![]() ![]() “I auditioned in Toledo, where they’d never held auditions previously,” said Jass in an email from Spain, where she was spending some of the $159,270 she won in 2013. Another prominent female winner, seven-game winner Stephanie Jass of Milan, Michigan, noted that a female casting producer “was really excited for me when I won as a fellow female” in 2013. Nobody from the show replied to requests for comment, but it seems clear the casting folks are working harder to find female contestants. “More women who might have been less willing to try out for the show before are more willing to put themselves out there into the spotlight.” “We’re starting to see the results of a generation of women being told that being smart is cool,” said Andy Saunders of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, a blogger at The Jeopardy Fan. Pundits may become absorbed by the hullabaloo surrounding how New York Times editor Jill Abramson was fired or how General Motors CEO Mary Barra was treated by a Congressional subcommittee, but Jeopardy! is the singular place in pop culture where intellectual achievement - especially by women, minorities, even older people - is glamorized. The fate of women on Jeopardy! isn’t a frivolous matter, fans of the show insist. What’s more, of the 63 people who have won more than $100,000 in the 30-year run of the show, only ten are women - and four of them did it either this season or last. ![]() ![]() But on the male side of that ledger was Arthur Chu, who attained some notoriety for an aggressive playing style and rumpled clothing, and whose 11-game winning streak accounts for nearly half of this year’s male wins. Aside from Collins’s monster run, two others, Sandie Baker and Sarah McNitt, have enjoyed long streaks, too. Of the 73 non-tournament matches that have aired so far in 2014, female players have won 45. Yet while Collins’s success is obviously an aberration for any contestant, she’s also now the most visible evidence that women have finally begun making their marks on the program. Then she can consider setting her sights on the 74-game record set in 2004 by the legendary Ken Jennings. Tonight, the 31-year-old Wellesley alum with a master’s from MIT guns to tie the 19-game streak enjoyed by Dave Madden when he took home $430,400 in 2005. She long ago surpassed the prior top female money winner, Larissa Kelly, and now she’s won more games in a row than all but two players in the game’s history. The current champ, Julia Collins from Wilmette, Illinois, rolls cheerfully into Thursday’s show on a 18-game winning streak, during which she has amassed $391,600. Since then, women have been on an unprecedented run on a program that has long been a target for complaints from feminists and other critics wondering why, for three decades now, the vast majority of players and winners have been male. On April 8, an environmental compliance manager from Baltimore named Derrick Shivar hauled in $22,800 on Jeopardy! His triumph would be otherwise unremarkable in the annals of the storied game show except for this: That was was the last time a man won a match on the show. ![]()
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