Conservative vs. progressive chess societies

Western Europe and the US doesn't fair too well on that list!

@Watcha: So you're saying that the percentage of female chess players is supposed to be the best indicator of whether chess societies in a country are conservative or progressive?

@ Bardu: So you're automatically assuming that it's better to be progressive than to be conservative just because the list ranks countries from most (supposedly) "progressive" to least "progressive"?

The United States has only 9466 registered male chessplayers? That seems highly unlikely.

That depends on how "registered" is defined.

So?  You can't force women to register. 

China can.

That's the point - he needs a better definition or more accurate statistics.

For such an elaborate chart, I would think a cited source might be in order. Where did you get it?

And what does "registered" mean in this context? Membership in FIDE is hardly a solid indicator of overall chess interest in a country. As post #4 suggests, 9466 for the US seems AWFULLY low, but this may due in part to our geographical isolation compared to smaller countries that exist side-by-side with each other. Plus, how many countries actually keep track of their players by gender?

Finally, though I consider myself a progressive, putting such a politically and socially charged label on what is nothing more than a chart seems to be asking for controversy. Are we supposed to believe that chessplaying women would rather live in the United Arab Emirates than in nearly anyplace else on earth? Or does it simply mean that women who aren't allowed to drive or leave the house on their own find themselves playing chess when their husbands drag them to the chess club rather than leave them home by themselves?

Source: Fide players list .

I used a perl script to process the Fide players list which as a downloadable XML file. This file contains records of the following format:

Every player has a 'sex' and a 'country' field. The table contains aggregated data based on these fields.

That's because the US has its own chess federation. So does the UK.

Just for curiosity's sake here is the relationship between per capita GDP and female player percentages. The red line is the logarithmic trend.

This has little to do with women participation in chess but has something on conservatism vs. liberalism ( both sides get their due in this caricature ):

@Watcha your data are clearly wrong. In USA there are surely more than 586 female players.

The problem is that you use FIDE, but likely the 90% of players in US are not FIDE. Generally FIDE events cost more, and they are for players above 1800, playing in Opens.

I just made a simple search in USCF for female players in Florida, and gives the number of 327. I doubt there are only 200 other women playing chess in the other 49 states.

Let's try another state, just to prove my point, I'll try California: there are more than 600 women players.

Now, I believe you should contact USCF, because I don't know if "women" excludes the young girls which are part of the scholastic circuit, and which could be thousand of players.

I'm interested in the ratio of female players among all players not the absolute number of them. The problem is that USCF provides no publicly available players list similar to the one provided by Fide.

The best reference on USCF players demographics I was able to find so far is this:

http://www.uschess.org/content/view/11478/141/

According to the above article:

"Our total membership as of  October 31, 2011 was 76,508.  58.6% of these members are under 21. Females comprise 16% of the under 21 population.  For the adult category, females represent 3.5 % of the population."

This means that in 2011 the ratio of USCF female players was:

16 % * 0.586 + 3.5 % * 0.414 = 10,825 %

Am amused Iran is rated over twice as progressive as the US.

(Perhaps they should be "liberated")

I speak of 'chess societies' in the title of the thread and this is not by chance. Speaking of 'societies' in general would lead to an unfair generalization which I wanted to avoid. Also my data is limited to Fide because this is the only worldwide source that is available to me.

@watcha, thanks for the data you found on USCF, so there is a 5% error on USA which could move US from 51 to 32.

Then there is the problem that in this globalization age, also if the top women players in US are "Americans," they were generally born in Russia or eastern europe countries, and migrated to US. I don't have any idea if such number, taken into account, could influence your statistics.

However, forgive me if I mention it, then we have the problem that in some countries, generally communist or former communist, chess players are professionals. For example China is in 3rd place with 1000 players vs 388 females, but my belief is that these players are all pros, or at least what is being nurtured as future champions.

In China they play mainly Weiqi and Xiangqi, there are likely hundred million players (as can be witnessed by Xiangqi magazines issued in million of copies), but the population don't have the idea to belong to a federation. They do it only if they are future pros, so it is impossible to know the real number. Also if in China is more likely that women like to play more Mahjohng than western chess.

Ratio of female players among all Fide players as a function of age:Age distribution of Fide players: