sexism in chess?

Excellent! some interesting responses,

I would like to point out that personally I am different to you in both physicallity and brain functioning/mentality regardless of my sexuality and type of human :) we all are different to each other and the does not limit us, only it gives us more of a spectrum in our approaches towards creativiy. This benefits us greatly, infact it has been suggested that proffesions like architechture are overtly male dominated and that is causing negative chauvinism in the culture of the work. Same could be said for chess, I geuss?... 

@Splod thannk you for playing with fire. Fair play for backing your account up on a bulk of text, an intruiging read: I do however understand that the author of the piece is a far right political scientist whom is deemed rather contraversial in the motives behind some of his works...

...Indeed I have been following twitter @carlsenanand and have seen to some extent that verily, women do show some interest in chess, but it is entirely correct that the men have had the [fiscal] stardom since its foundations... could this be changed? I do like the Idea of a single chess league for both men and women, would it encourage people to come together and push the game forwards in its history or deal the other hand?

Considering the available pool of talent among the female players vs male players, since there are so far fewer women who play chess... the fact that one even made 8th in the world suggests they might be even better if more of them were to play and try to reach a high level.

I don't actually believe that. I think the sexes are equal in intellectual capabilities, roughly. Socially less women take interest in chess, and in the eastern european countries where chess is taken the most seriously there is often more pronounced sexism--particularly in chess leagues.

The gap between the world #1 male and the world #1 female is about a full 200 points. Imagine if Carlsen was playing Polgar instead of Anand for the WCC. No disrespect, but Polgar would be lucky to get a draw.

a quick quote from wikipedia...

"Polgár is the only woman to have won a game from a reigning world number one player, and has defeated ten current or former world champions in either rapid or classical chess: Magnus Carlsen, Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov, Boris Spassky, Vasily Smyslov, Veselin Topalov, Viswanathan Anand, Ruslan Ponomariov, Alexander Khalifman, and Rustam Kasimdzhanov."

Judit Polgar is where the real chess genius in both womans chess and the Polgar family is, never mind Susan Polgars constant media-hugging self-promoting antics...

You must not be married.

7/10 troll thread.  Would read again.

Really? Judith Polgar beat in September 2002, in the Russia versus the Rest of the World Match, She finally defeated Garry Kasparov in a game. The tournament was played under rapid rules with 25 minutes per game and a 10 second bonus per move. She won the game with exceptional positional play. Kasparov with black chose the Berlin Defence instead of his usual Sicilian defense.
Polgár is the only woman to have won a game from a reigning world number one player, and has defeated ten current or former world champions in either rapid or classical chess: Magnus Carlsen, Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov, Boris Spassky, Vasily Smyslov, Veselin Topalov, Viswanathan Anand, Ruslan Ponomariov, Alexander Khalifman, and Rustam Kasimdzhanov.^[3]

She also beat  Wiswanathan Anand  in a 1999 game: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1009882 

So keep imagining and look at the best female chess play and draw your own conclusions, mine are simple.

She never had an opportunity to play Bobby Fisher.

I don't remember seeing any comment by you here... are you certain you're in the right thread??

You know, you could just search the forums for an answer to your question before making yet another one of these threads...

I don't understand the point of many people that think that every activity or sport MUST BE perforce unisex. Yes, it would be more "homogeneous", maybe even "romantical", "beautiful", etc., etc. But what's the reason for talking about discrimination or sexism? Nobody is forbidding women to play chess. The unique and real fact is that chess is a game where male sex is predominant. It's neither "good" nor "bad", it's just a fact. 

I would like to quote the comment of Sqod because, political correctness schizophrenia aside, his explanation makes sense:

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.

I'll just leave this here:

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/statistical-analysis-on-gender-difference

rdecredico  I would bet that an indepth study of compassion and empathy would show that people that have high degree of both do not do as well in chess as do people that trend towards sociopatholgy.

This paragraph you quoted demonstrates a lack of understanding of the stereotype threat phenonemon. It's been shown rigorously in repeat studies that when a member of a minority performs a task that could paint all members of that minority in a certain light, if they were to score poorly, it affects how they do. For instance in psychological studies where girls and boys are told to take a math test, and then they're informed that women tend to perform worse on the test... it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and the girls tend to perform worse. When they're told that girls perform better on the test, unsurprisingly girls end up performing better.

I think there is a systemic bias towards women in hard science, engineering, and math. It is a popularly held belief that women are worse at spatial reasoning and this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in the same way. That does not necessarily make it biological.

They perform better than men or they perform better than other girls?

BEES,

I don't want to get into a raging argument about sex differences, but I assure you there are major, innate differences in tastes and behaviors between the sexes. Furthermore, those differences have existed for all of recorded history, for example evidenced by the stories in the Christian Bible, and across virtually all cultures, races, and countries. I'm an older guy so I can see it clearly now whereas I tried to believe it wasn't true when I was younger. I wanted to believe my mother, the women I knew or dated, and the politicians, but what they were saying just didn't fit the reality I experienced year after year. Therefore I assure you I do *not* have a lack of understanding on this issue. I took teacher training, for example, and learned about how subtle sexual discrimination is, and how to overcome it. I would love to find a woman who could think and act like a man, but I could give numerous examples of women I knew, or famous people I read about, who had very high IQs who simply weren't interested in the same things men were. To put it bluntly, there were primarily interested in having and raising babies, and secondarily in having a husband to support that lifestyle. Spending massive time on things like chess or math isn't conducive to raising children, as the Polgar story someone mentioned earlier supports. I strongly suspect, but I have no references to that hypothesis, that such survival wisdom is built into our genes. I'm not saying the genes that make a person like or dislike chess are necessarily good, but I'm saying the two sexes definitely have natural proclivities that are extremely constant across all cultures for all of history, and that simply can't be attributed to culture or discrimination alone.

"GM only" is open to both sexes, women can be those as well.

The really weird thing about the female titles is when comparing them to the open titles..

For example, Sopiko Guramishvili, who is commentating the current World Chess Championship together with Peter Svidler, received her regular, open to both sexes IM title 3 years after she became a WGM.

http://ratings.fide.com/card.phtml?event=13602888

So does this mean normal IM title is stronger than WGM already ?

IM > WGM

WIM = CM

It's a pretty low bar.

The only tournaments, titles, and championships that are gender exclusive are the ones that restrict men.  This year's candidates and world championship match did not restrict any gender.