On Tuesday, I had another crossword puzzle published in the New York Times. I won't spoil it for you if you haven't done it yet and are planning on doing it. (The NYT puzzle runs a few weeks behind in syndication in some local papers.) I always write an entry on my other blog about my puzzles, and you can read it in full here (which will spoil it). But I'm also going to copy a large portion of it here directly, because it's an interesting general topic, and because I don't have a lot of time this weekend. (I also wrote a "guest entry" for a blog I read daily called Football Perspective. It's supposed to run tomorrow, Monday, and I spent a lot of time recently working on it.)
[Chuck Berry: October 18, 1926 – March 18, 2017]
What follows is my commentary on the dominance of males in field of crossword puzzle constructing.
If you keep up with the crossword blogosphere, you are certainly aware there is a push among many puzzle enthusiasts to make crossword puzzles more inclusive. I think this is a good thing. Constructing and competitive solving are dominated by men. In the former, there are a few prolific females (particularly C.C. Burnikel who I swear has a puzzle published somewhere every day) and then that's about it. The big question: Why is this the case?
It's something I've thought about quite a bit. In a way, it's something I've been thinking about most my life, as I discovered at a relatively early age that most my major interests -- sports analytics, math, Scrabble, crossword puzzles, etc. -- are predominantly male pursuits. After many hours thinking and rethinking about this, reading opinion pieces, scientific studies, and the occasional controversial "academic exploration of hypotheses," here's what I came up with as the reason: I have no fucking idea. I haven't come across a single theory yet that I've found particularly convincing.
The root cause I think is clearly sexism. Back in the day, women were discouraged from doing these activities, and so we're seeing the residual effects of that today. This makes sense, but the missing piece -- the thing I really don't understand -- is why aren't we seeing this male-female gap to the same extent in other fields. Back in the day, women were discouraged from doing pretty much anything other than raising a family, right? So why is it that today woman are much better represented in fields like law and medicine (though still not close to 50-50) than they are in fields like math and crossword puzzles?
Like I said, I have no answers. I do think however that if somehow we could get more women involved in underrepresented fields that it would self-perpetuate. I remember hearing about a study, the author of which I can't remember on a podcast I can't remember (get sourcing, huh?), demonstrating that representation really matters a lot when people are in their formative years. If a child sees somebody with whom they can identify doing something then they are much more likely to pursue that thing than they would be otherwise. This is why diversity matters. Even if you don't believe it's inherently good, without it you effectively block people, particularly young people, from pursuing things they might otherwise want to pursue (and might be very good at), and that's not the way things are supposed to work in the land of the free and the home of brave.
So it seems to me the only solution I have for getting more women involved in something like crossword puzzle constructing is to get more women involved in crossword constructing. And that's not actually a solution at all. It's a tautology.
(And by the way, if there are any aspiring female constructors reading this right now, and you need some guidance, I'm available! Actually, I'm available even if you're male or anywhere else on the gender spectrum. I'll just be excited somebody is asking me for advice about something.)
Anyway...
And with that we will call it an entry. Until next time...
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