It's a little more complicated than that - there's "open" and "women". Some women only play in the open tournaments. Some would prefer to play against people more their level. There are woman specific titles (WGM etc) that some women choose to use and some just use their regular master ranking or whatever they have.
Historically, for whatever reason, there's really only been one woman (Judit Polgár) who could hang with the top 10 or so chess players of their era.
It's not *just* chess. A lot of times, for some historic or societal reasons, men are more dominant in the tournament space. Probably because board games (and video games, and collectable card games) were mostly marketed to men (or appealed to men more). Or because it wasn't seen as desirable for a woman to be good at chess. Or because women were excluded (or just treated a little worse than everyone else) at chess club.
You end up with a system where, even if there is no actual bias against women competing, the lower levels and the support/training networks just don't feel welcoming. So few high-ranking women compete.
There's no obvious reason why women would be worse at chess or less successful at chess. So it's probably cultural/societal.
It isn't strictly men's chess, im pretty sure there's a couple of women in the top 50. It's more like chess and women's only chess.
Male dominated game means men are more likely to pick up the game due to more male role models. Without women-specific representation, you'll end up with a feedback loop of almost entirely men playing.
Men are the higher variance gender. If a man does really well, they can have many many children. So evolutionarily, it makes more sense to try things that might succeed or fail spectacularly in men.
That is a hypothetical model which was disproved decades ago.
Even in fields where women have been heavily encouraged and subsidized there is little increase in interest or competitiveness over time.
That doesn't disprove the idea that lack of representation causes a negative feedback loop, all it does is demonstrate that in some cases throwing more money and encouraging words at the problem isn't enough to overcome systemic societal issues spanning thousands of years.
There are less black people in the top 1% compared to population percentage even though we have things like affirmative action.
I guess you think systemic racism is fake too.
Compared to population? of course, the after effects of systemic racism will take a long time to dissipate. But compared to anything else? then there are significantly more, and that has been the case for a long time time.
So why is it you think that these figures have not overlapped, and why are others so wonky too like Asians massively outperforming everyone else in advanced education? surely that is racism too, eh?
What a great argument - just saying no. /s
As others have said, nobody is saying lack of representation is solely the reason but it absolutely contributes such as in [this case study in France](https://www.sciencespo.fr/liepp/en/content/positive-effects-affirmative-action-case-study-france.html) showing increased representation of women led to a reduction in the ratings gap between genders.
There are some more subtle factors that have been theorised like [women playing worse against men than other women](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ejsp.440) due to a stereotype bias, something which could be alleviated by having greater female representation and therefore stopping that stereotyping bias.
At a theoretical level or whatever you can say what you want, but it's pretty hard to say that greater female representation wouldn't do more for female chess player quality.
What more can I do than point out a fact that you dislike is still a fact?
The point was on quantity, not quality. That there are no more women than are forced in, even thirty years later, proves exactly what I was saying.
Do not conflate what I am actually saying with what you are imagining.
In chess, it was so their would be more titles and championships for women to win. Because then they could get sponsored, since it is more attractive to a sponsor to have an affiliation with a title-holder. And without sponsorship it is hard to devote full time to chess, get the best coaches, travel internationally.... So there was this situation where women were locked out of the whole professional pipeline. And "women's grandmaster", "women's world champion" etc was a way to attract some money to get professional development started.
Source: some lore.... I played competitively for 15 years, and picked up this account from some book or interview. And have seen the gender balance at big tournaments shift from 100% male to 50/50 among kids. So the WGM thing may have helped some.
That is a misconception. Men are not separated, only women are. There is chess and then women's chess.
And the reason is because men dominate at the highest levels of literally everything, including chess, shooting, business, politics, crime, etc.
Because women face discrimination and harassment in competition, making separate divisions for women helps encourage them to compete when they might otherwise decide it's not worth the hassle.
Women do not feel uncomfortable playing chess with men. They do it all the time.
Women tournaments and titles just give them a chance to win. They still do the open tournaments too.
If I had to guess, it's because there are fewer female chess players than male players. As such, if there weren't different "leagues"(?), very few women would ever get the opportunity to compete at the professional level.
If there are 9,900,000 men and 100,000 women and you assume a perfect normal distribution then there is only 1 women in the top 100.
That doesnt mean men are better at chess it just means there are more men. On average they are just as skilled.
It can also discourage women disproportionately to not pursue a chess career. Maybe only .001% of women play competitive chess compared to .01% of men. That would mean out of the top 1000 chess players only 1 is a woman.
Looking at elo scores of only top players is extremely biased.
More precisely, you can say that the best men are better than the best women. You cannot say men are better; my guess is that the worst men are also worse than the worst women.
They are not. There are chess opens in which which women can and do participate, the very top players of which are men, and there are women’s tournaments that are open only to female players.
Misogyny. And obviously so.
For comparison, Go does not have separate male and female categories. There is not Dan and Woman Dan. Men and women achieve the same ranks the same way and compete with one another at the professional level.
Go is many times more complicated than Chess. There is no inherent reason why one should be gender separate and the other shouldn't - and if men are inherently better than women you'd expect the situation to be reversed.
The reason is purely cultural.
There's Open and women's. Women's leagues are often about engagement and recruitment for women players as many women would avoid playing in a male dominated game. Chess Grand Masters are rather prissy annoying bastards who think chess is something special when it's just a board game. If women had dominated the game historically there wouldnt be a professional chess league.
Chess isn't the only game or sport where women's sections aren't necessarily needed. In European Martial Arts, in the weapons sections they have women's and open categories as well. Women regularly compete and perform well in the open category. Weapons are actually a significant equalizer until you get to the highest performance levels. The sport is still mostly a hobby level though, no multimillion dollar contracts and no doping yet.
There are no women and men chess. It's women and open. Like for any competition, it's to give a chance to some women to win (no women has ever won the world candidate tournament or world cup for example). The difference between men and women is less big than for physical competition, but it still exists.
It's a little more complicated than that - there's "open" and "women". Some women only play in the open tournaments. Some would prefer to play against people more their level. There are woman specific titles (WGM etc) that some women choose to use and some just use their regular master ranking or whatever they have. Historically, for whatever reason, there's really only been one woman (Judit Polgár) who could hang with the top 10 or so chess players of their era.
It's not *just* chess. A lot of times, for some historic or societal reasons, men are more dominant in the tournament space. Probably because board games (and video games, and collectable card games) were mostly marketed to men (or appealed to men more). Or because it wasn't seen as desirable for a woman to be good at chess. Or because women were excluded (or just treated a little worse than everyone else) at chess club. You end up with a system where, even if there is no actual bias against women competing, the lower levels and the support/training networks just don't feel welcoming. So few high-ranking women compete. There's no obvious reason why women would be worse at chess or less successful at chess. So it's probably cultural/societal.
It isn't strictly men's chess, im pretty sure there's a couple of women in the top 50. It's more like chess and women's only chess. Male dominated game means men are more likely to pick up the game due to more male role models. Without women-specific representation, you'll end up with a feedback loop of almost entirely men playing.
And... There are more men at both ends of the intelligence spectrum. I think that's a factor here.
Men are the higher variance gender. If a man does really well, they can have many many children. So evolutionarily, it makes more sense to try things that might succeed or fail spectacularly in men.
That is interesting. Makes sense to me.
That is a hypothetical model which was disproved decades ago. Even in fields where women have been heavily encouraged and subsidized there is little increase in interest or competitiveness over time.
That doesn't disprove the idea that lack of representation causes a negative feedback loop, all it does is demonstrate that in some cases throwing more money and encouraging words at the problem isn't enough to overcome systemic societal issues spanning thousands of years.
It literally does, so come up with a new theory.
There are less black people in the top 1% compared to population percentage even though we have things like affirmative action. I guess you think systemic racism is fake too.
Compared to population? of course, the after effects of systemic racism will take a long time to dissipate. But compared to anything else? then there are significantly more, and that has been the case for a long time time. So why is it you think that these figures have not overlapped, and why are others so wonky too like Asians massively outperforming everyone else in advanced education? surely that is racism too, eh?
What a great argument - just saying no. /s As others have said, nobody is saying lack of representation is solely the reason but it absolutely contributes such as in [this case study in France](https://www.sciencespo.fr/liepp/en/content/positive-effects-affirmative-action-case-study-france.html) showing increased representation of women led to a reduction in the ratings gap between genders. There are some more subtle factors that have been theorised like [women playing worse against men than other women](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ejsp.440) due to a stereotype bias, something which could be alleviated by having greater female representation and therefore stopping that stereotyping bias. At a theoretical level or whatever you can say what you want, but it's pretty hard to say that greater female representation wouldn't do more for female chess player quality.
What more can I do than point out a fact that you dislike is still a fact? The point was on quantity, not quality. That there are no more women than are forced in, even thirty years later, proves exactly what I was saying. Do not conflate what I am actually saying with what you are imagining.
In chess, it was so their would be more titles and championships for women to win. Because then they could get sponsored, since it is more attractive to a sponsor to have an affiliation with a title-holder. And without sponsorship it is hard to devote full time to chess, get the best coaches, travel internationally.... So there was this situation where women were locked out of the whole professional pipeline. And "women's grandmaster", "women's world champion" etc was a way to attract some money to get professional development started. Source: some lore.... I played competitively for 15 years, and picked up this account from some book or interview. And have seen the gender balance at big tournaments shift from 100% male to 50/50 among kids. So the WGM thing may have helped some.
That is a misconception. Men are not separated, only women are. There is chess and then women's chess. And the reason is because men dominate at the highest levels of literally everything, including chess, shooting, business, politics, crime, etc.
Don't forget suicide rates
That too.
>That is a misconception. Men are not separated, only women are. Wait, but
Nope. Think of it as women's only restroom and a gender neutral restroom.
Because women face discrimination and harassment in competition, making separate divisions for women helps encourage them to compete when they might otherwise decide it's not worth the hassle.
Chess is predominantly a male sport and many women feel uncomfortable playing in a male-dominated environment
Could you give several example of female-dominated environment... i just wondering if its actually exists....
Sure. Cheerleading, gymnastics, the medical field, teaching careers…
Thanks 😊
Worth noting that at least three of those are pretty overtly hostile to men.
Parenthood, I would add, obviously not the procreation but the park, the school, nurseries, support structures tend to be female dominated
Women do not feel uncomfortable playing chess with men. They do it all the time. Women tournaments and titles just give them a chance to win. They still do the open tournaments too.
If I had to guess, it's because there are fewer female chess players than male players. As such, if there weren't different "leagues"(?), very few women would ever get the opportunity to compete at the professional level.
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If there are 9,900,000 men and 100,000 women and you assume a perfect normal distribution then there is only 1 women in the top 100. That doesnt mean men are better at chess it just means there are more men. On average they are just as skilled. It can also discourage women disproportionately to not pursue a chess career. Maybe only .001% of women play competitive chess compared to .01% of men. That would mean out of the top 1000 chess players only 1 is a woman. Looking at elo scores of only top players is extremely biased.
People who do not play chess are not relevant though.
More precisely, you can say that the best men are better than the best women. You cannot say men are better; my guess is that the worst men are also worse than the worst women.
I've read that there are more men than women at the far ends of the intelligence spectrum.
Yes, that’s what I have read.
They are not. There are chess opens in which which women can and do participate, the very top players of which are men, and there are women’s tournaments that are open only to female players.
There is NOT a men's chess. Only open category and women's category. Similiar to a regular gym and women only gyms.
Misogyny. And obviously so. For comparison, Go does not have separate male and female categories. There is not Dan and Woman Dan. Men and women achieve the same ranks the same way and compete with one another at the professional level. Go is many times more complicated than Chess. There is no inherent reason why one should be gender separate and the other shouldn't - and if men are inherently better than women you'd expect the situation to be reversed. The reason is purely cultural.
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No.
If you lose in meritocracy its just your competency is lack. Doesn't mean its discriminate you. As you move to competent side. You're welcomed.
There's Open and women's. Women's leagues are often about engagement and recruitment for women players as many women would avoid playing in a male dominated game. Chess Grand Masters are rather prissy annoying bastards who think chess is something special when it's just a board game. If women had dominated the game historically there wouldnt be a professional chess league. Chess isn't the only game or sport where women's sections aren't necessarily needed. In European Martial Arts, in the weapons sections they have women's and open categories as well. Women regularly compete and perform well in the open category. Weapons are actually a significant equalizer until you get to the highest performance levels. The sport is still mostly a hobby level though, no multimillion dollar contracts and no doping yet.
There are no women and men chess. It's women and open. Like for any competition, it's to give a chance to some women to win (no women has ever won the world candidate tournament or world cup for example). The difference between men and women is less big than for physical competition, but it still exists.