Women and Chess

Please don't tell me that I am wrong !!!

I have a friend who plays for many years chess, with no doubt he knows much more in that game than me, but I was shocked when he claimed that women are less intelligent than men, he gave me the example of chess and the only reason I found to say was that women have not the opportunity to play chess as men, that there are 100 times fewer women who play chess so in average there must be more men than women in the 100 best chess players.  But he still affirms that women are less intelligent

Please help me to reverse that no acceptable thinking and that intelligence is the same what ever the gender is

You're completely right. Unfortunately, some people just won't learn!  Perhaps you should tell him to play against some of the Beth Harmon bots on Chess.com You can do so here!

Women are not less intelligent. Men are represented more at the higher AND lower ratings, but besides that fact... there are more men that play Chess. 

you are completely right FREEtheBASE besides I think that someone who calls himself intelligent is that he is not really what is intelligence

Am afraid that won't solve the problem, but there must be other social reason to prove him his wrong. what are saying statistics for lower ranking, he is around 1900  which is a ranking I will never reach. can i find for example the % of women and men playing on chess .com that have his ranking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variability_hypothesis

But girls who like to play chess, even there are 100 times less than boys, are their ranking proportional or not

I mean maybe 10% of female and 10 % of men are ranked at 1500, that would prove his wrong

Could you write using smaller words please?

Ummm...you do know that she's a fictional character right?

IQ tests show there's basically no difference.

It's simply because there are more men then women in chess: if you took the ratios of men:women grandmasters to men:women regularly playing chess, I'm sure the statistic would show differences.

It would show some, but not all of it.

I think that's only part of the reason, although I admit I haven't looked at it in detail.

I suspect a large reason why there are so few female GMs is because of personality... just look at Sophia Polgar. Her sisters called her the most talented of the 3 of them (more talented than Judit who was in the top 10) and Sophia quit before getting her GM title.

Just because someone is intellectually capable of doing something doesn't mean they'll enjoy it.

Tests show women are more interested in people than men and that men or more interested in things than women.

I m Swiss French and my English level is as high as my low chess ranking, so sorry but I absolutely dont understand what u mean

the statistics in addition do not prove all and certainly not the difference in intelligence between a man and a woman .... and what intelligence are you talking about?

Yeah, that's excellent argument to give him, but  I need a lot such arguments.

You could look at my Quora answer to why there aren't any women world champions:

https://www.quora.com/Why-have-all-the-world-chess-champions-been-male/answer/Warren-Dew

In addition to what has been mentioned in this thread, women often give up competitive chess to get pregnant and have kids.  Men can have kids without getting pregnant first, so they don't have to interrupt their competitive chess careers.

     What do you mean by intelligent? If you mean the mechanical manipulation, problem solving mathematical calculation sort of intelligence, men seem to do better on average. If you mean understanding human behavior, making friends and dealing with day-to-day issues I feel that women do better. Unfortunately, only the first variety can be quantified and tested for, perhaps because men have been in control of society for so long and are more interested in their own mental processes. There is no scientific method for measurement of overall intelligence so everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Finally, people who view chess accomplishment as proof of high intelligence are wrong. Many brilliant people have been poor chess players, and many strong chess players have been failures outside of chess.

 Not going to touch the intelligence part because there are many types of intelligence.  But it is a fallacy in argument to say that there are fewer females because the starting pool is smaller so that's why there are fewer at the top ranks.  It's a fallacy because a prodigy, and let's face it GM's are prodigies, will continue to study, play etc. regardless of sex while people that do poorly at something usually quit to do something else. 

Now this doesn't apply at all to below master levels.  This only applies to the highest ranks of players.  To be the best requires a very high innate ability to begin with.  Then you have to devote lot's of time, energy and effort to improve.  The vast majority find out early on that they will never make it to that level.

But to really upset the apple cart name me one thing, outside of child birth, where the very best top rated of all time female was better than the very best top rated male of all time.  Many will be mad at me but there is nothing.  BTW I'm referring to anything that is not 100% subjective and that can be measured.