Behind the Podium: Confronting Misogyny in Debate

The National Speech and Debate Association (NSDA) was founded in 1925 and has since amassed major recognition as one of the oldest and most respected high school academic organizations. This year, the NSDA reported that its membership was nearly 53 percent female, the highest level since before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The NSDA prides itself on its several efforts toward equity that have gone into effect in the past decade, pledging its ongoing commitment to "diversity, equity, and inclusion." These principles, however, don’t translate the reality of Speech and Debate for girls around the country. Though the NSDA isn’t responsible for the individual success of their debaters, the debate community as a whole is rife with prejudice. In Public Forum debates, in which teams consist of pairs and discuss policy initiatives and global issues, female-female teams are 17 percent less likely to win when competing against male-male teams. 

Female debaters are also less likely to succeed on a national level. When the NSDA hosted the 2024 National Speech and Debate Tournament, girls were incredibly underrepresented in top rankings. Ten of the fifteen top Public Forum teams that placed were male-male while only two were female-female. In Lincoln Douglas, out of the top 14 ranked debaters, only three were female. 

Female achievement in debate is staggeringly low, causing lower female enrollment and competitive effort. The NSDA is obligated to continue pushing for equality in their spaces, particularly concerning misogyny.

Brooke Gemechu, a junior at Hawken School in Chesterland, Ohio, was one of three girls who placed at 2024 NSDA Nationals for Lincoln Douglas debate. She has consistently witnessed and experienced misogyny in the debate community, including facing degradation by male opponents, she said. 

“Guys will talk over me in rounds and discredit me,” Gemechu said. “It’s really easy to get disregarded or treated as if what I’m saying is less valuable than what my white, male partner is saying.” 

Misogyny perpetrated by both competitors and judges causes a significantly higher dropout rate for girls in debate. Female debaters are 30.4% more likely to leave the activity than their male counterparts. 

Similar to Gemechu’s position in Lincoln Douglas, Ashna Gandhi and her partner Arianna Desai were the top-ranked female-female Public Forum team at the NSDA tournament. Still, Gandhi said she experienced imposter syndrome throughout her debate career. 

“Arianna and I were looking at ourselves compared to the people we were going against and it just felt like we didn’t belong,” Gandhi said. “We didn’t fit the mold of what the top ten at Nationals looked like.” 

Female dropout rates are important statistics within any sector, as women are less likely to participate in an activity where they see limited female representation; the effects are seen in STEM careers, higher education, and politics. 

Anna Pinkerton is a Public Forum debate coach at Whitman and a collegiate debater at George Washington University. In her experience as both a debater and coach, Pinkerton has seen bias push girls out of the program.

“I think more support for women debaters is also important because female debaters have been basically told by judges, whether that’s below the surface or explicit, that they don’t belong in this league,” Pinkerton said. “There’s a whole ton of pressure on female debaters to be good representation and to prove everybody wrong.” 

Naz Soysal, the President of the Yale Debate Association, said the female dropout rate has been noticeable in her experience working with collegiate debate. 

“A lot of onboarding sees female debaters tending to drop off,” she said. “People feel like they aren’t fully accepted and that causes a lot of problems.” 

Women in debate often receive similar criticism to women in positions of power. Female debaters are criticized for aggression against their opponents, while male debaters are praised for it, and it’s rare to find a female debater who hasn’t experienced this double standard, Gemechu said. 

“I’ve been told to be more assertive and more confident,” Gemechu said. “When you follow that, though, you get told to tone it down. That is a really universal experience for girls. It’s been normalized.” 

Judges often give female debaters inappropriate feedback regarding how they dress or their voice sounds during competitions. For male debaters, the same phenomenon is infrequent. 

“Men can show up in a sweater and pants, and that’s considered formal for them,” Gandhi said. “It would take me and my girl friends almost an hour to an hour and a half to get ready every morning because if you’re not wearing makeup and jewelry, you’re considered unprofessional.”

The phenomenon is also extremely present in politics, where women are more likely to be criticized for their appearance and attributes normally accredited to men. The connotation surrounding an aggressive man is not the same as an aggressive woman.  Whitman Speech and Debate Vice President and senior Zalina Bell actively participates in tournaments nationwide. Her personal experience in debate has met undeniable prejudice. 

“In debate, you have to be confident. You have to be assertive,” Bell said. “Whenever girls do that, they’re considered cold [and] all of these [other things] that are not perceived well at all, compared to guys, where it’s how they’re expected to be.” 

Committed members of the NSDA have questioned the gender inequity within the community. Anaya Joshi, a graduate of Lexington High School in Lexington, Massachusetts, set out to both raise awareness of the problem and encourage the debate community to act. 

“A lot of times, being a woman in debate at a higher level has people make assumptions about you,” Joshi said. “They’ll think you’re here because you talk about feminism in rounds all the time, or because you slept your way to the top. There’s always this underlying assumption that you’re not here because you did it the same way everyone else did. You’re here because you took a shortcut.” 

Incidents like these in her debate career inspired Joshi to create what would become the most successful petition regarding gender discrimination in the debate space. With over 1,000 signatures, her petition works to move the debate community in the right direction. 

Many female debaters like Joshi propose anti-bias training for judges, the development of channels to report judging bias, and more incentives for girls to join debate, starting as early as middle school. Anti-bias training, Joshi wrote in her petition, “is a bare minimum that ought to be met.”

Organizations such as Women in Debate (W.IN) have been working to address this issue at its root. W.IN has provided over $45,000 in scholarships, hoping to assist girls looking to continue their debate careers. Shree Saha, the Central Regional Coordinator for the organization, said that W.IN makes an effort to combat the few resources for girls. 

Although there is no easy solution to misogyny in debate, communities can work to create channels for young women to be appreciated, heard, and respected. When our society values young girls in academic spaces, they are more incentivized to continue pursuing their passions. Speech and Debate is an activity loved by students all across the world, and every one of those students ought to be treated equally. 

This article has been republished from The Black and White with permission.