The Real Reason So Few Women Play Professional Chess

The question was 'what else is there?'  I'm speaking hypothetically, is all, which is necessary since I've never experienced tournament play myself.

link? I need to show it to my wife

Schachgeek, you are too intelligent to think that what you wrote in any way addresses the issue here.  I have no data, so I have no clue how many women play pro compared to men, and frankly I don't really care.  I seek neither to support nor to refute the premise that women are under-represented (without which a search for a cause is futile).  But either they are or they are not, and either way, this has nothing to do with the fact that some women are way better than some men at chess.

In fact, taking it a step further, some other forums ask why women as a whole do not play as well as men.  Again, I will not support or refute this as a premise either, but it is true or it is not true, and either way, an anecdote does not disprove it.  And exception can never disprove a trend.

But what if they leave a turd under your blankets?  That's harder to ignore.

ah chess.com.

Reductive? You wouldn't happen to be from the University of Chicago would you? That's where I got my Ph.D. in 1979.

LOL!

I do work for the Business School, funnily enough.  But not in economics.  Still, I know enough to know the Chicago School is pure evil.  You ain't gonna get all Milton Friedman on me, I hope?

I'm not sure whose commenting you're addressing, but my original post was about "Professional Chess."

Define your terms! That was always my second favorite comeback in grad school after, "You're being rather reductive, aren't you?"

Define yours, friend, since right now it looks like you're attempting to make enough references to your PhD experience to bestow upon yourself the aura of authority.  Which is always fairly pointless in economics, since it seems to be a junk ideological science where half the people say one thing, half the people say another, and nobody has any idea what's actually true.  What's your approach, anyway?

Piled higher and deeper?

Get four economists in a room and you'll end up with five opinions...

Get enough economists on one planet and you all end up broke.

Yeah, I actually missed the title of the thread that limited it to professional female players only but what I'm saying is there are not many women at the grass roots level to begin with and that consequently there are also very few professional female players.

Re-reading the OP, this isn't the kind of thread I like to post in, I'll leave you all to your fun :)

I agree this isn't a good thread. It wasn't my intent to start a series of rants and insults. I mentioned my Ph.D. to explain my reaction to the "reductive" remark and also to counter the insults (stupid, idiot, etc.). I don't often mention that I have a Ph.D., because a slogan at the University of Chicago is that a "Dr. is a physcian," and no one there refers to themselves as "Dr." because everyone on the faculty is a Ph.D. and many in the administration as well. It has always seemed the right thing to me to go by "Ms."

The issue of the status of professional chess is, though, important to me, because I love the game so much. I am sorrowed that so few American children learn to play chess. I am sorrowed that the GMs in America, female and male, are treated so shabbily. I wish there was a media outlet for chess tournaments here, so we could watch them on cable as well as online. I wish People Magazine followed the chess stars. I wish the nightly news covered Anand-Topalov.

If we had the equivalent of American Idol for chess, maybe more young girls (and boys) would become interested in the game.

And no I don't think a million EUs is enough for either Anand or Topalov. One of them will lose and be paid zilch. The winner will have to survive on the prize for at least five years. That's only 200,000 EUs per year, and even in this down economy 200,000 EUs isn't a fortune. I know university teachers who make that much and many teaching couples who make much more. And you don't have to be an economist to figure that out.

Yes, I realize the winner will gain some commercial connections out of it and possibly some benefactors. But what happens to the loser? I suppose if it's Topalov the Bulgarian government will pay him some form of "welfare." Is that good enough, really?

So, folks, sayonara.

There's a lot of that going around.  Damned horses.

You will face it whether you are male or female, specially if you are promising and upcoming.

"All the men band together to keep the field of contenders as small as possible." If that's truly the case, perhaps they're robbing themselves with their own greed. That's probably the main reason why there's so little money in chess. People are not encouraged to play, and compete so there's naturally going to be less money in it. More players mean more money. I agree that it's now time for this stupid gender segregation to stop. It isn't necessary anymore.

Wooden ewe say: "Good place to lock this up!"

I tried to end it. If anyone cares, take a look at http://blog.chess.com/ccmambretti/the-female-world-record