sexism in chess?

I think there is a discrimination issue in chess. Why is it that all the major games I have been following feature a predominent male bias? I understand the reasoning behind this in contact sports and athletics where the physical differences between male and female become quite clear but chess is a game of the mind, on the grounds of which both sex's are equal.

Here's my point, can anybody explain/argue to me, in a dignified manner, as to why the majority of top end tournaments are featuring only men? Could this be changed so that we could see more unisex participation? Do you think we might see Unisex World Chess Championship/Candidates Tournament participants in the next five years? Could there be more be more of an active engagement in education for lasses to take up chess?

Thank you for your time and consideration. I am merely provoking debate and am not taking sides or forming opinions here. Keep Civil.

in my opinion subject not to eyes :(

yes i feel is little discriminate, is not fair they think we can not be as good as to males. i self do play in hockeyteam to and notice we get less attention than males hockey. at tv is example to, all male sports, ever see female sports? no, is simple is because i think they not take us female sports seriously

I haven't encountered a single men's only tournament yet. (If you have, let me know.) I'd say that probably more than 99% of all tourneys are mixed sex tournaments, including the whole world championship cycle. The reason those "super sharp WGM's" do not participate is that their ELO rating isn't high enough.

aaaaahahahAHAHAHAH

um...

chess has historically always been a male-dominated environment (it still clearly is, though it also clearly used to be much worse), and right now unfortunately the top women aren't as good as the top men. whether there actually are some physical differences that make men better at chess... i don't really care and just keep working on my own game.

i also don't support the existence of women's titles and women's tournaments, though i'm not strongly against them and understand why they exist. in the end it's all "inclusion policies" to try to make women more comfortable in the chess environment.

...I stand corrected! :) And so, do you think there should be more active engagement in education for lasses to take up chess? why then is it so male dominated? perhaps it does'nt appeal as much to women as other sports do? Why? ! It is right there needs to be a more inclusive attitude to chess, I would like to see a match between the WWC and WC... 

The WC would win.

ldumayu it not option in order that in a match of wwc and wc was balance, Anand should change a floor :)

Not sure that women are less active in the chess sphere because of their spatial abilities and their ratings only.

Yes currently only one woman is in the top 100 chess players in the world and she is Judith Polgar.

I believe that the main reason is that there are women's only tournaments. These tournaments in general do not even bring enough for the winner to buy hot dogs, fries and a soft drink. Cost would be about $6000 a year and do not tell me that no one eats this everyday, I know this  and if you but anything else it will be more costly. Now the $ prize not only does cover hot dogs , it also does not cover expenses for accommodations and travelling , groceries at $120 a week is also $6000 a year. The 2014 US tournment will give the men's section winner a $45,000 prize for  total of $172, 000 for other rankings. The women's section will have the winner take home $20, 000  for a total of all prizes at $72,000 two and a half times less than men do.

 The solution is have only one single chess league and remove the women's tournaments. Then those that want to really play chess can now have a chance at higher $ prizes.

I am just saying that the current structure with a female only participating in wome's tournament is not drawing the cream of the cream as they hve to spend more money to join any tournament around the world than they can collect for 2nd or 3rd prize.

With only one league tournament organizers can offer to the best women player to cover their expenses as they do for men at the top scale of the scale. Women do not need to be at the top scale ranking to get assistance.

I would welcome more unisex chess championsships.

July-Summer:
In hockey it's quite obvious: female (ice)hockey is a lot less physical, technical and much slower. I (as a male low-league hockey player) have played against top level female players: they are just as good as men in tactical playmaking, however, their game is so much slower. This surely explaines why pretty much all female sports get a lot less attention than men sports. I'm not saying it's right though, just searching for an explanation.

I myself love watching the women's ASP Tour (surfing), but I couldn't watch an entire hockey game. In chess, however, I think it would be really interesting to have more mixed games in tournaments.

        http://www.chess.com/forum/search?keyword=sexism

Women are far better at gymnastics, swimming and athletics. Their booties were not made to be hidden on a chair.

Sorry, I forgot to mention wrestling.

women are just not as good in chess as men. the highest female on the FIDE ratinglist was judit polgar on place 8. she is now on place 67

          Women are good in food fights

Neuromancer,

Men and women are *not* equal, either in physique or in brain functioning, and keep in mind that the brain issues come down to physical differences again. You can look up the *statistical* differences (of course there are always exceptions) between men and women on issues like the corpus calossum (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-mens-brains-are-wired-differently-than-women/), differences in IQ tests on spatial reasoning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_intelligence), etc. online for documented, objective proof of such differences. The issue is not discrimination. Why are females playing with dolls instead of erector sets when they are children? Why is it by high school science fairs are already dominated by males? In virtually all the top creative endeavors--cooking, fashion, painting, writing, law, mathematics, physics, chess, music, architecture, etc.--men are dominant. I'm all for equality for women, but women's highest interests and skills simply tend not to be in the endeavors in which men excel, which means the endeavors that are of most interest to me. These differences are probably based on genetics, hormones, and differences in brain functioning and as I mentioned are highly evident even at very young ages. No matter what politicians are pushing the public to believe, women are never going to be able to change their brains or interests unless we start playing with genetics or at least hormones.

rdecredico,

You may want to curb your personal attacks, and to do *your* research.

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(p. 135)
      11

   Conditions for Excellence and Achievement

      Genius as a Male Characteristic

   Much research has gone into looking at the correlates of genius, in
the hope of finding out the conditions favouring the emergence of cre-
ative excellence. The most obvious characteristic of the genius, of course,
is maleness. For whatever reason--and I emphasize the point that there
is much argument over the causes of the obvious discrepency--ge-
nius and creativity of the highest level are found almost only in males.
In the list of geniuses studied by Cox there were no women. There are
none in lists of leading mathematicians. None would be found among
the 100 best-known sculptors, painters, dramatists, or composers, and
hardly any among the great scientists. Only among poets and novel-
ists do we find a small proportion of women near the top class. The
facts are so obvious, and so well known, that documentation is hardly
necessary, but the facts do not speak directly to the reasons why men
are so predominant among this elite of creativity.
   Feminists often argue that male suppression may have been respon-
sible for this failure of women to shine in the arts and sciences, and it is
difficult to disagree. When women are not admitted to universities,
their chances of shining in academic and scientific subjects must be
low. Yet in the Middle Ages, convents were repositories of knowledge,
and nuns had an education not necessarily inferior to that of monks.
Having to look after children is another frequently given, but it
has been found that women in academe published less than men, but
marriage and family obligations do not generally account for the gen-
der difference observed--women with children published as much as
their single female colleagues. But of course women now average 1.8
children in Great Britain; things might have been very different when
they used to have 8 or more!

Eysenck, Hans J. 1998. Intelligence: A New Look. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers.

And yet far more women play organized bridge than men !  Isnt it also a meaningless game ?  Even though there are more women in bridge than men the top players are almost all male ....  must be due to sexism ? 

No way you can beat the guys, even at ballet dancing the guys are still top. Even aliens are not on a par with guys. Guys are the best at EVERYTHING.

I think that gender differences - whether cultural or biological - explain why more men choose to spend their time playing chess than do women. I don't agree with people who are concerned over the relative number of men/women doing something. Let them do what they want.

The real issue is why aren't the most talented women competing on an equal footing with the most talented men? I think the answer here is the whole notion of "women's" tournaments. They need to be abolished from the professional chess scene. I've seen arguments - not good ones in my estimation, but ones with solid points - in favor of separate girls' and boys' tournaments at the junior level, but those arguments need to be tossed aside as rubbish when it comes to the professional chess tournaments.

Gender-specific championships could still exist, but they should have about as much meaning as age- or occupation- specific championships - which is to say, pretty much no meaning at all in the grand scheme of things.

As long as women play against a weak subset of the world's chessplayers, there will continue to be this gap in ability. Look at Judit Polgar ... she decided to play in the main chess tournaments rather than in the women's only events, and her talent got her into the world's top ten. Her sister, Susan, never got into the world's top 20 as far as I know, even though I think it goes without saying that she had the potential. And Judit is so far the only women to have just about completely shunned women's only events.

There are obviously plenty of outstanding women players, but they are wasting their talents by continuing to play in a pool of players that have decided to accept perpetual mediocrity (by not competing against the top players in the world).

There could be another reason, too. If a nation is going to have a "men's" (which is actually also open to women) and women's championship, and the national federation displays the two champions side by side on the cover of a magazine, the message sent is that the esteem for each is equal. But then I turn the page (I am referring to the US Chess Federation's Chess Life magazine, and to Irina Krush and Gata Kamsky), and I see that the "men's" championship top prize is $40K, while the women's is $20K. Now I think this is only fair (women can play for the $40K prize if they so desire), but it flies in the face of the public message that we have "two champions" ... no, we have one champion, Gata Kamsky; Irina Krush won a special tournament for people with different genitals, just as our seniors and juniors and class players win national championships within their particular limited pools of players. Either the women's only championship needs to be relegated to its proper place among those specialized championships, or it needs to have a similar prize fund as the "men's" championship. I vote for the former.

I have no doubt that Krush in particular and other women as well could develop their potential and compete on equal footing with the top half of the players in the US Championship, it's just that they don't do that.

Eliminate these women's only events except as once-in-a-while special events like the world senior championship, etc., and I think we would see over time a more equal spread of men and women through the top 20. It would take time, but Judit Polgar proved it doesn't take too much time to make the effort worth it within one generation.

When you're forced to set your sights on the moon instead of to the top of some mountain, and you have any potential at all, you can't help but to at least reach higher than the mountain. I think women are too often encouraged to set their sites on the mountains that are women's only championships, when they could just as well reach the moon or beyond if they tried.