Dear NSDA,

We, the Public Forum community, sign this letter to alert you to a serious problem that needs an urgent solution.

Women face significant discrimination in debate.

Women are treated differently by competitors based on the way they dress, talk and carry themselves. Women face rude comments and harassment from male competitors and are excluded from prep circles. Competitive success in debate is consistently attributed to males in female-male teams. Women lack representation in school leadership roles.

But it is not just the competitors who are the problem. It is important to recognize that judges are part of the problem. Here are the troubling statistics:

Yi and Nie (2020) found that female-female teams are 17.1% less likely to win a debate round against male-male teams; male-female teams are 10% less likely to win. Also, “males make up a higher proportion among elimination round competitors than their female counterparts, even when controlling for individual and tournament characteristics.”

Lynn and Kawolics (2018) find that in half national circuit elimination tournaments, the finals round consisted of all male debaters. There was no single tournament with more than one female debater in finals, even though 42% of participants identified as female in Public Forum Debate.

Kawolics (2018) reported that “female-identifying debaters are criticized for being too assertive or aggressive about twice as frequently as male-identifying debaters. Moreover, while male-identifying debaters criticized for aggressiveness still have a 50% probability of winning the round, female-identifying debaters receiving the same criticism lose three-fourths of the rounds in which the criticism is levied. And when the criticism is given in a round in which the female-identifying debaters are facing male-identifying debaters, the loss rate is closer to 90%.”

Spinna (2019) evaluated judge ballots from New York State debate tournaments and found that female debaters received significantly less feedback overall compared to male debaters.

Lynn and Kawolics (2018) examined Public Forum debate judge ballots from 2017-2018 and found that female debaters receive criticism for being overly aggressive 50% more than male debaters. Additionally, female debaters received criticism on speaking style and overuse of emotion at higher rates. 

Terveen and Wang (2022) found that “gender disadvantaged teams faced disproportionately low win rates even when controlling for experience… and that female judges actively discriminate against [female teams] to the same degree that male judges do.”

Terveen and Wang (2022) reported that “gender disadvantaged teams are more likely to lose in front of judges of the highest technical class compared to the lowest”.

Not surprisingly, attrition rates among female debaters are high and increase over time.

Yi and Nie (2020) reported “a large difference in participation rates between female and male students, which begins at the 9th grade level and is exacerbated over time due to female debaters being 30.34% more likely to quit than male debaters.”

This is not due to differences between male and female debaters’ innate ability.

Yi and Nie (2020) found that “when only including novice data, the effect of gender on whether or not the debater wins dramatically decreases, becoming indistinguishable from zero… In the Varsity division, significant gender disparities emerge once again, where female debaters are 18.8% less likely to win a round…”

While we recognize that not all of these issues can be solved immediately and are a result of systemic inequalities, we believe that there are steps that the NSDA can take to address this problem.

We submit that although this problem is difficult to solve in its entirety, it can be significantly mitigated by mandatory judge anti-bias training. At a minimum, all judges in the debate space should be presented with these findings, so that they are aware of this problem and their unconscious bias. Judges should be required to engage with this information in order to recognize and minimize existing biases before judging, and ought to receive an anti-bias certification prior to being allowed to judge at any tournament.

Women in the debate space face discrimination. They are being driven out of debate, and those who grit through the discrimination and stay, face significant barriers in the debate space. Women do not deserve this treatment, and mandatory anti-bias judge training is a bare minimum that ought to be met. Change has to be made, and it has to come from the top. We submit that change starts with the NSDA.  

Sincerely,

Sasha C, Anaya J, and the Public Forum Debate community