It is a common refrain that where women are under-represented in some field or other, be it in the STEM subjects, as politicians or Senators or as orchestral conductors, this is in some way due to society discouraging them or failing to actively encourage them. It is not always clear what form this takes and it sometimes seems as though it must be something in the air or water, or something the wicked patriarchy puts in their tea and coffee.

However, it often seems that it takes no more than a harsh word, a look, or even a compliment to turn intelligent, professional women into quivering lumps of jelly. One area where such criticism has surfaced recently in the UK is that of television quiz and game shows and, in particular, the venerable quiz show, University Challenge.

As its name suggests, this is a quiz in which teams consisting of four students from various British universities compete against each other by answering high-brow general knowledge questions. In March 2015 the Daily Telegraph reported that the question-master, Jeremy Paxman, made an aside at the start of the semi-finals that there were no women on any of the remaining teams (at the start of the series 25 out of the 112 contestants were female) and in 2016 The Guardian revealed that, out of a total of 180 contestants who had been members of winning teams over the 45 series of the programme, only 16 had been women and that only once, in 2002, had a winning team contained more than one woman.

This is not to say that there have not been some outstanding female contestants. In 2009 Corpus Christi College Oxford was led by Gail Trimble, a.k.a. the human Google, (Corpus Christi defeated Manchester University in the final but were subsequently disqualified because another team member was no longer a student and she is therefore not included in the total of 16) and in 2016 the victorious Peterhouse College Cambridge team was captained by Hannah Woods. Both of these contestants were certainly the equal of any of male contestants who had ever appeared.    

Back in 2016 I wrote a post questioning whether male dominance at the very top and bottom end of the ability range in many areas was purely due to social conditioning or whether there might be a hard-wired biological explanation. I started by citing the British game show Countdown, in which since it was first broadcast in 1982 the very strongest contestants have been predominantly male, and observing that this phenomenon had so far escaped public comment. There are many differences between the two shows and a comparison might provide an insight into the vexed question of why women are under-represented.

One obvious difference between the two shows is that University Challenge is a team game, whilst Countdown is a contest between individuals. Several articles have been written concerning the selection process for University Challenge (examples here and here) and it has been suggested that the BBC should introduce a quota of at least one woman in each team, but this has not (yet!) been seriously considered.

It is clear that universities are free to pick a team any way they please and that teams are carefully selected by the BBC based, not only on ability, but also on whether they are likely to come across well on the show. I cannot comment on whether the universities’ selection processes could discriminate against women beyond saying that this might be possible.

However, contestants in Countdown compete as individuals and apply directly to the show. The production team are therefore the only gatekeepers, which eliminates the possibility of this type of bias. I also cannot comment on whether the ‘casting couch’ process discriminates against women beyond saying that, in this day and age, it is highly improbable that the producers are not acutely aware of the gender imbalance and the consequent potential for adverse comment.

Despite the lack of adverse comment, the producers of Countdown must be acutely aware that there has not been a female series champion since late 1998 and that the last 40 series champions have been male. Furthermore, Countdown is broadcast around 3pm and women are therefore one of their target audiences. The producers are therefore unlikely to want to discriminate against women, although the counter-argument is that this discrimination is unconscious. It would, admittedly, help if quiz shows were to publish statistics comparing the proportion of women applying to the show with the proportion appearing.

 In contrast with the alleged, subjective selection on grounds other than ability in University Challenge, pretty well the only criterion determining whether you are accepted to appear on Countdown is the objective one of how well you perform in the audition, although other factors may be taken into account in deciding which of the borderline contestants are accepted. One of these could be gender, with borderline female contestants more likely to appear in order to even up the gender imbalance, but this would mean that female contestants were on average slightly weaker than male contestants.

It does not appear to matter whether a contestant is particularly telegenic or not, since some contestants have appeared to be fairly socially awkward and there have been a few who were known to have Aspergers. However, the proportion of female contestants on Countdown is consistently around 25%, a little above the proportion in the 2015 University Challenge series of 22%, but not significantly so. It is also noticeable that the average age of female contestants is higher than that of male contestants and the lower proportion participating in University Challenge might be partly explained that these contestants are predominantly in their late teens and 20s.

If the problem lies with women not putting themselves forward, the question arises of why they might not do so. One argument is that the lack of female contestants in itself deters women. If female contestants were as rare as hen’s teeth I might have some sympathy with this argument, but 25% of contestants being women should be sufficient for women to see that appearing on the show is a realistic ambition. After all, 50 years ago both the legal and medical professions were almost entirely male, but this did not put off women becoming lawyers or doctors and now women form the majority of newly-qualifieds in these professions.

Other reasons why women might be inhibited from applying are suggested in this article. One woman who ‘nearly’ appeared on University Challenge claims that the producers had asked female contestants to wear clothing which highlighted their cleavage and even wear false eyelashes. The show is accused of having a ‘boys-club ethos’ and Jeremy Paxman, who made his reputation as a forceful and pugnacious interviewer of politicians, has certainly sometimes made mildly derogatory remarks on the show when a contestant gets an ‘easy’ question wrong.

Even when he complimented a female contestant who had answered a number of questions on sport correctly, including one on the obscure (in the UK, at least) sport of Australian Rules Football, his tone of surprise was seen as evidence of this. References were made to Gail Trimble having been the subject of derogatory comments on social media and the fact that she had been invited to appear in a lads’ mag (presumably she was not asked to take her clothes off and the offer was politely declined).

The show is accused of having a ‘boys-club ethos’ and Jeremy Paxman, who made his reputation as a forceful and pugnacious interviewer of politicians, has certainly sometimes made mildly derogatory remarks on the show when a contestant gets an ‘easy’ question wrong. Even when he complimented a female contestant who had answered a number of questions on sport correctly, including one on the obscure (in the UK, at least) sport of Australian Rules Football, his tone of surprise was seen as evidence of this. References were made to Gail Trimble having been the subject of derogatory comments on social media and the fact that she had been invited to appear in a lads’ mag (presumably she was not asked to take her clothes off and the offer was politely declined).

I cannot comment on the accusation about the producers’ dress requirements beyond observing that, whilst all the female contestants have appeared to be smart and presentable, none of them appear to be over-glamourized or over-sexualized and I doubt if they would allow contestants (male or female) to reveal too much flesh. I posted the comments about University Challenge on a Countdown forum and asked for feedback from former Countdown contestants on whether they had had similar experiences, thinking that this might uncover good reasons (e.g. it looks really bad on TV if a contestant looks as though they are dressed in a tent).

I got a response from the production team and some useful feedback from a couple of the best female contestants to have appeared on the show in recent years. Countdown operates a very relaxed dress policy and only insists that contestants should not wear clothes with logos on them, due to rules on advertising. However, one of the former contestants wrote that she had appeared on another quiz show which had been rather fussier and had insisted on inserting a few stitches in her dress to make it less revealing. This was corroborated by another former contestant, who wrote that other quiz shows had been equally fussy about her husband’s outfits. The comments about University Challenge’s dress code are therefore credible, but even Countdown’s relaxed dress code does not seem to greatly boost female participation.

In contrast to University Challenge, Countdown is gentle, afternoon entertainment. Its ethos is always very supportive, since the contestants are of all ages and come from all walks of life, rather than just being a bunch of cocky students. The presenter is therefore very careful about making comments concerning a contestant’s performance in a particular round, even in jest. They are always reserved for very strong contestants who have won several games in impressive style, on the odd occasion that they fail to achieve a maximum score in a round (‘Come on Stephen, pull your socks up! You’re slipping!’). These are always taken in the spirit intended and such remarks certainly would not be directed at a contestant in their first game, or who was having a nightmare in their third game after a couple of wins.

The accusation of University Challenge having a boys-club ethos is fairly nebulous and ill-defined, but in The Myth of Male Power Warren Farrell writes that boys’ stock-in-trade in these sorts of groups is the ‘wit-covered put-down’, which often act as a form of male bonding. Groups of boys will happily trade insults, but this is different from the insults in girl gang bullying. This is because, firstly, they are exchanged between friends who know that they will be taken in the spirit intended and, secondly, because it is expected that you learn to give as good as you get, or, conversely, that you don’t dish it out unless you can take it back. For Farrell, the trading of insults is a rehearsal for taking criticism as an adult, which is a pre-requisite for success.

The other aspect of boys’ behaviour which girls might find off-putting is their tendency to become obsessive. If a girl wants to join the school chess club, she is likely to find that the boys are not only fanatical about playing chess and learning the various openings, but also about all the trivia surrounding the game. It is no accident that the various websites cataloguing the voluminous statistics of 36 years of Countdown have been constructed by men. Women are equally capable of building websites on these topics and researching and cataloguing the statistics, but they are simply not interested in doing so (and neither are most men).

This leaves the baleful influence of social media. Derogatory tweets and the like are not to be encouraged or condoned, but are we really to suppose that bright and ambitious women are actually such delicate flowers that they wilt as soon as some anonymous troll writes something nasty about them, just as they wilt at the first hint of any criticism from the host or question-master?

My request for feedback about dress codes also elicited stories of female contestants being on the receiving end of gamesmanship in the studio and derogatory remarks in the green room. Once again, neither of these can be condoned, but I’m sure that the production team step in and have a word with a contestant if they feel that they overstep the mark in the studio and neither of the contestants recounting the derogatory remarks in the green room wanted to make an issue of it at the time or now. They accepted that these were instances of a contestant being over-competitive and not having particularly well developed social skills, rather than an attempt specifically to put off or demean women. They felt that they probably also acted in a similar way to men, but that they may well also have felt insecure about the prospect of losing to a woman. Whatever the reason, the contestants felt perfectly capable of simply brushing these remarks off.

If even Countdown has difficulty getting the female participation rate above 25%, the question arises why boys and men are so much more eager to participate in these sorts of show. In Is There Anything Good About Men? Roy Baumeister suggests that this is due to the evolutionary position whereby men compete for females and to do so they need to stand out from the crowd. Competing, and being successful, in these game shows is one means of doing so, whilst women do not feel the compulsion to do so in such numbers. The fact that there is no point to competing in these shows beyond the satisfaction of doing it for its own sake is irrelevant; it is simply a matter of proving yourself against your peers.

Jeremy Paxman made his remark about the absence of female contestants at the start of the semi-finals. This meant that all of the teams containing female contestants had been eliminated by this stage and that the highest performing teams were all male. It is, of course, not possible to read anything much into one series, but an analysis of the comparative performance of male and female contestants in Countdown since late 2001 is illuminating (at that time the programme changed from a 30-minute, 9-round format to a 45-minute, 15-round format and this therefore makes a suitable cut-off point).

Contestants retire undefeated in the heats after 8 wins and since late 2001 19 out of 178 of contestants achieving this feat, i.e. roughly 1 in 9, have been women, whereas they make up around 1 in 4 of contestants. The best eight contestants in the heats contest the finals on a knock-out format. There have been 33 completed series in this period, giving a total of 264 finalists, of which female contestants account for 42 or roughly 1 in 6. The contestants are seeded according to their performance in the heats and in this period it is notable that no female contestant has been number 1 seed and almost half of the female finalists have been seeded at either 6 or 8. When you analyze the performance of female finalists you find that 30 of them lost at the quarter-final stage (compared with an expected number of 21), 6 lost in the semi-final and there have been 6 losing finalists.

The fact that female contestants become increasingly under-represented the further up the ability scale and, in particular, the complete lack of number 1 seeds and series champions in this period demonstrates that, whilst there have been a number of extremely good female contestants, there has always been a male contestant who, on the day at least, has been very slightly better.

Let us be quite clear that we are talking about very fine margins here and the argument that ‘women are essentially the same as men’ is at the same time perfectly correct and extremely misleading. The variation in ability amongst men and amongst women is vastly greater than any difference between men and women, but at the very highest level any slight difference between particular groups becomes crucial and this lends support to the theory which is anathema to feminists that, in the skills required in Countdown and University Challenge at least, men might have a slight natural advantage. However, biology is not destiny, as Gail Trimble and Hannah Woods have proven.

The question remains whether it is possible to improve female participation and, more specifically, to get more girls and women competing on equal terms with the best boys and men. The first step is to recognize that boys’ behavior is not designed to exclude girls, but is, on the contrary, a sign of acceptance. Boys are willing to accept tomboyish girls into their ranks as perfectly normal, whereas a boy wanting to do ballet was the subject of the film Billy Elliott. When I was young I used to play soccer in the park for fun (I was never any good at it really) and occasionally a girl would join in our game. We thought nothing of letting her do so, provided that she played on equal terms and didn’t, for example, go down crying whenever she was tackled.

Similarly, if a girl joins the chess club and simply sits down and beats the boys, she will quickly gain their respect. Yes, she will be the target of the boys’ banter, but that is because she is being accepted as one of them, not because she is being excluded. She may be taunted for being a girl, but this is just because this is what sets her apart in this group and boys will be similarly taunted for characteristics which set them apart, such as being ginger or having ears which stick out. And how many girls like a boyfriend who’s cocky and funny? If you want them to do this on a date you have to expect them to do it in the chess club.

If a girl can do what the boys do and give as good as she gets, this may be even more effective than for boys. It’s one thing for a boy to take a withering put-down from another boy, but taking it from a girl might be extremely damaging for the teenage male ego. However, alternatively, if a girl does not wish to take part in this banter, she can just sit back, smile, and let her chess do the talking.

 Furthermore, whilst it is an article of faith, the assumption that boys’ behavior is actually putting off girls and, in particular girls who might be able to compete with the best boys, may be incorrect. The girls who do participate clearly have no problem with boys’ behavior, but there is assumed to be a large pool of girls who would do so if boys did not behave like boys. This has clear parallels with the attempts in the UK described by William Collins to make the physics syllabus more attractive to girls by incorporating an element of the social history of physics. However, he noted that, even with the new syllabus, in a class of 40 there were still only 4 girls, who, in all probability, were attracted by traditional physics rather than the social history.

Trying to modify boys’ behavior in order to encourage girls is therefore likely to be a futile exercise, which will only result in boys disengaging without significantly improving female participation. It is another example of the way in which society views boys as a problem, whose ‘deviant’ behavior must be controlled and made to conform to the ‘normal’ behavior of girls. This is, in turn, based on the belief, which is an article of faith of feminists, that gender is purely a social construct. This belief has been comprehensively debunked, most entertainingly by the Norwegian comedian and television presenter Harald Eia in the television series Hjærnevask (Brainwashing – in Norwegian, English subtitles).

Like Dondi’s clock, if you start from a false premise you have to perform increasingly improbable contortions to stop your theory falling apart.