where do the
girls go?
analyzing the gender gap in competitive certamen
By the time you get to advanced Certamen, you get so accustomed to seeing one, at most two, or quite possibly zero girls on a team that it hardly feels remarkable. From a glance around an advanced Certamen round, it might be very easy to conclude that the world is, indeed, about ⅓ female.
This disparity persists at the national level. Across all national teams that made it to semifinals in 2020 (more or less eliminating casual or first-time players), 41% of players were girls. However, as you move up the ladder from novice to advanced or to finals rounds, that number decreases. While 47.2% of novice players were girls, only 42.5% of intermediate players and 34.1% of advanced players were. Across all three levels, only about one out of every four players on a finalist team is female, and that ratio, too, gets smaller in higher levels.
Far from being immune, Virginia is generally worse than the national average, both historically and presently. Of Virginia’s 34 hall of fame members, only three are female. In the past 4 years, only 21.5% of Virginia’s nationals Certamen players have been girls.
The blame for this, however, does not necessarily lie with the coaches for state teams. Although data from local Certamina are harder to find, based on personal observation, there tend to be significantly fewer girls there, too. If girls aren’t playing at the local level, they can’t play at the national level. Saying that schools simply need to recruit more girls doesn’t fix the disparity either. There are girl players in novice, and in intermediate, too. The problem isn’t that girls aren’t joining Certamen; it’s that they aren’t staying.
To understand why, we may need to look at Certamen’s past. It hasn’t always been a welcoming environment for female players. According to Dr. Irina Greenman, one of Virginia’s first female members of the Certamen hall of fame, “. . .during the 90s I faced criticisms from adults at both the state and national level that my play style was ‘too competitive’ because it made me ‘unladylike.’ I heard stories of states (and schools in and out of Virginia) discouraging girls from playing at high levels of competition because ‘girls just aren’t that competitive,’ though that wasn’t something I personally experienced in Certamen.” Even today, NJCL Academics Chair and Virginia Intermediate Certamen Coach Ms. Lewis observed that she sees “a lot of the ‘women shouldn’t be competitive’ mindset --subconsciously”.
Girls tend to stay involved in Latin but focus their time on different activities, making up the vast majority of graphic arts entries, and slightly over half of this year’s creative arts entries. It isn’t that girls are completely falling behind in knowledge, either. An analysis of the top 5 places in many Certamen-adjacent national tests (Language tests, mythology, Roman literature) found that while still only around 35-45% of the top five places on most tests go to girls, the drop from lower levels to advanced tends to be far smaller. For several tests, the proportion of top 5 places going to girls is higher in advanced levels (3+) than it is overall. Roman History was a notable exception, less than 35% girls overall, and about 28% girls in advanced levels.
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