2016/17, Episode 14 - Glasgow vs East London

If you haven’t already you can watch the episode here before reading the review:

Here we are, fourteen irreverent weeks on from Bristol’s victory over Sheffield, for the fourteenth of the first round matches, as East London take on Glasgow for the final guaranteed spot in the last sixteen. The next two shows will be contested by the four high scoring losers for remaining pair of places.

East London, making their first ever appearance, are the only team this season with more women than men, and one of only five with more than a solitary female. In total, of the 112 contestants to have plied their quizzing this series, only 24 of them have been non-dudes. This is around 21%, and as you’ll probably have noticed, this isn’t a new issue. Over the past four years the ratio remains pretty much the same, at 95/448. This means on average, teams have been comprised of 3.15 gentlemen, and 0.85 ladies. In this time period, there has only been one team, Queen Mary’s, London, in 2014, which was made up of four women. By comparison, there were ten with four guys this series alone.

I’m not sure how good your knowledge of the gender-split among the entire population of the world is, so this may blow your mind, but here goes - its actually 50.4% male, 49.6% female. So not exactly more than three men for every less than one woman. Not even close, really.

This scarcity is borne out even further in the percentage of women who have won the overall tournament, with only 16/180 victors. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a girl in the winning team once every three years, but only once in the history of the show have you had a winning team with more than one. The triumphant team from Somerville College, Oxford in 2002 contained not only Vicki Wood, but Dorjana Sirola as well! Last years victorious Peterhouse, Cambridge were captained by Hannah Woods, plural, but she is one of just three female winners in the 2010s.

So what’s the reason for this illogical discrepancy? I guess its fairly obvious isn’t it. 21% of contestants are women, but only 9% of the winners are, so clearly they’re pretty crap at quizzing. What’s that? I’m talking rubbish? Surely not, it all adds up doesn’t it? It doesn’t? Fine, I’ll do some more research.

Okay, so it turns out women do better in their degrees than men, so maybe they’re not that dumb after all. But what else could it be?

Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook stated in a speech in 2010 that “women systematically underestimate their own abilities”, while men overestimate them. The issue is not a lack of intelligence, but may rather be a lack of confidence. More guys put themselves up for consideration, even though they’ve got not chance in reality, whereas a number of women, who would be in with a shot, aren’t even going for it. That’s where my analysis of this point is going to end, because I don’t know enough to go into more detail and don’t wish to make a bumbling fool of myself. I shall, however, return to this topic in a future issue, don’t you worry.

Anyway, well done to East London for battling the male dominance, although the women are all blonde, so not perfect on the diversity front. And their token dude Ducklin did his level best to distract from the fact his team were flipping the ratios by wearing the most Paisley of Paisley shirts to have ever blessed my eyeballs.

The team from Paisley reverted to type - it would have been too much to hope for both teams to mix it up, I suppose. They have two lads studying Russian, and one who is Latvian, so with that in mind they should have Eastern Europe covered. And indeed they do, with Edinburgh-born Thomson buzzing in ‘Fyodor Dostoevsky’ with such an accent to make you think he was a true Muscovite.

The Scots take an early lead, but the Londoners make an early comeback and the scores are tied after the first picture round. The match remained close throughout, with neither side able to open up a convincing lead. There was a conspicuous run in the middle where neither side answered several starter questions in a row. I suspect this was deliberately edited back in as a two-fingered salute to the press who’d been gleefully writing clickbait about how the show was rigged to make contestants look smarter.

(Exhibit A of a full alphabet: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/shortcuts/2016/oct/05/your-starter-for-10-is-university-challenge-cheating-us)

Deciding the winner was just going to be a case of who had edged into the lead just before the gong, and despite the apparent inability of East London captain Jardine to say ‘Wuthering Heights’ (twice nominating a (different) teammate though she did know the answer herself) it is the Englishmen, sorry, Englishwomen (!!) who pip their opponents to the post.

Final Score: Glasgow 135 - 150 East London

With the fourteen first round matches complete the high scoring losers who will be competing over the next two weeks will be Durham, SOAS, and Queen’s and Jesus Colleges, Cambridge. Hope you all enjoyed this foray into a real issue for once. Thanks for reading