Ask The Ladies

...as they will be under the spotlight at the QFI-Purple Riband Quiz Challenge 2025, which will have women having an intellectual face-off

- ANUSREE PV

WERE intellectual pursuits only for men? If we look at the scenario, say, some decades ago, how much was women's representation in the world of words, politics, sports, or finance? There is a deeply entrenched sexism that seeps into the socio-political, financial, educational, and domestic domains. But today, women are making strides in every field that once only men pursued.

Quizzing was also one such male-dominated area — be it television quiz shows echoing men's voices or the themes they explored. However, if we delve deep into quizzing, we see a shift in representation. Saranya Jayakumar, who founded Motley Crew, the reputed Calcutta quiz team of the 1980s, shares her experience in Calcutta, "There were many women quizzers in Calcutta in those days, so I never felt out of place. There were not so many in Chennai when we started QFI."

In 1985, Saranya, the founding president of the Quiz Foundation of India (QFI), returned to Chennai and continued quizzing with her son quizmaster Dr Navin Jayakumar as a new team called Memory Bank and eventually won the All-India North Star Quiz sometime in 1987. The same year QFI, Chennai, was founded.