Mastermind seeks more women

When was the last time a woman won the BBC quiz Mastermind? Why have there been nearly three times as many male champions? What can be done about this gender imbalance? Such questions have been testing the ingenuity of producers on the long-running series since the presenter, John Humphrys, recently bewailed the shortage of women contestants. Between 1,500 and 2,000 people undergo auditions for the TV show every year, but only a quarter are female.
In an attempt to rectify the disparity, the programme has launched a recruitment drive through advertisments in women's magazines and approaches to women's organisations. Insisting there would be no positive discrimination or lowering of standards, a BBC spokeswoman insisted: "Women will still have to be good enough to get on the programme. Mastermind is looking at encouraging more women to apply because they are not getting as many as men."
The show began in 1972 and was the brainchild of the TV producer Bill Wright, a former RAF gunner, who drew on his wartime experiences of being interrogated by the Gestapo. Over the past 35 years, eight women and 21 men have won the title. The series was not screened between 1997 and 2003. Curiously, the first three winners were women, the last being Anne Ashurst, a novelist, in 1997.
Humphrys believes women triumph in general knowledge but men do better in specialist topics.

This article is about the show "Mastermind" and how only eight women but 21 men have won the title. This is quite a shocking statistic and makes me wonder if it was just coincidence at the time or purposely done.
Now however, mastermind are encouraging more women to apply.

The reason i chose this article is because the matter of gender discrimination has always been a controversial issue and therefore this interested me from the start, but even more interestingly it was actually the women that didn't want to apply not so much Mastermind not letting them.
I think there is not discrimination actually being enforced, yes it may seem that way due to the vast gap between the number of male winners and female winners, but actually it is just the fact that more men apply. Maybe Mastermind's encouragement can help turn these statistics around.