Can women be as good at chess?

Psychology and anthropology are sciences... maybe you meant biology? But male and female brains are different also so...

As far as stats, participation certainly affects the extremes (males have the highest and I also expect lowest ratings). But I did see a graph that showed the female average rating was lower than the male. This can't be explained by there being less women playing.

Stereotypically, female chess players have a very aggressive style, so whoever you saw say that was an idiot anyway lol.

The unanswered question is, "Why are the best women not so good at chess than the best men players?"

That's the easiest to answer. The bigger the population is, the further the extremes will be from the mean (for a standard normal distribution... a bell curve).

It is in fact expected that males should have the highest and lowest ratings.

That's right ladies. Don't be fooled by the posers. As I travel international water on my yacht year round, I'm always looking for a foxy companion to join me on my adventures...

LOL

I think I've been awake too long.

People can kill without being aggressive. These are cold-blooded killers. Aggressiveness specifically refers to being impulsive and quickly prone to anger.

Then consider this. Given a defensive strategy and a very aggressive gambit that are objectively equally good (i.e, have been measured to be roughly good by an engine), how likely are women to go for a risk-taking strategy and play the more aggressive gambit?

Actually, murdering people is about as clear of an example of aggressiveness, impulsiveness, and anger that I'm aware of. 

You'd have to be careful with defining the terms. Aggression doesn't necessarily have anything to do with emotion or impulsiveness.  As a serial killer who kills in cold blood, you could employ aggressive strategies. Also when it comes time to kill the person, you may not be angry, but it may require physical aggression if they fight back.

I don't have stats to answer that. The most famous female players, like J.Polgar, would undoubtedly sacrifice and try to rip your living guts out (figuratively of course haha).

I've only played 3 different women, but all of them were tactical, sacrificial players. My first female opponent sacrificed 3 (!) minor pieces before move 25 to try to checkmate me... I avoided mate but was down a queen for a rook in the end and I resigned.

I think we need to define what is "aggression".

Of course murdering someone is offensive to society, and it is an act against society. But it's not necessarily an example of hot-blooded aggression. Murders can be planned, and planned murders are NOT an IMPULSIVE act. Serial killers usually (but not always) plan their murders and show a pattern of low anxiety and anger that's very different from hot-blooded aggression (typical male risk-taking). Plus, people can murder for many reasons. One reason that's not related to hot-blooded aggression is to benefit from the victim's death.

Even when killing, female serial killers show a different pattern. They are more likely to use poison instead of being outright violent (i.e, they are not very likely to beat their victims to death). They also usually murder fewer people, and are more likely to kill for their own benefit, sometimes spending years without a single kill (they are less likely to go on a killing spree, killing many people in a row).

But I'm digressing. If anything, psychopathic people show a very peculiar reasoning, very different from the average. This is something that deserves a very lengthy explanation and study all by itself.

But it's different to sacrifice because you have to and to sacrifice because you want to "show" you are a powerful opponent. Let's think of it the other way around: if these women were shown a best option that was not sacrificial and a dubious option that was sacrificial, how likely would they go for the dubious option?

I have no idea what you're talking about? Whatever you imagine about a serial killer sounds like it's from movies. Murdering people requires aggression--extreme aggression. 

What are you defining as aggression? Maybe you mean "guts"? Just like I said, killing people is an act of aggression, but not necessarily of hot-blooded, stereotypical male aggression. "Seasoned" killers usually show a reduced anger response, and they can kill while being perfectly calm.

Well, then let's go back to the topic a bit.
Here is Judith Polgar's opening repertoire (statistics from http://www.365chess.com/players/Judit_Polgar):

Judit Polgar Repertoire with White pieces (most played)

Judit Polgar Repertoire with Black pieces (most played)

As you can see, none of the openings she played is dubious. Nothing can be more solid (and boring) than Petrov's defense opening. The Alapin Sicilian is also pretty solid for white.

If you are a future mod, why are you trying to act as a mod? What do the real mods have to say about this?

Hmm? I argued it was aggressive in spite of there not being anger or impulsiveness.

As for movies, IIRC a few of Dahmer's victims he picked up at a bar for sexual stuff, took them back to his place, drugged them, then killed them while they were still drugged. That seems well calculated, low emotion and low energy to me. I also recall another serial killer I read about, who described himself as curious... he wanted to try to kill people in many different ways. One day he noticed a window was left open, so he went in, found someone sleeping, and cut their throat, and then walked away.

So I don't think I said anything incorrect. It's aggressive without being emotional or impulsive, and it I didn't get it from movies

Hot-blooded, cold-blooded? Look, if someone is a serial-killer, you can talk until you're blue about the semantics of the word "aggression", but it's sounds ridiculous. The act of murdering someone itself typifies extreme aggression. Whether it be by poison or proxy. Actors can fake extreme aggression for a role, but in real life, if humans could only communicate with their actions, then murder is at the top of the charts for displaying extreme aggression. 

In future, instead of saying something like 'let's have a good game'... I'm gonna say 'you're going down, punk'.  

I might even change my profile name to: Babykillrrr 

I can literally taste my ratings rise.