Gender Stereotypes in Chess

A recent academic study in the European Journal of Social Psychology examined gender stereotypes in chess and found some very interesting results.  The Abstract for the article states:

Women are surprisingly underrepresented in the chess world, representing less that 5% of registered tournament players worldwide and only 1% of the world's grand masters.

In this paper it is argued that gender stereotypes are mainly responsible for the underperformance of women in chess. Forty-two male-female pairs, matched for ability, played two chess games via Internet. When players were unaware of the sex of opponent (control condition), females played approximately as well as males.

When the gender stereotype was activated (experimental condition), women showed a drastic performance drop, but only when they were aware that they were playing against a male opponent. When they (falsely) believed to be playing against a woman, they performed as well as their male opponents.

In addition, our findings suggest that women show lower chess-specific self-esteem and a weaker promotion focus, which are predictive of poorer chess performance.

Here's an article from the WSJ about how Cambridge researchers found a correlation bewteen testosterone levels and stock market "success". 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120846072638623669.html 

 So how do you explain the results, then? Women either feel intimidated across the board from a man or else they don't feel comfortable beating a man. I just played a game recently against a woman who stopped playing serious chess against men because she would rather have dates once in a while than beat every man and have no social life outside of chess. The study is valid.

I've already said enough about the differences between men and women in the forum "battle of sexes"(didn't like the title).

I want my opponents to beat me,regardless of their sex,because I am forced to improve.

I wouldn't refuse to date a woman if she beat me.The fact that she plays chess would be interesting,no matter what her level would be.

bgianis wrote:

I've already said enough about the differences between men and women in the forum "battle of sexes"(didn't like the title).

I want my opponents to beat me,regardless of their sex,because I am forced to improve.

I wouldn't refuse to date a woman if she beat me.The fact that she plays chess would be interesting,no matter what her level would be.

And that is the whole point. Women are afraid the only dates they would get would be from other chess players limiting their future prospects. Keeping your pool of future marriage prospects as diverse as possible is more important to women than it is to men. Once a man outside the chess world finds out how good she is at chess it can be intimidating because of the perception of chess being a hobby only for highly intelligent people. Women often downplay their intellect in order to appease men they like. It is part of the mental game they play with us. It becomes hard to act less intelligent than you are when you are a world renowned grandmaster with a 2600+ rating. Women are afraid if they go sweeping through tournament after tournament like some chess obsessed valkyrie that it will make men they want to date feel intellectually inferior to them and drive them away. 

1)I am not that kind of man.I am fascinated by clever women and find it challenging to be with one.

2)A man outside the chess world would never understand what it is all about,so why would he bother?

Hmmmm. Interesting findings.

 I don't like it that women (or girls, if you're my age) have to pretend to be stupider than they actually are. It's misleading, and I don't see why any man would be attracted to a stupid girl. I would never date a girl who was not at least halfway intelligent (my scene partner right now in my Scene Study class is pretty, but aggrivatingly unintelligent). I would love playing an evenly matched chess game against my girlfriend/wife.

I'm not saying they pretend to be stupid. They know being stupid can be equally unattractive. I am saying they try to make men feel comfortable around them. There are men who don't feel threatened by women who are more intelligent than they are but there are a lot more who do. I have dated women with college degrees and good paying jobs and have them pretend they are less intelligent when it is obvious from the fact that they do have college degrees and good jobs that they aren't as mediocre as they let on. They wouldn't have those degrees and jobs otherwise. For someone like Sophie Milliet to play the shy, demure girl of only average intelligence with a man she likes wouldn't work simply because of her fame as a chess player. I certainly wouldn't believe that act for one second knowing how she plays. 

Marshal_Dillon wrote: kohai wrote: Its quite scary to think that these university folk are paid money to come out with such twaddle.

 So how do you explain the results, then? Women either feel intimidated across the board from a man or else they don't feel comfortable beating a man. I just played a game recently against a woman who stopped playing serious chess against men because she would rather have dates once in a while than beat every man and have no social life outside of chess. The study is valid.

Research findings will always be disputed, regardless of the findings or subject.
After so many threads in these forums, under various headings, on men v women [with regards to chess] that its still going on. Its the kind of topic that does and probably always will cause debate.
There isn't a "yes its true" or "no its not true" definate answer to this kind of question.

Women either feel intimidated across the board from a man or else they don't feel comfortable beating a man.