October 14, 2009
Abolish Women’s Chess Titles
BY BARBARA JEPSON
The Wall Street Journal
In 1991, Hungarian chess player Susan Polgar made headlines as the first woman to earn the coveted rank of grandmaster by meeting established performance standards. While competitive chess remains primarily a male activity, women have made impressive progress since then.
According to David Jarrett, executive director of the World Chess Federation, women make up about 10% of the organization’s estimated one million members, 7.6% of 100,456 rated players, and 2% of the top 1,000 players world-wide. More significantly, the caliber of the top female players is rising. In July 2005, grandmaster Judit Polgar, Susan’s youngest sister, was the eighth-ranked player world-wide. And prominent chess coaches predict that the number of women holding active grandmaster status—now 18 out of 1,028—will triple within five years.
Yet the federation, known colloquially as FIDE (pronounced fee-day), persists in the anachronistic and demeaning practice of awarding separate titles for women at lower levels of accomplishment. For example, to qualify as a grandmaster (GM) today, men and women must earn two or more “norms” (prespecified favorable results in qualifying tournaments) at a performance rating of 2600 and achieve a published overall rating (a system ranking relative player strength) of 2500. But female players attain the woman grandmaster (WGM) designation by earning two or more norms at a performance rating of 2400 and achieving published ratings of 2300. So it’s easier to attain the WGM title than to become an international master (IM), which requires two or more norms at 2450 and an overall rating of 2400.
…A number of aficionados claim that men have an edge because chess is a game of spatial relations, and some studies show men scoring higher than women in “mental rotation.” Chess teachers say that girls are usually not as competitive as boys, and that hinders their performance. It’s no accident, in my opinion, that many top female players were introduced to the game at an early age by their fathers. The three Polgar sisters—a middle sister, Sofia, reached IM status—were chess prodigies and pawns in their father’s educational experiment; he endeavored to show that children can become geniuses if provided rigorous daily training in a favorite activity. Ms. Krush, who learned the game from her dad at the age of five, observes that girls may not naturally possess the “killer instincts” that some boys exhibit, but they can be trained to be more attack-oriented if they compete from childhood.
She also pinpoints another possible factor in the dearth of women at the top. “Chess is a pretty solitary activity,” says Ms. Krush. “My feeling is that women overall are not as fanatical about it as men. The Polgar sisters worked very hard at chess from an early age, but it’s rare to see women being encouraged to do that or even wanting to do that. Women . . . [believe] there are other things in life.”
Here is the full article.
I agree wholeheartedly that women’s titles should be abolished. I have seen too many women aim too low when they could have reached the heights of real titles. A very long time ago, there were special ‘women’s degrees’ in universities. (In fact my granny actually believed that my PhD was a special kind of wPhD, bless her!). These were phased out decades ago, because women proved they were perfectly capable of getting real degrees. Chess has a lot in common with academic study and the time to leave women’s titles in the past where they belong has surely come.
Yeah I was just thinking about this after the Championship finished today. The creation of separate titles for women is degrading. I don’t blame women for taking them when earned; after all, they recognize specific accomplishments and carry substantial meaning, raising a player’s status. But how can we pretend to know that women’s abilities in chess are inherently less? The system paints the picture that way, but I doubt it reflects an absolute truth. I suspect that as more women enter the sport, they will make their mark. The proportions are just all funny at the moment. I’d be pretty steamed if they started coming out with gay chess titles or chess titles reserved for the african-american community. Other sports can make a much stronger (although still highly questionable) case for separate competition and titles, but let’s make our sport one of the first to stop being so silly.
Using that same logic they ought to rename the Grand Master title the “Men’s Grand Master” and reserve the regular GM title for computers only, as people will never compete with computers.
Anything that serves to promote women playing chess should be considered a good thing. If it means having separate titles or tournaments, so be it. There is nothing about being a WGM that prevents you from becoming a GM. There is also nothing about playing in a women’s tournament tht prevents you from playing with men, either.
The question, of course, is whether these separate designations actually help. Perhaps the women in our audience would like to comment on that.
I think the women’s titles should not be abolished, it can be renamed, who knows someday, there will be a woman (a chosen one), who can beat all the best chess player in the world, man or woman.
‘I agree wholeheartedly that women’s titles should be abolished.’
To make that happen, you need to abolish FIDE first.
‘who knows someday, there will be a woman (a chosen one), who can beat all the best chess player in the world, man or woman.’
There will never be one.
Men should be allowed to play on all women tournaments and get women titles, too. Then and only then all will be well.
FIDE is clear on the topic. Women are less smart and less capable for chess than men.
This WGM claims to be a GM here and there, and also claims to have a “men’s IM title”, clearly one which does not exist. Women are far from understanding FIDE system of titling. http://www.alisamaric.com
FIDE is as usual stupid when making title names. So are the 150 federations supporting it.
Abolish Women’s Chess Titles? Abolish women from playing chess! Have them as coaches only.
Rybka is a woman.
Other sports have women’s championship title. Why not chess?
FIDE clearly assumes that women are stupid for chess playing, but not for other things. There are only one sort of titles for FIDE arbiter, FIDE organizer and FIDE trainer. FIDE is a man’s organization and there is nothing you can do about it. Forget it.
That is such a pretty picture of the Polgar sisters. Susan looked so different in dark curls.
‘”I don’t see their benefit,” says 25-year-old IM Irina Krush. “Women’s titles are really a marker of lower expectations.”‘
Nothing she has done in US championship says otherwise anything is wrong. Lower expectations is just right.
My opinion is that women should not be allowed to play with men, nor to earn men’s titles. Men’s titles are men’s anyway.
‘These were phased out decades ago, because women proved they were perfectly capable of getting real degrees.’
In chess, most women are not capable of working as hard as men. Why? Because chess is a stupid game.
‘Chess has a lot in common with academic study and the time to leave women’s titles in the past where they belong has surely come.’
Posting open letters instead of sending them to USCF means nothing.
TO change anything in chess you need to contact Mr. George Makropoulos of the world chess federation. He decides everything.
This question is similar to one I was pondering last night. During the World Series of Poker last night (I have no idea if the episode was current or not), the announcers made a big deal out of the four women remaining in the tournament. At the same time, several hundred men were vying for the coveted “final table” spots. Why should a game like poker or chess have male dominated upper-echelons? As anecdotal evidence, I play family style poker about once a week with both women and men. In these games, the women generally play as well as the men (most of us have no idea what we are doing). The players in my poker circle that pursue poker more extensively (playing in casinos and online) are all men, however. For some reason, men seem to simply care more about a game than women do. My women friends are shocked at the idea of playing online poker multiple hours a night while my male friends seem (hopelessly?) attracted to the idea.
What is so deeply objectionable in the game of chess that women, the crown of creation, are incapable of playing it well?
Simply that games are the opposite of human contact.
Most chess clubs (in the random sample of the ones I’ve been to) are dominated by very socially awkward, very bitter men in their lates 20s and early 30s. They in general want “chicks” around, but they certainly don’t want independent women with views of their own, and they absolutely don’t want women who might beat them at chess. So, since their “wanting” to have chicks around is not something that has an effect on their behaviour – they aren’t prepared to treat women respectfully – an economist would say that they might as well not want chicks around at all.
The question of why there are so few women grand masters was not answered by studying average groups of chess players and finding no significant differences between boys and girls or men and women. Sameness near the middle of a distribution tells us nothing about the extreme tails.
We have not seen any women to equal Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking or Isaac Newton or other super geniuses in physics or math. We have not seen any women chess players that have been close to the abilities of Bobby Fisher or Gary Kasparov. I do not believe that is due to discrimination or cultural biases. There are plenty of women in science and medicine, but none have been among the most elite. There is strong evidence that men have slight advantages in some areas (spatial orientation, number manipulation). Thus, it is unsurprising that the most elite mathematicians, physicists, and chess players have been men. Women have slight advantages in other areas (language and interaction skills). Thus, the best and most brilliant (in my opinion) of the computer language and compiler developers was a woman, Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, who earned her math Ph.D. in 1934 and began her computer language work in 1943.
The question is less acute than it was a generation ago (when I was playing competitive chess). At that time the best women were _far_ below the best men. This was despite the fact that the great motherland of chess was the USSR, where gender equality was a prominent feature of the ruling ideology, and women were substantially present in many male-dominated occupations. Yet not one woman even approached grandmaster level. I don’t know if anyone measured actual participation levels. But there were IIRC 25-35 Soviet grandmasters and it seems unlikely that the participation rates were _that_ different. Americans were far less interested in chess than Soviets, but the U.S. still produced Bobby Fisher.
There was a lot of gassy speculation about the mysterious mechanism behind the discrepancy.
Since then the rise of the Polgar sisters has proven that women _can_ be grandmaster level players. Perhaps even in Russia, the participation rates were that different, and the geeky bachelors who dominate chess clubs were a serious barrier. Idunno.
Chess players, of course, have clearly defined numerical performance ratings, which measure quality quite accurately. The bottom line seems to be that men simply care more about doing well at chess, I might add that this speaks well for women. Of course this preference-based explanation can be tested further; it implies that women should have greater relative chess strength in poorer countries, where they are more likely to play for a living and not just for fun. I believe this to be true, most of all in China.
read this and you will understand –
http://www.gmu.edu/jbc/
Tyler/womeninthearts.pdf
I found these to be very interesting posts, because I have been mulling over this same issue as it pertains to competitive Scrabble. Recently, our National Champs (I live in New Zealand) were won by a woman, and someone said to me that this particular person was the first female to win our National Champs in 25 years. This surprised me, since I play competitive Scrabble, and know that most of the players are female. So I looked at the current National ratings, and this is what
I found:
1. There are 278 ranked Scrabble Players in NZ of whom 62 are Male (22%)
2. The top 100 players contain 36 men (36%)
3. The Top 50 players contain 23 men (46%)
4. The top 20 players contain 13 men (65%)
5. The top 10 players have 9 men (90%) plus our current national champ, Joanne.
I thought this inverted pyramid was pretty astonishing – only 22% of Competitive Scrabble players in NZ are men, yet they dominate the top echelons of the game. And I think the same applies internationally (I know that a woman has not won the world champs yet).
I’m not aware that there is any discrimination operating in Scrabble, but the sheer number of women playing the game should produce more top ranked players – unless there are other factors prevailing.
But in this case participation levels can hardly be the culprit.
Just give it some thought, it is not meant to be negative in any wya, in any context: which top players have the GM Polgar sister produced, that can overpower the man-machine in chess? Not one. Not even close. My question is why, as all three were capable of thrashing the men whenever they wanted to.
All the women who are and were successful in chess are and were so because they were trained by men, not women.
I think it is high time to reveal the most well kept secret since Roswell. Not all top male chess players were of male gender at birth.
Let’s just accept the obvious – men are inherently better at chess than women. The Polgar sisters should not be an argument for women’s chess strength because they were products of a family experiment. If the Polgar sisters happened to be brothers, that family experiment would have produced the strongest GM trio ever, and the Polgar brothers would have been dominating world chess by now.
In chess, what matters most is having you know what. It helps you by pointing where to play at all times.
‘Let’s just accept the obvious’
I will never accept the “obvious”.
Do anyone think FIDE will abolish an income source? Rather they may like to introduce tiles such as BGM(Boy GM), GGM (Girl GM), JGM (Junior GM)and thus enhance the income
There are arguments on both sides.
The GM and IM titles are not men’s titles: they are available to all.
Similarly, it is not correct to refer to the World Championship as the ‘Men’s World Championship’: it was never this in name of reality.
Any measure which encourages women to play chess is to be encouraged. If the WGM title lowers their aims and motivation, then by all means abolish it.
However, it’s introduction was and is in good faith.
I agree in abolishing women titles, they make no sense nowadays. Even if men generally show to have an edge, doesn’t mean much… there are some women who are more competitive than male counterparts. But i don’t agree that the difference in the number of male vs female players (hence the difference in the number of GMs) is due to the fact that women know there are other things in life, even well known male GMs do. 🙂
‘However, it’s introduction was and is in good faith.’
No it’s introduction was made by beaurocrats who know little about the game.
Women’s chess? I never saw such a thing.
What would be the result of a chess match between bloggers and USCF officials?
Women’s chess should be abolished in any country that treats women as dirt.
”However, it’s introduction was and is in good faith.”
From what planet you come from?? The only reason was to get more money from taxing women. You don’t really think some chess woman champion suggested it???
The thing is that later all women loved these titles and willingly became addicted to being ridiculed in chess, with a few notable exceptions.
Introducing womens titles was a major setback in mens earnings in chess, as suddenly money went away for organizing women chess tournaments and not into mens pockets. Look at recent Nanjing, how much money we lost! I could have been all added to our prize fund instead.
The rule is – do not mend if i is not broken.
Why isn’t there a Woman’s World Chess Federation??
What I see is women promoting chess more and beter than men.
Just take a look at FIDE reports. They only mention how much money was collected from women and men titles, and not how many new titled women and men there are more each term, how their lives are functioning, how their pension schemes are being regulated, etc.
I am only interested in reading comments from Women World Champions on this issue.
‘”Chess is a pretty solitary activity,” says Ms. Krush’
More solitary than tennis, or table tennis, or accountant? Aw come on!
“Similarly, it is not correct to refer to the World Championship as the ‘Men’s World Championship’: it was never this in name of reality.”
You are totally wrong here. In fact it used to be Men’s World Championship for 100 years. In 1986 Susan finished shared 2nd in Hungarian championship and thus qualified for the zonal championship (1st step in World Championship cycle). However she was ilegible to participate in the zonal on the grounds that she is not a man!!! For the next cycle the word “Men’s” was droped and World Championship became open for both genders.
So from it’s inception to the end of 1987-1990 cycle, the World Championship was for men only.
Yup, FIDE sux bigtime. I throw up every time their names are mentioned.
Imagine our chess world run by the likes of Philippinos, Malaysians, Brazilians and Portugese. Praise the lord for help. Russians should be abolished from any chess commentaris in the futures, too.
‘However she was ilegible to participate in the zonal on the grounds that she is not a man!!!’
That must be a groce lie. Why do you lie?
For God’s sake, our chess world is run by people who are cowards.
I hate every chess official and wish them all the worst in life. I hate all of them who did harm to Susan and wish them to rot.
Women can beat Men easily, clearly the Polgar Fam. proved this, thanks for the info though chess historian! didnt know you hit’em in the face like that Susan!!! Are you sporting a BUSH in that photo? hehe.
“I hate every chess official and wish them all the worst in life. I hate all of them who did harm to Susan and wish them to rot.”
Many are vexatious closet homosexuals with fantasies of seatless bicycle riding. Many are pedophiles and convicted felons.
All of them are imbalanced.
Chess is a sport for men. Women should be making babies and cleaning houses.
Oh Mr. Duncan i missed your blog , we arent interested in your titles or rating systems to prove our abilites , we have other plans, besided i already beat all your so-called elite guys on the icc , then the cowards started playing me with low accounts! i guess its the OLD European Male Ego! HAHA. I guess they will have some magic or something when we meet over-the-board, we will see.
What say the Chess Bitch, Jeniffer Shahade?
‘Many are vexatious closet homosexuals with fantasies of seatless bicycle riding. Many are pedophiles and convicted felons.
All of them are imbalanced.’
How true. Let’s not forget a small number of pedofile chess trainers and felons who have avoided conviction so far.
“We have not seen any women to equal Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking or Isaac Newton or other super geniuses in physics or math.”
Have you ever heard of Marie Curie, silly? Her most notable achievements?
Nobel Prize for Physics (1903)
Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1911)
Her daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie, won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1935
How many men have won two Nobel Prizes in scientific fields???? Albert Einstein ONLY WON ONE for Physics.
Stephen Hawking HAS NOT won the Nobel Prize.
Women are equal to men if they apply themselves!!!
And I’m a guy.
What say Hamid of Malaysia, expert in women chess?
It is of quite importance to eliminate all chess officers who engage in illegal offers to women during chess tournaments.
I have come to the conclusion that women are just stupid. Yes, I know that must include myself, but I can support the statement.
I have a friend named G, obviously not her real name, whose boyfriend M left to live in Texas a couple of weeks ago. Before he left, while sipping some Starbucks Hot Chocolate, I said, “He is going to dump her after he gets there.” What happened? He waited a good week then sent a text message to a mutual friend saying that he had changed his number and not to give it to G or he would change it again. Oh, he also changed his email address, though all he had to do was block her.
So my friends decide that they are not going to say anything and just let this woman thinks that he is counting the hours til her arrival in another two weeks. Well, not the kind of person to want to see someone hurt and spending money on a bus to do it, I told her about the text message. She cried, plotted revenge, called his other girlfriend, who gave her money, and then started calling his father, friends, ex-wife, etc. OK, yes, he was incredibly stupid to have given those numbers to someone they do not know.
The father supposedly said he wanted her down there because M was not doing well. Hmmm. He gave her the new number and all hell broke loose, or so it seemed. He called the person he originally texted and with the speakerphone on (Don’t ask me why) G heard him screaming that he did not want that “B” calling him, and the “F” gave her my number. You get the picture. He was not aware that she heard it, so again she went off crying. Did she learn? Nope, she called him all the more, almost like a stalker. He would never answer, but call someone else, curse about the fact she had his number, and then call her with all kinds of strange things like his dad did not want her to come down, he’s trying to get back with his ex-wife, need to get my life together and take care of my son. Does she get it? Nope.
She supposedly then decides that she needs to live less than two miles from him, and make him tell her to her face that it is over.
Q. What do you call a man with half a brain?
A. Gifted.
Q. What is gross stupidity?
A. 144 men in one room.
For years, there’s been a popular conception that male chess players are intimidated by intelligent chess playing women.
What I’d like to know is what were you three sisters looking at on the globe?
And – sure, abolish the titles. Men’s too, start from scratch with new and fresh ideas.
I propose new titles for women:
1. Chief Master
2. Assistant Master
3. Master in the making
4. Talent
I think chess players can have titles named by the openings they play most of the time.
Titles can be given based on rating of computer engines:
Rybka
Fritz 12
Fritz 11
Shredder 10
Crafty 20
etc.
Dears, we live in a world of men, who have trouble adding 5+5 to ten, men need advice, lets give them some, to make this world a better one.
Bobby Fischer never accused women of arranging games. Need more be said?
Yes, abolish the women’s titles!
Chessbase has a funny headline “Should we abolish women’s chess titles?”. Who is we?
Why the hell would I lie???
It’s true, Susan was the first woman to qualify for “Men’s” World Championship cycle, but was not allowed to enter because she is not a man.
You can read her oen words:
http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/
2007/04/my-top-10-most-memorable-
moments-in.html
Can we have a poll on this issue?
Most of the Commissions and Committees in FIDE are almost dormant. They meet during Olympiad years and even so, few of those who fill the committees in an election year are present in subsequent meetings.
For example, the Titles and Ratings Committee should have been activated before the FIDE board decided to implement new instruments. After the announcement of the new time control, nothing in the FIDE Handbook has been updated.
Title regulations had changed but you don’t see the new norm charts in the Handbook. The FIDE website carries an abundance of international events, but the essentials are missing.
No FIDE approved pairing program for teams is available.
Women’s chess remains unimportant.
The constantly changing of regulations and format pertaining to the World Championship is disturbing. How can FIDE market chess as a useful tool for education or as a good sport to take up when FIDE cannot plan ahead? Under the standing regulations, the Laws of Chess can be amended only every four years, no matter how good the proposals may be.
Nevertheless FIDE is changing its regulations to suit some elite players.
I think this is a provocative thread in that it contrasts quantity [of Elo] with quality [of enjoyment].
For probably 99.99% of all chess players the second seems vastly more important to them than the first – their love of the game and its qualities are why they play it – and what top players 2500-2800 are about is really a vicarious sort of knowledge.
Some years ago I was privileged to write a series of letters with Mark Taimanov and I remember one anecdote especially. He said that for many a bright young person in Russia chess was their way out of regional gloom and onto a national stage at least in terms of St. Petersburg and Moscow, but his context of this was as a warning: these young people really ‘only’ had chess, he said, and were psychologically brittle and unsocialized thereby.
Anyway – in terms of any practical rather than vicarious comment, most os us these days can play strong women players who can defeat us.
This somewhat cautionary tale is an antidote to projecting unto professional players ideas which have no basis in our own experience, even in fact, if the system and its titles change completely.
Phil Innes
Cermont
Once Judit Polgar reached #8 ranking in the world (and beat Topo in tournament play shortly after the toiletgate match), doesn’t the “inherently inferior” argument disappear? It makes sense to me that the behavior needed to attain super-GM (lock yourself in a room alone 60 hours every week and study chess) is much more rare in women, and probably discouraged by peers and family for women. Also, once child-bearing is in the picture attaining (or maintaining) super-GM status is impossible (again, witness Judit Polgar).
‘The Polgar sisters worked very hard at chess from an early age’
Did you really?
‘This somewhat cautionary tale is an antidote to projecting unto professional players ideas which have no basis in our own experience, even in fact, if the system and its titles change completely.’
Huh?
‘The creation of separate titles for women is degrading.’
No it’s not. Women are of different sex and can be treated separately.
Susan’s stories are always very
inspiring. She’s overcome so much
and achieved so much too.
What I was saying before is that regardless of what happens to women’s titles, nothing much will happen to the rest of us. I therefore ask people to wonder why they have strong opinions, and so on.
—
140 years ago there were 3 women doctors in the USA. The first was not allowed to practice here at all. The second could practice during the civil war only as a nurse, and the third could practice as a doctor only if her husband doctor supervised her.
These days 55% of graduating MDs are female. It takes time, and that is because of resistance to women and what is female in society.
In a hundred years will the idea that women can’t play chess seem as crazy as women can’t be doctors?
The thing of it is, I would prefer women become doctors than chess players – since the later is at least valued by society. Perhaps that is why women chose other things than to excel at chess?
Phil Innes
Who are those pretty young girls?
And what’s your opinion on this Susan?
‘And what’s your opinion on this Susan?’
If she knew or wanted to, she would have said already.