I know people are reading this and thinking "what the heck is this loser talking about" i know... but it just hit me... the strange fact that 99% of all my chess games were against males... is there a hatred of chess somewhere that females are not as fond as men... im saying this all wrong... maybe i should just shut up... i cant help but wonder why mostly I go up against male opponents

I don't know, maybe women have better things to do with their lives?

joking...but really, I've noticed that too!

Stunt, I'm not sure how many women are here but I see alot!  Perhaps you should challenge about 10, and see what the odds are that they are here to play chess. :) 

Every woman I have spoken to, or have crossed paths with here on chess.com love the game!   

There are around 3.5 billion women on the planet, so it's hard to generalize. Even if women in general are somewhat less likely to take to chess than men are--and I'm not saying that this is the case-- there are still an awful lot of women who enjoy, or would enjoy, chess

there are more male than female chess players for reasons already discussed in this forum. but the women who play do enjoy it the same way men do. I enjoy it very much. I'm even pretty addicted :)

I am a girl, I LOVE chess, and in a casual chess camp last week, there was a tournament, and I won every game. My opponent in the final round was getting pwnd, and he was like, "You'll still get first if you accept this draw!" every other move, and I'm like, "NO!"

Short answer is yes. I enjoy it.  

Women players in my experience tend to be more aggressive attackers.

MEN= WOMEN=WHAT DIFERENCE DOES IT MAKE= LETS GET ON WITH OUR GAMES

Well, grammatically speaking, the post should say "Do Women Enjoy Chess?" And that's all I have to say about that.

Do women enjoy chess?  More than they enjoy stupid questions.

I concur.

How many women do you find in the top 100? hardly 10 

Look, I learned in kindergarten that girls tend to prefer some things and boys others. Girls would skip a rope or play hopscotch. Boys would shoot at each other with a water pistol or do something with hitting a ball.

This is just, of course, a generality. Some women are better at the things men like than most men. And, the opposite is true, too.

Think about this, while you are at it. Most men don't have an interest in chess...just as most women don't. We are a niche...no more than a very small niche, in the cosmic scheme of things.

But, that's OK...all the more chess for the rest of us. lol

Not convinced that's really true. I work in an office mostly women (lucky me) and I am struck how similar to Men the desire to be professional, winners and the whole spectrum of drives that men have. In my opinion the only differences are anatomical. However there is a brain structure that is Female and Male that is fact (though not necessarily by gender). Lets not forget people like Yelena Dembo, Natalia Pogonina or Susan Polgar or even Kimberly (aka Augustkim a fantastic chess attacker).

This is because they all try to copy Judit Polgar's playing style.

Although I've also noticed that they play less aggressively against other women. So perhaps chess is an outlet for a suppressed desire to destroy and punish men 

"the only differences are anatomical" is an oxymoron. Males and females are different anatomically... they have different brain structures, different hormones and different ways of thinking. 

Why can't we just embrace the differences and move on, instead of trying to make everyone exactly "equal"? Most males like competition and "fighting" more... ON AVERAGE. This doesn't take anything away from females or from males, there is no issue. I mean from an egocentric female perspective they would think playing chess and similar games is an incredibly stupid waste of time.  

Speaking as a woman, I do feel more aggressive playing  a man than a woman.  Perhaps I tend to be at ease more, playing against a woman. 

Let me ask you, mad, are you more aggressive playing against another man, compared to a woman?

walofs

You can't generalize every woman, or every man -- it's like asking what a woman wants out of a man -- if they want looks, kindness, humor, or if they want a bad boy... some women will want one thing, others something completely different. It absolutely depends on the person.

Admittedly I sometimes feel some extra nervousness when I play a woman -- it has this distinct feel to it, probably because I'm just not used to it because it's so much more usual to play a male and I get used to that general demeanor. It has nothing to do with any sort of supremacy of one of the genders. In other words, it's natural for something that is unusual (me playing a woman in chess) to feel unusual.

Why it's unusual is always a hard question to answer. For one thing, psychologists seem to believe women activate the emotional areas of their brain more than men do on average, giving them less of a tendency to focus their concentration on one narrow hobby and more of a tendency to want to share themselves in conversation with others; again, it still depends on the specific person. Moreover, a woman is probably less likely to be encouraged to play games like chess as much simply because of our societal gender roles. Many people believe this justifies female titles; I am actually not of that opinion, because gender stereotypes are clearly not applicable to the women that do play the game.