Invisible Pieces: Women in Chess

#473 I doubt that has anything to do with chess

When your reference for male behavior is Bobby Fischer, the same guy who made an applause for World Trade Center Attack, you are not really trying to address the issue[1].

The fact of the matter is that, unlike boxing, women can compete with men. Don't that take my word for it, just throw "Carlsen vs Hou Yifan" on Google. Tata Steel 2018, for instance, showcases a game[2]. Women are legally entitled to play against men.

That being said, the topic "why there is so few women in Chess" should be discussed AFTER "why Chess is such an underrated sport". It took a movie like Queen Gambit to make it slightly more popular. Maybe intellectually capable women are being attracted to other things that are more popular. After that we have to address another problem: HOW the actual sexim on the sport exists in an ADMINISTRATIVE level[3]: something the article failed to show.

Yes, women's brains are wired differently the men's, but world has 8 billion people and there is probably a girl somewhere who has potential to climb the stairs and become a World Champion in few years. Probably more than one girl has that potential. Thus, discussing biology is dodging the issue.

So, how sexim exists on administrative level? I won't go about it because I can just drop a reference that gives a few examples[3]. I'll go onward and say that even with this happening, it doesn't explain why so few women.

Now, finally, to the question: "why so few women"? It's extremely subjective. This is how I go about it:

Imagine you have a very talented daughter who is able to become a giant on any field she takes the effort to do so. You have to guide her to some direction. WHY Chess? She won't be a World Champion and a renowned medic or judge at same time. It turns out that what society does is this on a large scale. Women are the daughters of the society much the way men are the sons. How many talented BOYS are told to play Chess, following the same idea, at a PROFESSIONAL level? Not so many if compared to those told to study law or biology at a professional level.

At this point, I'd like to recall that less than a century ago Rashid Gibiatovich Nezhmetdinov was unable to get GM title because, in his words, "there were not enough tournaments". He trained Mikhail Tal who would become a champion. There isn't space for everyone becoming a professional on Chess. There was no space for the arguably "strongest russian attacker" to become a GM. Why would be so much space for women either?

I found the article weak and it dodges the issue. Too sentimental. It didn't even cite Hou Yifan's protest and this is a MASSIVE blunder. Hou, a strong player, was set to defeat 7 female players and this is something that works straight towards actual ELIMINATION of females from the sport. Formally. How the article managed to miss that? They conducted tests to legitimize the pairings later on but I am not convinced about it.

1. Source for Fischer's insane claim: (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1364118/Bobby-Fischer-speaks-out-to-applaud-Trade-Centre-attacks.html)

2. Carlsen vs Hou Yifan: https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1908561

3. Women treated unfairly on Chess: https://www.chess.com/article/view/when-chess-players-protest

" I’m writing this anonymously. I would quite genuinely fear for my safety if I wrote this under my username"

lols , really . dam, hold back on your cutting words geeks ,lives will be lost !

So, most of us play online these days, you have no gender online or race you're just a name and a county(if you decide you want that displayed) and a rating i guess .

End of the day it's just a board game that for whatever reason more men play , if you go to an online scrabble site they are mostly female , you don't get 1000+ worded articles bemoaning that fact ,why ? because no one cares ! lols

few women in chess , I DO NOT CARE !

maybe we need to make the CAPTCHA easier so more women can comment , lols

"maybe we need to make the CAPTCHA easier so more women can comment , lols"

That's it, I'm reporting you to the FBI.

Stats don't lie and biology/genetics is real. When the disparity at the top level is this enormous then there must be something going on that can't merely be explained by "society". This article is bogus. It relies on narrative, not facts.

#477 The 3rd article literally ended with "Of course, I wish you to always get the best possible pairings in the tournaments that you play. But if something goes wrong and you see the ugly side of Swiss pairings, don't rush to call it conspiracy.

As they say, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
You aren't convinced because you don't want to be.
#480 Sure, but how does not having a Y chromosome cause one to be bad @ chess?

The disproportionate amount of the greatest chess players being Jewish, to me indicates genetics plays a role .

@svensp

I see what happened there...You write "I'm not sure I follow this, because I get the opposite result whether I look at the ratio of those rated above 1700 to all players (m 52% to w 32%), those rated above 2000 to all players (m 23% to w 12%) or those rated above 2300 to all players (m 4.2% to w 1.2%)"

and I read "to all players" as if you mixed the genders again. I had previously calculated the ratios of players below 1700 myself, which have obviously the opposite tendency (more lower-rated women per woman player), and somehow thought that was the reason you were getting to a different conclusion. My bad

Then the only issue would be that in the graph they make a point on # of GMs/IMs/etc of each gender and not ELOs, where it turns out there are more WGM's per woman player, than male GM's per male player, but WGM's are from ELO 2300 and above so it gets very murky. I think the way the ELO system is designed it should not matter whether you only play against other women, or open tournaments etc, but I am not qualified at all to judge that.

Honestly, I think that "inconclusive" is right on point. There is a very different number of players in the two genders discussed, so it is not easy to make a fair comparison. But what is more if one believes, as I do, that there are no intellectual/cognitive differences based on gender then there shouldn't be a true way to measure it either. You can make all points with data analysis especially if there is no clear tendency in the data.

Anything else you pointed out I agree with.

The point is that social expectation determines what you get passionate about, what you dare pursue, or even what you yourself believe you can get good at, for far too many people, especially the ones with fewer opportunities in the first place, like women. It's funny btw how some in here also turn that into a false positive. "women don't get obsessive", "they don't want to waste their time to crush the opponent's soul like fischer"... underhanded compliments.

Man you really have to be a loser to still be commenting on this.

#471

You may claim to be whatever you want. I don't know if you are a black person and what that means to you.
But last time you used OPPRESSED and OPPRESSION in post https://lichess.org/forum/general-chess-discussion/blog-X9i1gRUAAJzOKpd0?page=44#443 it was clearly sarcastically, implying that women are not oppressed, just plain dumb.
So I of course assumed that you used it sarcastically again in order to say that black people are dumb and that's why "you all" or they are worse at chess.

Or that you messed up in your effort to troll.

Sure, maybe the nieces didn't want to bother learning chess from a black guy knowing that he'll teach inferior chess compared to an OP white guy, and since they themselves are inevitably going to be worse than all boys with their OP testosterone. Or maybe two girls don't prove anything.
But you have your experiences in life, and if you've seen that hormones explain something there, maybe you have a point. I don't see the same thing, and I do believe I see "inherent" differences that are typical of one's gender otherwise.