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People

THIRD STEP ︳ COMPETITION
Cerianne Bury

World Barista Championship is widely known to be the they do have a team, this team consists of friends and family
shortcut to prove yourself in coffee world. Since the very be- members; while male teams often consist of industry profes-
ginning in 2000, great number of baristas took part in it, but at sionals, thus, we can see that women teams basically have
the same time everyone views the championship differently. weak professional support.
Cerianne Bury is one of the speakers in Re;co conference,
majoring in political science and gender studies; she also Self-expression & social prejudice
took part in championship herself, as a coach, part of jury
team etc. and this time she focused on female participation Talking about the competition, participants’ speech and
in the competition. performance are also very important for a final score, and, of
course, social perception of men and women have affected
some of female contestants. “Since the early childhood we are
woman man
taught how we should be, these kind of regulation affects per-
sonality a lot. For example, things, that I do, can be done by
other women, too; but even if they do it the best way possible,
there are still some people who will subconsciously think that
men can do it better,” said Cerianne. Society still has tags for
men and women: Asian femininity, Western women serenity.
There are a lot of prejudices connected to this, moreover, it
can lead to objectivity deviation: some people do not like
hostess’ voice, so they leave rude comments in her Facebook,
which can be considered as a personal insult. So when it
According to Cerianne’s research, in the past 15 years, comes to scores for impression, it is really hard to say how
average female participation rate is only 17%; and even if per to do it fairly.
6 contestants there is one female contestant, there has never
been a female winner in the championship history. This is Competition structure
what got Cerianne’s attention, how come this international
competition has such a low female participation rate? In this All these cannot help but make us think about the struc-
regard, she summarized her thoughts: ture of the competition. There are also many baristas, partici-
pants, who ask: if in the whole story of WBC there was no female
Self-confidence & spirit of adventure champion, so maybe there is something wrong with the compe-
tition itself? Or, perhaps, women and men should be seperated
According to the same research, female participation is 25% into 2 different competitions? So former judge and coffee coach,
lower than male, and generally show less self-confidence, anxiety; Cerianne suggests to add gender training into judges training.
moreover, there is this “follow the crowd” phenomenon, which is She will continue doing researches on the competition, she
something like “if other women do not participate, then I will not also hopes women can be more brave and directly express their
participate, too”. There is one more problem: lack of spare time, most demands, not be afraid of asking for help and sponsorship , so
working women give their free time to their families, kids, house- they can focus on the competition itself and find suitable way of
work… Thus, in comparison, men have much more time to prepare expressing themselves.
for the competition. That is why a lot of women gave up their hopes.

29%

The
composition
of team competition
●Independent ●Family&Friend ●The Professional ●Others

One more crucial factor is a team support. Women in
earlier competitions are usually independent participants but if

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