kleelof wrote:
Anarchos61 wrote:
...one of the questions is "why?"
Too busy cooking my dinner and chilling my beer?
Where's Jamie, Batgirl and all the other hens when you need them?
I'm doing my hair and my nails. 
Women and Chess
Sort:
I think,women tend to think more in an emotinal way than a logical way. Since chess demands a pure logical way of thinking ,it becomes less interesting to girls/women .
Apr 20, 2015
0
#24
kaynight wrote:
Back again robbie, had to save the world.
I'd think about saving oneself if I was you.
The short answer is that there are general innate differences between mens' and women's interests/tendencies. This is obvious, and for most people not even controversial.
We can even agree that historically, women were discouraged (and even outright banned) from getting seriously involved in chess. But women are these days far more welcome and free to persue chess, and they still largely ignore it. The main reason must result from real gender differences. But our "politically incorrect" culture does not encourage honest exploratiuon of gender differences. Try doing so, and many in the audience will complain of "sexism".
The OP's question keeps getting asked, but never satisfactorilly answered, specifically because of this fear of openly discussing innate behaviorial gender differences.
Apr 20, 2015
0
#26
The way such discussions quickly devolve into nonsense and agenda-based speculations gives certain insights in itself.
Anyone wanna go fishin ? Here's some gals fishin for catfish ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRLOQKlzdx8 the animation is only about first 30 sec .
batgirl wrote:
The way such discussions quickly devolve into nonsense and agenda-based speculations gives certain insights in itself.
Especially here on chess.com, where you have trolls chiming in from both sides of the argument, making discussion impossible.
Apr 20, 2015
0
#29
Vardia wrote:
Most girls do something because its social. Chess isn't the social event most females like. I play chess cause its fun :)
Really? You play chess?
Apr 20, 2015
0
#30
Frederitch wrote:
The mysoginist comments on this topic (for example) give a beginning of reply about the OP question.
When in everyday scale women faces stupid sexist comments from almost every places (even the "joking ones" are still sexist ones with a potential harm in), they don't feel welcomed and end up to leave the place. Or stay and face all of it and waste energy on it.
All individuals are different based on personal story&environnement, these differences are socially builded. Using these differences as "biological ones" to validate discrimination towards a whole group and favorize another group is where lay the problem.
OMG, I'm going to give this guy a trophy.
maybe it depends on the youth culture or school enviroment.
In Singapore many study chess at school in our younger years, so its about 50/50.
It seems to me that some of the comments of the guys on this thread are pretty good evidence as to why more women don't play chess.
lisa_zhang_tok wrote:
maybe it depends on the youth culture or school enviroment.
In Singapore many study chess at school in our younger years, so its about 50/50.
I hope that will persist in to adulthood.
Just by coincidence, a bit of a debate in the Guardian on exactly this subject, triggered by some comments by Nigel Short in "New in Chess".
Nigel Short, one of the UK’s greatest chess players, has incurred the wrath of the female chess community after claiming men are “hardwired” to be better at the game than women. Short, who won his first grandmaster title when he was 19, told New In Chess magazine that we should “gracefully accept it as a fact” that men possess different skills to women that make them better able to play chess at a high level.
Asked about his thoughts on the lack of women competing in chess, Short, 49, said: “Why should they function in the same way? I don’t have the slightest problem in acknowledging that my wife possesses a much higher degree of emotional intelligence than I do.
“Likewise, she doesn’t feel embarrassed in asking me to manoeuvre the car out of our narrow garage. One is not better than the other, we just have different skills. It would be wonderful to see more girls playing chess, and at a higher level, but rather than fretting about inequality, perhaps we should just gracefully accept it as a fact.”
The comments have been derided as both sexist and ignorant by those in the chess community. Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Amanda Ross, who runs theCasual Chess club in London, said it was “incredibly damaging when someone so respected basically endorses sexism”. “Judith Polgar, the former women’s world champion, beat Nigel Short eight classical games to three in total with five draws,” she said.
“She must have brought her man brain. Let’s just hope Nigel didn’t crash his car on those days, trying to park it. At least this resolves the age-old debate as to whether there’s a direct link between chess-playing ability and intelligence. Clearly not.”
Short responded on Twitter, claiming that Ross seemed “to suffer from incomprehension”.
He wrote: “Men and women do have different brains. This is a biological fact. Furthermore, I never said women have inferior brains. That is your crude and false attempt to caricature me.”
Short also elaborated on his comments on Sky News, reiterating his belief that “it’s quite easy to demonstrate there is a fairly substantial gap between men and women”. “Women have all sorts of skills where they are superior to men” he said, adding that the fact Polgar had once beaten him was irrelevant to his general point.
“The fact that I have one bad score against an individual doesn’t prove anything” he said. “I’m talking about averages here … statistically women don’t [compete] in the same numbers. The average gap is pretty large and that is down to sex differences … Those differences exist.”
Nigel Short interviewed by Sky News on Monday— Nigel Short (@nigelshortchess)April 20, 2015@KayBurley @Newsagentprovoc Of the top 100 chess players, 98 are men. It will be 99 when @GMJuditPolgar falls off the list in August. #facts
Rita Atkins, a British International chess master, described Short’s comments as “damaging”. She said: “I completely disagree with him and he should not say things like that. It is a fact that there are many more men than women playing chess at a very high level but it is nothing to do with the way our brains work or our mental ability.”
Atkins said her experience as both a chess player and now a teacher had given her insight into the reasons why such a gender gap remains in chess. “I teach a lot of chess to schoolkids and I think it is to do with the fact that girls shy away from aggressive competitiveness at a young age whereas young boys are very competitive. I think that is the main reason why girls don’t get into it as much when they are young, and so don’t get to competition level.”
This is not the first time issues of sexism in the world of competitive chess have arisen. There has never been a female World Open chess champion, nor a female British Open champion.
Sue Maroroa, a British women’s international master, said there was general attitude within the chess community that women were worse at the game than men.
She said: “Sometimes when I go to a new chess club, I can tell the guys don’t think I can play, so that kind of attitude I can relate to. There is an attitude within the chess community that women are worse than men. It’s just like any old boys’ club which is dominated by older men who still have that attitude, ‘Oh, she’s a girl, so she can’t play.’ But I know my capabilities, so I just take it within my stride.”
She was echoed by Sabrina Chevannes, a British women’s international master, who said that an entrenched culture of sexist jokes and overbearing male superiority had led to a huge dropout rate among female players. “Unfortunately, I do think there is a lot of sexism at every level of chess, from beginners right the way up to the top. We have to admit that it’s there. It has been been present throughout my entire chess career and will be present for years to come. Nigel’s views are pretty representative of most of the men who are competing in chess.
“Generally when I’ve gone to a tournament, they’ll ask me if my child is playing because they presume I’m the mother of a player, or even ask if I’m the wife of someone playing. God forbid I would actually be there to play. And if they did find out I was a player, they’ll always assume I’m in the beginners section. They assume I’m terrible because I’m female and it is completely infuriating.”
Writing on Twitter, Polgar simply said: “Men and women are different but there are different ways of thinking and fighting still achieving the same results.”
— Judit Polgar (@GMJuditPolgar)April 20, 2015Men and women are different but there are different ways of thinking and fighting still achieving the same results :) http://t.co/IPsiP8NJJ1
Short’s comments also prompted Chess Club Live, a website for the chess community, to publicly condemn the remarks. Writing on Twitter, they said: “Most people in the chess world respect Nigel Short as much as he respects women.
— Chess Club Live (@ChessClubLive)April 20, 2015Most people in the chess world respect @NigelShortChess as much as he respects women.
“What’s even more ridiculous about Nigel Short’s derogatory comments about Women in Chess is that he has a daughter.”
— Chess Club Live (@ChessClubLive)April 20, 2015What's even more ridiculous about @NigelShortChess derogatory comments about Women in Chess is he has a daughter. #GodHelpHer
It is not the first time Short has been accused of making sexist remarks in relation to chess. In a column in New in Chess magazine in 2012, he described a 1992 chess Olympiad in Manila in the Philippines thus: “All Olympiads have their volunteers, but Manila 1992 was unsurpassed in the sheer volume of totty,” he wrote. “There were literally hundreds of smiling and invariably polite 18-20-something-year-old [Filipina] hostesses. Not a few liaisons were struck up during the course of two weeks.”
Short acknowledged the problem of sexism, but insisted his comments were not making it any worse. He told Sky News: “I think probably sexism is an issue in chess and I wouldn’t try and escape from that.”
There are clearly neurological differences but Short is speaking outside his area of competance and from the fact that male and female brains operate differently, it does not follow that one sex should be better at chess, on average, than the other. It's possible, of course. I've certainly seen what Sabrina Chevannes is talking about in lots of chess contexts.
I don't think, for what it's worth, that Short is being sexist here.
Apr 21, 2015
0
#36
Short is not being sexist he has just made what on the surface appears to be a deductively sound argument (men and women brains are biologically different) but its empirically fallacious because there is not an emphatically right or wrong way to think about chess. To use a biological argument to make a general statement about the strength of female players is simply ludicrous. Short himself has been whupped by Judith Polgar, Hou Yifan would also whup him no problem.
If the type of guys who played chess were average guys or better, lots of women would play.
But unfortunately .......... (chess is a woman repellant).
“Men and women are different but there are different ways of thinking and fighting still achieving the same results.” -- Judit Polgar
Looks like Polgar is a "sexist" too!
There are thousands of ways of deciphering the same sentence (on a chess website).
How about a few more serious comments too- especially from the women? Maybe the cheekily sexist comments are part of the problem.
It is part of the problem. And chess takes a long time to learn so it's got to have other things to it to make it attractive. What are the other things? A bunch of guys hanging all over you? That's kind of intimidating so you would like to be in the company of your friends for that, but your friends don't play chess. So there's no socializing. It's all self-serving. So it's got a loner aspect to it. There's more guy loners than girl loners. Guys are more familiar with and comfortable being alone. Girls like to be with others more.