If it's of interest, here's a perspective from the other side of the pond. Until a few years ago, British quizzing was entirely male dominated, particularly at the student level, which is where I have most experience. There were whole tournaments where there would be perhaps one female player to as many as 30 or 40 male players. Then, a couple of years ago, the gender balance suddenly righted itself - it's still not perfect, but at the British Student Quiz Championships tomorrow, somewhere between 25% and 40% of the players will be female (I don't have all the team rosters yet). It has actually fallen back from the point a couple of seasons ago where I was able to field an all-female Oxford team to a tournament (and see them finish second to another Oxford team). So what happened? One thing we didn't do was somehow mark out female players as special in any way. Instead, I worked on making it more amenable for female players to get involved in the game, by encouraging a less combative (and arrogant) atmosphere, by reducing the number of male-oriented questions (even little things like always having a male character when your questions call for a random name), and by actively recruiting female players to the Oxford teams. I think the most important shift was the change in atmosphere - those players on this board who've taken part in a British tournament will, I hope, agree that there's less testosterone flying about, and everyone takes a more laid-back attitude to the whole thing (it is, after all, only a bloody game). The one thing I've noticed, though, is that there are very few weak female players. There is, if you like, a certain threshold of ability below which you really won't enjoy the game or feel comfortable taking part, and that threshold is higher for female players than male players. It is almost as if there is an element of self-selection, and also a lack of self-delusion as to ability in some cases! If I had to give some advice to you guys on righting the gender balance, I'd suggest cracking down on the handful of jerks who treat this game like it's life and death. They're never the best players anyway - really good players can afford to be relaxed about the game, because they do their talking with their buzzers. If you've got arrogant fools on your team, either throw them out if they're no good, or "re-educate" them if they're vaguely useful. It's got to be said that this group isn't exactly a good advert for the game - I'm frequently sitting here shaking my head in despair as someone posts another terribly serious and self-absorbed piece of tripe. I know they're not representative of the average Joe quizbowler, as 99% of the players from the US and Canada that I've met have been really great people. As an aside, and straying rather boldly into dangerous territory, the one thing that has consistently defeated me is the balance of the ethnic backgrounds of quizzers over here - in a nutshell, quizzers are nearly all white. I don't have any idea why this should be, as the handful of players from minority ethnic backgrounds who do take part are very good (mostly from an Asian background, it must be noted, particularly from the Indian subcontinent where quizzing seems to be popular as well). I wouldn't even dare to speculate how to right this balance, and unlike the gender balance, positive action to right it would be rather dangerous (it's a damn minefield in PC terms if nothing else). I suspect the questions we use are very white-centric, but without good writers from minority backgrounds we can't correct that, but we won't get good writers without having first attracted good players - chicken and egg. Anyway, that's my 2p - if anyone's ever wanting to come over and take part in a British tournament to see how we play the game, just drop me a line (rob at buzzerquiz.com) or check out www.buzzerquiz.com . You're always welcome. Rob -- Rob Linham: E-mail: rob_linham_at_... Phone: 07855 079433 Web: http://www.geocities.com/rob_linham ICQ: 23064118 MSN: rlinham_at_... AOL: RJLinham
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