist. Most trash tournaments are still packet submission, so they will reflect the interests of those writing them, but this isn't systematically anti-female. It _is_ sexist to imply that because sports is a major category it hurts female players. I would play more trash if I didn't work so many weekends.

I personally hate writing questions, but I doubt that has anything to do with me being female, but more accurately that I am unwilling to give up my free time for it. I have been co-TD at several tournaments and my husband and I are a good team, his tournaments would be a little rough without me to keep him organized.

Beth (Gaughan) Saxton
Sterling Heights Stevenson (MI) 95-97
BGSU AQT 97-01

[theMoMA]

There are some inaccuracies in Dr. Chuck's post. One major reason why fewer women rise to leadership positions in the corporate world is the differing family priorities that men and women have in the workplace. Men are much more likely to sell their souls to the corporation for promotions, while women are more likely to balance corporate life with raising children, etc. Obviously this is not in play as much in quizbowl, especially among quizbowl players, where few have to balance quizbowl participation with starting a family. Conflating these two phenomena is a problem, because it leads to this idea that the deck is tangibly stacked against girls who want to edit or write quizbowl questions.

I think we're not focusing our attention on the past enough. In my experience, high school quizbowl was much more male-dominated even a few years ago than it is now. I'd imagine it's tough for individuals to become the one of the first girls on an all-guys team, and I wonder if this individual-level phenomenon, and not some vast attitude of discrimination or injustice in the system, is what's driving the disparity between males and females in quizbowl. It would certainly also explain the increase of girls in quizbowl in recent years.

[grapesmoker]

Men accusing women of being sexist to women... Welcome to HSQuizbowl! Everything is crazy here!

You don't have to be male to be sexist towards women. Welcome to the real world, everything is crazy here.

[Stained Diviner]

theMoMA makes some good points. Being the only girl on a team of boys can be a good, bad, or indifferent experience depending on the attitudes of the individuals involved and team chemistry, but I think that it's a bad experience a lot of times.

On the local level, at least, the genders are fairly balanced when it comes to coaches and TDs. Writing seems to have more men, but there are several women involved.

I think the fact that there are more high school boys than girls is due to some extent that it is a competitive activity with winners and losers, which is something that attracts boys more often than it attracts girls. Fortunately, there are a lot of exceptions and the trend seems to be in the direction of balance.

[Maxwell Sniffingwell]

I beleive there are fewer women in quizbowl because on the whole there are fewer women with very high IQ's compared with men.

First of all, this is probably false. Show me your study. Second of all, there is nothing close to a consensus that IQ measures anything about intelligence at all. Kind of like the SAT. So this is a strange suggestion.

I was curious, so I looked this issue up:

From Wikipedia:
"Deary et al. (2003) performed an analysis of an IQ test administered to almost all children in Scotland at age 11 in 1932 (>80,000). The average IQ scores by sex were 162.69 for girls and 163.36 for boys. The difference in mean IQ was not significant. However, the standard deviation was 14.1 for girls and 14.9 for boys, a difference which was statistically significant. Because of the difference in variance between the sexes, however, girls are in excess by 2% in the middle IQ range of 90–115. At the extreme IQ ranges, 50–60 and 130–140, boys make up 58.6% and 57.7% of the population (gaps of 17.2% and 15.4%) respectively. That is, boys were overrepresented amongst the lowest and highest IQ groups."

From JSTOR:
*It looks like Lynn et al.'s 2004 study on Mauritian children found no significant gender gap in variance, though.
*But Arden and Plomin (2005) found a pretty serious variance gap.

So there's still a decent amount of debate on this.

[naturalistic phallacy]

I think we're not focusing our attention on the past enough. In my experience, high school quizbowl was much more male-dominated even a few years ago than it is now. I'd imagine it's tough for individuals to become the one of the first girls on an all-guys team, and I wonder if this individual-level phenomenon, and not some vast attitude of discrimination or injustice in the system, is what's driving the disparity between males and females in quizbowl. It would certainly also explain the increase of girls in quizbowl in recent years.

I agree with your assessment, Andrew. There is nothing in the system that excludes girls at all at any level of competition. It is just a matter of individual experiences. Some girls might find it difficult to become part of a male-dominated team. I remember being the only girl at some high school practices, and it was intimidating to start, but I feel that it had less to do with quizbowl or the males that were at practice and more with my own discomfort with feeling out of place. Once I got over that initial difficulty and was comfortable, I had a blast on the team.

I don't feel that there need be any effort on the part of the quizbowl community to encourage females to join any more than males. People should and will join activities based on their interests and talents, not because they want to be the token "fill in the underrepresented group here". That is just plain degrading.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

Yeah, call me crazy but I don't think there is a big gender problem in quizbowl. I know of tons of girls who play, and have played with some of them at various times in my career. I think the biggest thing with quizbowl clubs discouraging women is having anti-social "nerdy" people who wear Boondock Saints shirts that haven't been washed in a week and who are obsessed with World of Warcraft and nonsense like that. Once that element of a club is gone, I think there is absolutely nothing barring interested girls from joining a team, and I can produce you tons of examples of this.

[First Chairman]

I agree there is no overt or blatent discrimination. I also think that things are certainly better than they were in the past, but there are cultural influences outside of quiz bowl that do affect the disparities. We don't need a big publicity campaign, but we do need to be sure we are all sensitive to what those subtle environmental issues are that raise stereotype threat problems.

[No Rules Westbrook]

Eh, I'm not going to say anything substantive, I just wanted people to see my name in this thread and then - well, depending on who they are - either be struck with fear over what I've said or with hope that I've said something deliciously offensive.

So just pretend I said everything you imagined I would.

Well, maybe I cant resist a little substance. Chuck's crazy, Hart/Bernadette/Sarah are rational, and Nina shows some real promise in this thread. That about covers it.

[cvdwightw]

From this thread, I have divined that the biggest obstacle toward the participation by women in quizbowl is the perception (real or imagined) of a lack of participation by women in quizbowl, tempered with the fear (again, real or imagined) that the inclusion of more women into quizbowl will make it more dramatic/silly/catty/some other adjective that clearly(!) does not already apply to quizbowl.

This thread has clearly inspired coaches all over the nation to replace the whiny autistic kids and the Teen Angst Drama boys with women to remedy this problem.

[Stat Boy]

This past fall a freshman girl walked into our practice, and when she noticed the ratio of guys to girls was about 14 to 0, her face went from to . She left and never came back. It was kind of depressing.

[The Infanta]

This is Marisol Brady (17, female [Hispanic!], captain/only female on Kellenberg A), and I'm glad this has been brought up. I believe there was a thread like this last year where this topic was addressed and I remember these points being made: two of the reasons there is a disproportionate number of males in quizbowl include A) the discouragement on adolescent society's part for females to participate in academic activities at school (i.e. quizbowl, Science Olympiad, math team) and B) females' preoccupation with image (in concordance with what Nina said). Now, I realize the latter does not apply to ALL females, but it is a major obstacle towards getting more girls for the game. Let's face it. Is a girl in jazz chorus more likely to get ridiculed than a girl in quizbowl? Probably not, which is why girls are more likely to flock to the former. Although it seems that nowadays girls are encouraged more than ever by adult society to excel intellectually, adolescent society does just the opposite. It's just not cool for girls to be smart. The number of men and women with exceptionally high IQs may be equal, but besides grades, there's no way to tell judging solely by extracurricular activities.

Everybody's pretty much said it concerning playing differences. Another possible reason girls don't neg as much as guys may be that most guys don't mind too much when they make mistakes and just shake it off, whereas most girls would probably hold back on buzzing after the first two negs (I know I do).

As for treatment, I haven't noticed any differences. The only time my gender was ever brought up was on one occasion where some guys on a team were amazed that I like video games, namely those from the Medal of Honor series. Other than this, everything has been pretty fair.

I believe most trash is pretty fair, with the exception of the trash round at Blue Hen this year; it seemed mostly only "gettable" by stereotypical quizbowlers like the kind Charlie described. I'm not just saying this because I only got two tossups and mostly 10'd the bonuses; a male friend of mine from another school was on my team and he agreed. I have no other complaints about trash in general.

I do not believe the atmosphere of quizbowl is sexist. It seems as though most of the guys truly would like to see more girls participate, so they're not exactly going to be disrespectful to those who already are. In the end, it's up to girls themselves to be self-motivated and break the stereotypes.

[AdamL]

Yeah, call me crazy but I don't think there is a big gender problem in quizbowl. I know of tons of girls who play, and have played with some of them at various times in my career. I think the biggest thing with quizbowl clubs discouraging women is having anti-social "nerdy" people who wear Boondock Saints shirts that haven't been washed in a week and who are obsessed with World of Warcraft and nonsense like that. Once that element of a club is gone, I think there is absolutely nothing barring interested girls from joining a team, and I can produce you tons of examples of this.

QFT.

Also, is anyone else thinking this is strange? "The average IQ scores by sex were 162.69 for girls and 163.36 for boys." Am I misreading this or was the average Scottish child a genius back then? (actually I just noticed it was 1932, was the scale different back then?)

[Susan]

Actually, it looks like whoever quoted the article in Wikipedia made up the scores out of whole cloth; I looked up the actual article, and it says the average girl scored 100.64 and the average boy 100.48.

[naturalistic phallacy]

Actually, it looks like whoever quoted the article in Wikipedia made up the scores out of whole cloth.

[Stained Diviner]

So much for my plan to recruit a group of SuperScots and dominate the Quizbowl Universe.

[AKKOLADE]

Actually, it looks like whoever quoted the article in Wikipedia made up the scores out of whole cloth.

[Matt Weiner]

False information? On Wikipedia?!?!

[The Atom Strikes!]

False information? On Wikipedia?!?!

The false information apparently wasn't on Wikipedia proper-- it was an error in cornfused's citation of the article.

[Susan]

No, the incorrect information is right in the article.

[The Atom Strikes!]

No, the incorrect information is right in the article.

Sorry-- misunderstood an earlier post commenting on this. That's a pretty egregious error. Maybe one of us who actually knows about the study in question should fix it.

[silverscreentest]

There was a story on This American Life about a producer of a quiz show featuring high school girls for the Oxygen Network. Although the link is for YouTube, it's audio only. The gist of the story was that she seriously had to dumb down the questions to get any right answers. Obviously, the producer was utterly clueless about where to find good contestants. Anybody on this board could have done a better job than her.

[BuzzerZen]

There was a story on This American Life about a producer of a quiz show featuring high school girls for the Oxygen Network.

That whole episode of TAL is really good...the other stories were about the MIT Mystery Hunt and a British Millionaire contestant. It's episode #326 "Quiz Show", if anyone happens to be interested.

[Concluding Unscientific Post-It Note]

At least in my years there ('03-'06), State College had many more boys than girls show up at practice but about equal representation on the travelling (A and B) teams, with at least 2 girls and 1 boy on the A team every year. When we took C or D teams, they were almost exclusively male. I guess girls care more about excelling at an activity than boys?

[theattachment]

I can't really say anything as to why there's few girls on a lot of teams, but as to questions being girl/guy skewed...

In our last run of EPIC, one of the major complaints we got was that our trash was non-"girl" skewed. It wasn't that the distro was biased towards guys, but that it was biased against girls. I think a lot of that comes from us having one female writer that, on many occasions, gives me crap for being more feminine than she is. I wouldn't say that groups like NAQT suffer from those problems (on occasion, I'd almost say that their music has a bit more of a female-oriented audience), but it seems endemic that there aren't that many female writers and particularly editors.

By the way, if Nina is still reading this, we haven't met but Miss Jay was my desktop background before Danny Federici died. There's now two Top Model guys.

[The Atom Strikes!]

Haven't there been conversations before on this forum in which it was determined that basing distribution on normative gender stereotypes wasn't really a good idea?

[BuzzerZen]

Haven't there been conversations before on this forum in which it was determined that basing distribution on normative gender stereotypes wasn't really a good idea?

Yes.