For the past couple of weeks the Standing Committee of the Oxford Union has been contemplating passing a motion that mandates that the Debate Selection Committee (DSC) must have at least one female member. DSC is the body responsible for selecting which debaters go to external debating competitions; these are union funded trips to Inter-Varsity tournaments across the UK and to the World and European Debating Championships. In essence, if you want to debate competitively for Oxford, you have to go through DSC. Normally, the eight places on DSC are allocated based on a fairly complex and obscure merit-based system designed to assess performance at various debating competitions. This policy would mean that the most successful female debater would gain an automatic place.

This piece of affirmative action has led to a negative response from many within the debate community. The claim, as I understand it, is twofold: firstly, that Oxford’s female debating community was not consulted and the action was unilaterally taken against their wishes; secondly, that such affirmative action undermines women’s achievements in debating by suggesting that they were unable to reach such positions through purely merit-based criteria. It seems to me that the first of these claims is irrelevant and distracting, and that the second is false.

The failure to consult oxford’s current female debaters was an omission. Indeed, an omission which runs contrary to the aims of the quota itself, since it further marginalizes women’s voice within the debate community. However, the lack of consultation has little bearing on the wisdom of the policy itself. Indeed, such a consultation, in isolation, might have actually been misleading since it would represent an enormous selection bias. By definition, these are the very people who have managed to accommodate themselves to Oxford’s debating culture, who have not been dissuaded by the male dominated atmosphere and who did not require female role models in order to continue debating. Whilst I know many of the women who oppose the quota to be very intelligent and talented debaters, their opinion should not be thought representative of women in general. Whilst it is true that they do have some insight of what it feels like to be a woman in debating, their experience is not definitive. To ask only current female debaters would mask a hidden constituency, one which is very difficult to accurately sample: all of those women who were turned off debating by the lack of female representation. A friend of mine who was the only female member of DSC a few years ago said that on numerous occasions, women would approach her and say that they wouldn’t have thought about continuing debating if they were confronted with an all-male hierarchy. How many such women are there? I suspect a lot. Given the assumption that debating ability is gender-neutral, one would expect an equal number of men and women representing oxford at the highest levels. Yet this year, of the 14 people (debaters and judges) sent to the World Universities Debating Championships (Worlds), only 1 was female; last year, only 2 in 20 were women. At the European Championships, there were no women in a delegation of 13. Only one woman has debated competitively for Oxford at either the World or European Championships in the last two years. And, of course, DSC hasn’t had female representation for well over a year. These numbers are not anomalous—they are typical of the pattern I have observed in 6 years of debating at Oxford; women constitute a tiny fraction of competitive debaters. The implication of this must be that a large number of women either quit debating or are unattracted to it in the first place. The reasons for this are not clear (though I will discuss some potential ones later), but such numbers are suggestive of a hidden constituency of potential female debaters who might have been encouraged by woman on DSC. Thus, although it was erroneous to fail to consult Oxford’s female debaters, the fact that many of them oppose the quota is not grounds for rejecting it; indeed, it only reveals what we already know—female debaters who weren’t dissuaded by a lack of a woman on DSC think that female debaters won’t be dissuaded by a lack of a woman on DSC.

The second claim is that the quota undermines women’s achievements. It is unclear, however, who it is that is undermined. It could be the hypothetical woman who gets on DSC solely because of the quota, who then has to face her colleagues thinking she did not merit her place, and perhaps treating her opinions with less weight or respect. But if this hypothetical woman felt so strongly about the issue, she could simply not apply until her debate CV was strong enough to out-do male applicants. The only women that would apply hoping to get the “unmerited” reserved position are presumably those that believe that encouraging young female debaters to continue debating is more important than how good an experience they have on DSC. I don’t think this is an unreasonable belief, and it seems appropriate to at least give women the chance to make such a choice.

Perhaps the claim about affirmative action “undermining” women’s achievements is intended to have broader scope—maybe the point being made is that it will lead to a negative perception of women in oxford debating generally. I do not follow this argument. Why would Oxford’s male debaters suddenly lose respect for female debaters just because of the existence of a DSC quota? I can imagine a few guys being annoyed that a woman took “their place” on DSC—but I don’t see how this contagion would spread to a more general antipathy towards female debaters. The scenario where talented female debaters were thought to be less good than they actually were because of a DSC women’s quota seems very implausible to me.

Perhaps the claim is more conceptual and less tangible—that, although no women are actually negatively affected by the quota, it is a patronizing idea that suggests women couldn’t get to “the top” on their own. However, this fails to distinguish between the different reasons for a quota. The DSC quota is not designed to compensate for women’s “inability to be successful” (indeed, it doesn’t especially help women be more successful at debating), it is designed to encourage more women to enter the activity in the first place. The quota is not designed to correct for the fact that women “can’t get there on their own”; the lack of female debaters on DSC has nothing to do with a lack of ability among current female debaters, it is a function of the fact that pool of female debaters is relatively small. Given this, it is inevitable that sometimes women will be unrepresented on DSC, with the subsequent knock-on effect of reducing the number of new entrants into debating. A quota ensures this circular problem doesn’t occur.

So, the final question is that of the problem itself—those that oppose the quota must believe that there is no problem such a quota could help solve. Affirmative action is sometimes a response to implicit discrimination—under these conditions, quota systems actually level a currently unfair playing field. There is certainly a possibility that an implicit discrimination against women exists in current debate culture (I’ve heard people complain about the “high-pitched” aggressive style of certain female debaters when they speak with a passion that is rewarded in male debaters) but, to my mind, discrimination is not a widespread phenomenon in debating. This type of affirmative action is targeted towards a very different type of problem—a male culture that dissuades women from joining the debate community in the first place. The crucial moments are the first few Sunday night sessions of the year, where curious students get to sample what debating is all about. When DSC introduces itself at the front of the room, and people are greeted with a debate hierarchy that is exclusively male, it is natural that some female students will be put off. Certainly, there are other elements that might turn women away—such as the fact that most of the hierarchy already appear to be friends with an elite fresher coterie of ex-schools debaters, or the harsh and not especially encouraging judging that first-time debaters sometimes receive at the fresher’s competition or the impenetrable exclusivity of some pre-formed debating cliques. As one of the main culprits of this type of exclusionary behaviour, I do not mean criticize Oxford’s current debaters. We don’t realize we’re doing it, and it is only when I talk to my non-debating friends, who come for one or two sessions and feel distinctly marginalized, that I notice the accuracy of their observations. These problems are not necessarily gender specific and it is not at all clear that a women’s quota will solve all or any of them. However, whatever it is that is wrong with debating at the moment, it is clearly affecting women more. As mentioned before, the rate of retention of female debaters is disastrous and I can’t imagine how anyone would believe such a gender distribution to be “natural”. A female on DSC would give women a figure to aspire to, remove the perception that debating is an all-male clique and could be a conduit between young female debaters and DSC. She could organize women’s events and represent women’s concerns at meetings. The fact that the role of “women’s officer” does exist on DSC represents a recognition that women’s issues are a distinct category which requires specific attention; the fact that the position has been filled by a man for the past year is an almost parody of the situation.

It is perhaps no surprise to see that the country with by far the best record with women’s debating is also the country which has consistently adhered to a policy of affirmative action. Every Australian institution requires at least a third of their contingent at Worlds be women, Australia has a women’s only tournament (the innovatively titled “Women’s”) and have ensured that their regional (“Australasian”) tournament mandates that every team has a woman on it. It is pretty much exclusively Australia that has accounted for the success of women in international debating. At this year’s world championship, a woman was the Top Speaker and there were three women in the top 4 teams, all Australian. In the last decade, 6 women have won the World Championship, 5 of them from Australia (including two all female teams). And the last three Top Speakers at “Australasians” have been women. The DSC quota is, of course, a very different type of affirmative action—playing more of a symbolic than practical role. Nevertheless, Australia’s example demonstrates that far from undermining women’s achievements, a quota system has encouraged enormous female participation, a less male-dominated atmosphere, an appreciation of a plurality of styles and a genuinely diverse debate circuit. A DSC women’s quota won’t achieve all of these things—far more comprehensive measures would be required to do that. But I fail to understand how it could makes things worse, and there are very good reasons to believe it will make things better. The idea that affirmative action is “bad for women” relies on the assertion that people do not understand the purposes and merits of affirmative action. No one who believes in such policies does so because they believe women are inferior or incapable. It is because they see systematic institutional problems that require systematic institutional solutions. The lack of female debaters over the last decade in Oxford highlights a deeply rooted problem. Shirking from proactive solutions because of a fear of undermining the women who currently debate only serves to undermine all of those talented women who, if things don’t change, never will.

Samir Deger-Sen is a DPhil student in International Relations at Balliol College. He has been part of the competitive debating circuit for 8 years and, in 2008, won the World Universities Debating Championship.