On Chess
Several factors stunt women’s careers
Saturday, March 6, 2010 2:50 AM
by Shelby Lyman
Three reasons come to mind that explain why relatively few women are attracted to professional chess careers.
• The formidable task of establishing a comfort zone in what is primarily a male domain.
• The career constraints imposed by child-bearing and child-rearing.
• Men’s negativity toward members of the other gender when having to face them as equals in a game in which males’ usually superior size, strength and speed are not factors.
Several decades ago, a 7-year-old girl received intimidating notes because she was winning a homeroom chess tournament.
I also recall watching a U.S grandmaster and national champion sweep the pieces off a chess table after losing to a female opponent.
Of course, the changing roles of men and women and the requirements of political correctness have helped drive overt resistance to female equality in all spheres underground.
It’s difficult to know, therefore, how much resistance in chess is still a deterrent to women’s participation.
Source: Columbus Dispatch
http://www.dispatch.com
Really?
Could it also POSSIBLY be that the female brain has differences from the male brain? Maybe the male brain is better wired for the type of thinking required for chess. In the world of higher mathematics you see the same lack of women as you also see in chess. Although I am sure cultural factors play a major factor, why discount the POSSIBLE physiological differences between the male and female brain? Over the past millions of years males and females evolved to play different roles in the survival of the human species. So maybe the brains evolved differently too! Of course this would be a STATISTICAL GENERALITY and not to be assumed to be the case in every individual male and female. Just like it is correct to say that in general males are larger than females, it would be wrong to assume that every male is larger than every female. It is also interesting to note that in the game of bridge there is very little cultural bias. On the club level, female player abound. However, as in chess and mathematics, at the highest competitive levels of bridge, males dominate the landscape. I know that what I have said is politically incorrect, but if you really read and think about what I have said objectively, it makes perfect sense.
It’s a fact that there are some things that women can’t do as good as men can, and chess is one of those things.
IT’S A FACT!
Everything else is just feministic sociopolitical bullshit. Men and women will never be the same. Never!
P.S.: Of course there are things that women are better at than men.
P.P.S.: And it seems like the female chess players already know this, and accepted this. For example; NONE of the women players signed up for the open European championship. They all play in the women section. they know they have no chances there.
Top women players generally seem overrated to me, especially in the US.
20 years ago the top players here were mostly in the 2000-2200 range, and their games reflected the ratings. Today, the top women are much higher rated, but their chess really sucks. It’s the same hyper-aggressive play for mate style and overlooking simple tactics.
My question is this: are womens’ ratings higher because of more all women events where they can inflate their ratings?
Or do women perform up to their rating when they play against men.
Maybe I seem sexist, but this site seems to promote sexism to a great extent by highlighting the beauty of top women players. Well, if the goal is to get a mate, no problem.
It seems to me that the players from India and China are the ones who really buck the notion that women are weaker at chess.
I”m actually skeptical that women are not capable of reaching the top 10 in chess, say, but what I see in Europe and the US chesswise doesn’t impress.
Judit, Sofia, and Susan did it well early on and before computers–maybe all the mens scores are higher because of computers— hard to compare different time periods
“…this site seems to promote sexism to a great extent by highlighting the beauty of top women players.”
Wrong. It’s not this site that calls attention to the beauty of female chess players; rather it’s some of those who post comments.
Every time a woman is featured here, it never fails that some neanderthal, instead of commending skill at chess, makes a stupid comment like “man, she’s hot!”
This article’s argument is dead wrong. Players, whether male or female, have to prove first that they can compete before they’re welcomed to compete, and NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND. Elite players will never cherish playing in a closed event with 2400-rated patsies, WHETHER THESE PATSIES ARE MALE OR FEMALE.
No one shows any resistance when Judit plays in any elite event. That’s simply because she has shown that she can compete, regardless of the fact that she’s female.
You Anonymous folks commenting on this are weird. At least have the balls to say who you are.
I’m no expert, but seems to me that there are few women who play chess. So, obviously, you have fewer women at the top — it’s a statistical outcome.
It’s not just statistics.
There are strong club players who can beat the top US women players.
There’s no question that top women chessplayers are just a LOT weaker than top men. It makes more sense to say that available evidence says that women are weaker at chess than men; the opposite is a perverse argument.
One thing I’d like to know is if top women players study as much as men do. Some women players have suggested in interviews that they do not. Clearly the Polgar sisters DID study prodigious amounts; perhaps this is the singular factor which led to their success (along with being very intelligent to begin with, obviously).
I would like to know what Susan has to say about the amount of time women chessplayers devote to study, compared to men.
By the way, I believe the top success for a woman in a mental sport has been achieved by Rui Naiwei, a Chinese (taiwanese ?)
go player who has resided in Korea for several years. Korea, by the way, is the top go playing country, along with Japan and China. The Koreans seem to have a small edge in international competitions these days.
Rui Naiwei is a brilliant player. She plays incredibly complicated attacking games and often wipes strong opponents off the board.
I know she has won top titles in Korea. A few years ago, she won a match against Cho HunHyun, one of the very strongest players of the last half century. I don’t believe she won an international title, but she went quite far in at least one cycle. Judit Polgar is a comparable woman chess player, but I think Rui Naiwei’s best results have been clearly equal to the best men’s; the same is not quite true of Judit, who was never on par with Kasparov.
The strongest go player ever is almost certainly Go Seigen, who is still alive, although he is almost 100. In his prime in the 1940’s and 50’s, he was so strong that he pushed the very best Japanese players to a small handicap in a series of ten game matches. I believe he won every 10 game match he played in the 40’s and 50’s—quite a few of them—although he lost some 5 game matches. His margin against the competition was larger than Kasparov’s in his prime.
Why to I mention Go Seigen? NOt just because of the history. He was Chinese born, and was discriminated against after he moved to Japan for several years.