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More Than Just Opponents: The Barriers Women Face In Chess

@svensp said in #31:

But why would it be the case in chess? In football it makes sense, because it is a physical sport and on average men are physically much stronger than women. In chess, there is no comparable difference.

So you say chess are not physical sport? Have you ever played in chess tournament and did a proper preparation to make a peak form?

@svensp said in #44:

It's possible that people who are exactly 1.82m excell at chess, whereas people who are between 1.50m and 1.55m just biologically cannot understand it.

Argumentum ad absurdum. Watch the FIDE ratings for men and women - can you see the difference? Because there is. Now show me the statistics based on heigh differences and prove that there are differences.

@robin_esperoza said in #41:

I feel there for sure is something in our culture that men get to be allowed to be completely obsessed with one (useless) thing. They excel at chess by not leaving the house for 3 months straight and just doing the one thing (I exaggerate).

It is just not true. How many men are playing chess having a job, university and families? I can tell you - a lot. Even on the highest level there were many musicians, mathematics and so on.

@svensp said in #31: > But why would it be the case in chess? In football it makes sense, because it is a physical sport and on average men are physically much stronger than women. In chess, there is no comparable difference. So you say chess are not physical sport? Have you ever played in chess tournament and did a proper preparation to make a peak form? @svensp said in #44: > It's possible that people who are exactly 1.82m excell at chess, whereas people who are between 1.50m and 1.55m just biologically cannot understand it. Argumentum ad absurdum. Watch the FIDE ratings for men and women - can you see the difference? Because there is. Now show me the statistics based on heigh differences and prove that there are differences. @robin_esperoza said in #41: > I feel there for sure is something in our culture that men get to be allowed to be completely obsessed with one (useless) thing. They excel at chess by not leaving the house for 3 months straight and just doing the one thing (I exaggerate). It is just not true. How many men are playing chess having a job, university and families? I can tell you - a lot. Even on the highest level there were many musicians, mathematics and so on.

@szczyk said in #51:

It is just not true. How many men are playing chess having a job, university and families? I can tell you - a lot. Even on the highest level there were many musicians, mathematics and so on.

Perhaps you are right; I am not convinced this is true for the absolute top though. To give one example, Ju Wenju said in an interview she spend about 6 hours/day preparing for her world championship match. Gukesh more of less spends this time before he has breakfast.

I agree I over exagareted, many men do several things at once, chess may be one of them. But for that 0,01% of the top elite; I feel they have spend a lot of time on chess, more so than women tend to be expected to (from a young age onwards). But, who knows maybe I am just wrong. It's surely possible. I don't have data.

@szczyk said in #51: > It is just not true. How many men are playing chess having a job, university and families? I can tell you - a lot. Even on the highest level there were many musicians, mathematics and so on. Perhaps you are right; I am not convinced this is true for the absolute top though. To give one example, Ju Wenju said in an interview she spend about 6 hours/day preparing for her world championship match. Gukesh more of less spends this time before he has breakfast. I agree I over exagareted, many men do several things at once, chess may be one of them. But for that 0,01% of the top elite; I feel they have spend a lot of time on chess, more so than women tend to be expected to (from a young age onwards). But, who knows maybe I am just wrong. It's surely possible. I don't have data.

@macha1313 said in #43:

I think you could very well be onto something here. I'm reminded of some stuff I've read about being on the autism spectrum, how it used to be thought of as something "only boys had" partly because of the way we socialize girls and the criteria of special interests (ie, your idea of doing one thing and not leaving the house for 3 months straight). It's not as acceptable in girls, so they typically learned to hide it better and didn't get diagnosed. It's worth mentioning that also affected diagnosis negatively for boys at times. "It's just a phase, he'll grow out of it" and such.

Good point. Thanks.

@macha1313 said in #43: > I think you could very well be onto something here. I'm reminded of some stuff I've read about being on the autism spectrum, how it used to be thought of as something "only boys had" partly because of the way we socialize girls and the criteria of special interests (ie, your idea of doing one thing and not leaving the house for 3 months straight). It's not as acceptable in girls, so they typically learned to hide it better and didn't get diagnosed. It's worth mentioning that also affected diagnosis negatively for boys at times. "It's just a phase, he'll grow out of it" and such. Good point. Thanks.

At some point, when you persist to believe in something despite empirical evidence of the contrary, you have to wonder where the bias really is.

At some point, when you persist to believe in something despite empirical evidence of the contrary, you have to wonder where the bias really is.

@x_trickster said in #47:

I actually agree with you on that. But we do know something in this case: men and women are biologically different and should be expected to perform differently. That should be the baseline assumption.

Assuming that they should perform equally across all averages is a wild hypothesis which should hold the burden of evidence.

Even just take a single factor such as men being more aggressive than women, the expectation would be that they play chess differently. I'd be very curious to hear your argument on why you think that despite men and women's many differences that the outcomes when playing chess would be identical at all levels.

Not necessarily 'identical at all levels' as that would be a very general statement. Within the group of men or the group of women there is a wide variety already, so my point is not that everybody is playing either in the same way or at the same strength. I'm arguing that unless there is evidence, there is no reason to assume a fundamental difference. I reject your argument on that point (see 6) below) But I see your points and I respect your view and I'll bring up some arguments as to why I don't think it's plausible that there would be a big difference in performance between men and women. Even though I disagree that that view should hold the burden of evidence.

  1. If there was some fundamental biological difference for the skills that make a good chess player one would expect there to be a hard ceiling for one gender or the other or for those that surpass it to be extremely untypical of their gender. But there isn't. For men it is obvious if you look at the rating, for women you can point to Judit Polgar for example.

  2. Along the same lines: The reason why there are many more players below 1800 than above 2000 is that it takes already a pretty refined skill set to reach that level (compared to all the ways one can play, a GM will look at it differently of course). Similarly for people above 2200, IMs, GMs etc. If there were a fundamental biological difference as to the skills that mattered, one would expect there to be hardly any women rated above 2000. Yet according to the current FIDE ranking list, there are more than 4000.

To me these two points (they are related) already indicate that no property in any gender can be incompatible with great chess playing abilities. Of course you could still argue with shifted distributions or whatever, but I feel this makes it very difficult to argue that there is a fundamental biological difference which is incompatible with great play.

  1. One could argue about the ability to spatially imagine things (which I've heard is something men score better at than women), but again, you would hardly have any great women player then. Especially if it is true that from 2000 onwards, evaluation starts playing a bigger role than analysis to explain differences in skill (that's not to say that GMs do not have vastly superior analysis skills to IMs for example)

  2. I believe the skills that matter most for chess don't naturally depend on gender. From what I've heard, it correlates mostly with deliberative practice. I see no reason why that should be different between men and women. There are female professionals in lots of fields. Again, no fundamental difference for what matters.

  3. If aggression was such a fundamental character trait how do you explain the very different characters demonstrated by players such as Fischer and Anand or Kasparov vs Karpov. Engines don't even have aggression and they're the best of all. So there are many different ways to be and still achieve greatness. Therefore differences that influence the way one plays wouldn't necessarily need to limit the resulting skill. They might just affect the style of play. But there are many ways to play successfully. Tal and Botvinnik were like night and day.

  4. In general, why would people who are so different have on average similar skills? That is a question that you could ask of any comparison. But, whenever you sample a group of people for example to investigate a certain question, you will have plenty of variety within them. And yet statistics and polling work somehow and yet get some normal distribution in the end. You of course have to control for the differences that matter (to the best of your knowledge), but through this filter there will always be a lot of variety still. Still it gives valuable results.

Again, this is an argument in favor of the view that the existence of difference should not lead to a baseline expectation of differing outcomes unless you show a connection between the difference and the skill in question. So the existence of difference within population does not logically lead to the assumption of it resulting in a difference for a given outcome. You would have to show a connection first.

For football that's easy to do when it comes to men and women. Running fast is an extremely important skill in football, men are unambiguously able to run faster than women and no other skill could compensate for it.

  1. In these types of discussions, people are very passionate in general, but the people who believe in natural superiority of men over women in chess usually seem to me to be more tenacious and emotional. If there was a study that proved unambiguously that men were better than women in chess (taking into account participation rate and related effects), that one would have been brought up in most if not all of these threads. :D

I believe the reason it hasn't happened is probably because that study doesn't exist and perhaps cannot, because the data might not show it. On the contrary, there is evidence that men and women alike have a bias to see women as less competent than they are, so I'm inclined to put the tenacity down to that.

There also was a study/investigation that showed that most of the difference in rating between men and women could be explained easily by the difference in numbers if I remember correctly (many more men than women play chess, so it makes perfect sense that there are more men in the top 100 than women).

@x_trickster said in #47: > I actually agree with you on that. But we do know something in this case: men and women are biologically different and should be expected to perform differently. That should be the baseline assumption. > > Assuming that they should perform equally across all averages is a wild hypothesis which should hold the burden of evidence. > > Even just take a single factor such as men being more aggressive than women, the expectation would be that they play chess differently. I'd be very curious to hear your argument on why you think that despite men and women's many differences that the outcomes when playing chess would be identical at all levels. Not necessarily 'identical at all levels' as that would be a very general statement. Within the group of men or the group of women there is a wide variety already, so my point is not that everybody is playing either in the same way or at the same strength. I'm arguing that unless there is evidence, there is no reason to assume a fundamental difference. I reject your argument on that point (see 6) below) But I see your points and I respect your view and I'll bring up some arguments as to why I don't think it's plausible that there would be a big difference in performance between men and women. Even though I disagree that that view should hold the burden of evidence. 1. If there was some fundamental biological difference for the skills that make a good chess player one would expect there to be a hard ceiling for one gender or the other or for those that surpass it to be extremely untypical of their gender. But there isn't. For men it is obvious if you look at the rating, for women you can point to Judit Polgar for example. 2. Along the same lines: The reason why there are many more players below 1800 than above 2000 is that it takes already a pretty refined skill set to reach that level (compared to all the ways one can play, a GM will look at it differently of course). Similarly for people above 2200, IMs, GMs etc. If there were a fundamental biological difference as to the skills that mattered, one would expect there to be hardly any women rated above 2000. Yet according to the current FIDE ranking list, there are more than 4000. To me these two points (they are related) already indicate that no property in any gender can be incompatible with great chess playing abilities. Of course you could still argue with shifted distributions or whatever, but I feel this makes it very difficult to argue that there is a fundamental biological difference which is incompatible with great play. 3. One could argue about the ability to spatially imagine things (which I've heard is something men score better at than women), but again, you would hardly have any great women player then. Especially if it is true that from 2000 onwards, evaluation starts playing a bigger role than analysis to explain differences in skill (that's not to say that GMs do not have vastly superior analysis skills to IMs for example) 4. I believe the skills that matter most for chess don't naturally depend on gender. From what I've heard, it correlates mostly with deliberative practice. I see no reason why that should be different between men and women. There are female professionals in lots of fields. Again, no fundamental difference for what matters. 5. If aggression was such a fundamental character trait how do you explain the very different characters demonstrated by players such as Fischer and Anand or Kasparov vs Karpov. Engines don't even have aggression and they're the best of all. So there are many different ways to be and still achieve greatness. Therefore differences that influence the way one plays wouldn't necessarily need to limit the resulting skill. They might just affect the style of play. But there are many ways to play successfully. Tal and Botvinnik were like night and day. 6. In general, why would people who are so different have on average similar skills? That is a question that you could ask of any comparison. But, whenever you sample a group of people for example to investigate a certain question, you will have plenty of variety within them. And yet statistics and polling work somehow and yet get some normal distribution in the end. You of course have to control for the differences that matter (to the best of your knowledge), but through this filter there will always be a lot of variety still. Still it gives valuable results. Again, this is an argument in favor of the view that the existence of difference should not lead to a baseline expectation of differing outcomes unless you show a connection between the difference and the skill in question. So the existence of difference within population does not logically lead to the assumption of it resulting in a difference for a given outcome. You would have to show a connection first. For football that's easy to do when it comes to men and women. Running fast is an extremely important skill in football, men are unambiguously able to run faster than women and no other skill could compensate for it. 7. In these types of discussions, people are very passionate in general, but the people who believe in natural superiority of men over women in chess usually seem to me to be more tenacious and emotional. If there was a study that proved unambiguously that men were better than women in chess (taking into account participation rate and related effects), that one would have been brought up in most if not all of these threads. :D I believe the reason it hasn't happened is probably because that study doesn't exist and perhaps cannot, because the data might not show it. On the contrary, there is evidence that men and women alike have a bias to see women as less competent than they are, so I'm inclined to put the tenacity down to that. There also was a study/investigation that showed that most of the difference in rating between men and women could be explained easily by the difference in numbers if I remember correctly (many more men than women play chess, so it makes perfect sense that there are more men in the top 100 than women).

@szczyk said in #51:

So you say chess are not physical sport? Have you ever played in chess tournament and did a proper preparation to make a peak form?

Yes, but I imagine the role of physical sports in chess preparation is probably more in stamina and awareness than in the actual physical skills used in those sports. To me it's unclear that the positive effects in these dimensions are necessarily larger for one gender over the other. Unless your opponent gets very angry and is very dangerous it doesn't really matter how fast you can run in chess.

Argumentum ad absurdum. Watch the FIDE ratings for men and women - can you see the difference? Because there is. Now show me the statistics based on heigh differences and prove that there are differences.

Yes, there is a clear difference, but does that difference really tell us anything other than that many more men than women are playing?

@szczyk said in #51: > So you say chess are not physical sport? Have you ever played in chess tournament and did a proper preparation to make a peak form? > Yes, but I imagine the role of physical sports in chess preparation is probably more in stamina and awareness than in the actual physical skills used in those sports. To me it's unclear that the positive effects in these dimensions are necessarily larger for one gender over the other. Unless your opponent gets very angry and is very dangerous it doesn't really matter how fast you can run in chess. > > > Argumentum ad absurdum. Watch the FIDE ratings for men and women - can you see the difference? Because there is. Now show me the statistics based on heigh differences and prove that there are differences. > Yes, there is a clear difference, but does that difference really tell us anything other than that many more men than women are playing?

Yes, there is a clear difference, but does that difference really tell us anything other than that many more men than women are playing?

This is an example of something that people routinely argue over, which would seem to have an objective answer. We should 1) agree on what we expect the relationship, then 2) agree on a data source, and only then look it up. That would yield objective evidence one way or another, instead of volleying the question back and forth.

Re question 1: I'm not a statistician, but it seems to me that, assuming that a particular subset of the population is representative, we should expect it to be more or less proportionately represented at every level. E.g., if it comprises x% of the overall population, we'd expect it to comprise about x% of the top 100 players, top 200, etc.

Re question 2: it seems to me that the registry of any major chess organization (FIDE, USCF), etc. would make a pretty good proxy for serious chess players overall, and their breakdowns by sex are likely to be accessible.

Does this sound like a reasonable way to address the question? (I have not looked at these numbers, and I'd suggest that anyone with an opinion on the proposal should state it before looking them up himself, to avoid being possibly affected by bias toward whatever theory he already leans toward.)

>Yes, there is a clear difference, but does that difference really tell us anything other than that many more men than women are playing? This is an example of something that people routinely argue over, which would seem to have an objective answer. We should 1) agree on what we expect the relationship, then 2) agree on a data source, and only then look it up. That would yield objective evidence one way or another, instead of volleying the question back and forth. Re question 1: I'm not a statistician, but it seems to me that, assuming that a particular subset of the population is representative, we should expect it to be more or less proportionately represented at every level. E.g., if it comprises x% of the overall population, we'd expect it to comprise about x% of the top 100 players, top 200, etc. Re question 2: it seems to me that the registry of any major chess organization (FIDE, USCF), etc. would make a pretty good proxy for serious chess players overall, and their breakdowns by sex are likely to be accessible. Does this sound like a reasonable way to address the question? (I have not looked at these numbers, and I'd suggest that anyone with an opinion on the proposal should state it before looking them up himself, to avoid being possibly affected by bias toward whatever theory he already leans toward.)

@svensp said in #56:

Yes, but I imagine the role of physical sports in chess preparation is probably more in stamina and awareness than in the actual physical skills used in those sports. To me it's unclear that the positive effects in these dimensions are necessarily larger for one gender over the other. Unless your opponent gets very angry and is very dangerous it doesn't really matter how fast you can run in chess.

I understand your point. My point is that the fact is males are stronger than females so I guess they tend to be used to confronting bigger physical challenges. And in tournament play, as you said - it is a lot about a stamina to play one game for hours or a lot of games in short period of time. It's my assumption that stronger body can provide better effect in tournament play even if there is no technical differences in play. One master said: if you want to win, it is not enough to be good at chess, you have to be good at playing chess. I mean, I may be wrong but I still woudn't underestimate physical asspects in playing chess.

@svensp said in #56:

Yes, there is a clear difference, but does that difference really tell us anything other than that many more men than women are playing?

I'm not pretending to know the reasons of that difference. I was only referring to your argumentation.
Everybody notice a difference between males and females - now we can start wondering the reasons.
Nobody have ever noticed a difference between players based on theirs heigh - we should prove that before start to compere it to gender (or sex?) differences.
Maybe in English language it was better to say "whataboutism" than "argumentum ad absurdum", but I think you understand the point.

@svensp said in #56: > Yes, but I imagine the role of physical sports in chess preparation is probably more in stamina and awareness than in the actual physical skills used in those sports. To me it's unclear that the positive effects in these dimensions are necessarily larger for one gender over the other. Unless your opponent gets very angry and is very dangerous it doesn't really matter how fast you can run in chess. I understand your point. My point is that the fact is males are stronger than females so I guess they tend to be used to confronting bigger physical challenges. And in tournament play, as you said - it is a lot about a stamina to play one game for hours or a lot of games in short period of time. It's my assumption that stronger body can provide better effect in tournament play even if there is no technical differences in play. One master said: if you want to win, it is not enough to be good at chess, you have to be good at playing chess. I mean, I may be wrong but I still woudn't underestimate physical asspects in playing chess. @svensp said in #56: > Yes, there is a clear difference, but does that difference really tell us anything other than that many more men than women are playing? I'm not pretending to know the reasons of that difference. I was only referring to your argumentation. Everybody notice a difference between males and females - now we can start wondering the reasons. Nobody have ever noticed a difference between players based on theirs heigh - we should prove that before start to compere it to gender (or sex?) differences. Maybe in English language it was better to say "whataboutism" than "argumentum ad absurdum", but I think you understand the point.

in regard to discrimination that happens to most people eg in work in life in dating in all aspects of life not just to woman men get discriminated too for example there is a sport called netball and it is made for only woman and men are not allowed to play at a competitive level this is what google said in regard to netball "International netball is strictly sanctioned for females and is one of the only single-gendered sports to be solely permitted by its governing body - the International Netball Federation. But it's not due to lack of male participation nor male interest". so even if some men really found the game interesting they would not be allowed to play is that not a form of discrimination? at least you the opportunity to play chess unlike Netball for men.

In regard to only 11% of rated players being woman that is because Woman are smarter when it comes to money then men are they realize it is extremely hard to make money in chess and it takes a lot of financial investment and time to potentially make any money and it makes more sense to have a stable career that gives an income than chase tournaments hoping one day they will become so well known they can become a streamer or sponsored vast majority of titled players make money doing chessable course or chess lessons that fact you can be a professional in chess and not make a living playing the game you are professional at is crazy

This last point is in regard to harassment I agree it does happen to woman more than men in chess that is true I admit that however there have been some instances where I have seen some females falsely accuse men of harassment and when they were asked what happened they said a guy made them feel uncomfortable but would not say what they did which is gaslighting.

in regard to discrimination that happens to most people eg in work in life in dating in all aspects of life not just to woman men get discriminated too for example there is a sport called netball and it is made for only woman and men are not allowed to play at a competitive level this is what google said in regard to netball "International netball is strictly sanctioned for females and is one of the only single-gendered sports to be solely permitted by its governing body - the International Netball Federation. But it's not due to lack of male participation nor male interest". so even if some men really found the game interesting they would not be allowed to play is that not a form of discrimination? at least you the opportunity to play chess unlike Netball for men. In regard to only 11% of rated players being woman that is because Woman are smarter when it comes to money then men are they realize it is extremely hard to make money in chess and it takes a lot of financial investment and time to potentially make any money and it makes more sense to have a stable career that gives an income than chase tournaments hoping one day they will become so well known they can become a streamer or sponsored vast majority of titled players make money doing chessable course or chess lessons that fact you can be a professional in chess and not make a living playing the game you are professional at is crazy This last point is in regard to harassment I agree it does happen to woman more than men in chess that is true I admit that however there have been some instances where I have seen some females falsely accuse men of harassment and when they were asked what happened they said a guy made them feel uncomfortable but would not say what they did which is gaslighting.

That's how i feel when I play chess with my friends that try to support me(they're boys) when i play chess and are made fun of,, especially against boys.

That's how i feel when I play chess with my friends that try to support me(they're boys) when i play chess and are made fun of,, especially against boys.