The Status of Female Players in Chess

So..who's your son? I'm up for a match. 

I can try asking, dunno though.

Thanks for citing the article and for providing the quoted passage. I think that area should be explored.

(just so I'm not misconstrued - I wasn't suggesting that you made up, misunderstood or misquote the article. I was simply explaining that I couldn't comment on it, as opposed to commenting on the other person's statement, because I had no way of ascertaining its validity and because it wasn't germane to the discussion, which deals with the presence of women in chess, not their comparative aptitude.)

Do you remember 3 years ago when the president of Harvard University, Dr. Summers, in a speech, at a diversity conference mind you, in giving possible reasons why men outnumber women in certain scientific fields, said "that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination." 

This statement caused an uproar and backlash that almost cost Dr. Summers his job and unfortunately cast a shadow over his career (I even wrote my own brief article on the subject at the time). He resigned in 2006. Today, Harvard's president is a woman. A historian who recently published a wonderful book on the grisly reality of death in the American Civil War.)

Dr. Summers was mainly referring to the presence of women in the highest echelons of science, comparable perhaps to grandmasters in chess, not particularly to the presence of women in the sciences in general, although there probably is some correlation.  The inference, as I understand it with my non-scientific mind, is that the differences that studies show exists are quite infinitesimal. At the lower levels, this difference makes almost no difference. But as one rises, this infinitesimal difference takes on more meaning, until, at the top, the tiny difference is quite important.  This may be or may not be. Summers was, I feel, suggesting that the demonstrated differences shouldn't be ignored, as political correctness had been doing, but rather accepted as a possibility and examined.  I tend to agree with him.

But aptitude has nothing to do with presence. Chess is one game where aptitude has little or nothing to do with enjoyment. The oft-quote line that chess is an ocean in which a gnat may drink or an elephant may bathe is true. If aptitude had anything to do with participation, 90% of the people here, including myself, would be at checkers.com. If, indeed, there is any physiological difference in the potentials of men and women in chess, it also rolls uphill and at the lower level it's pretty much null. Only at the very highest levels would it come into play and, even then, only if there aren't other factors that compensate for it. But it merits investigation. 

"A few of my chess-playing friends are women.  Later today when we meet at our local chess spot I'll see what their opinions are."

I was thinking about this while folding my laundry and it occured to me that it might be even more interesting to pool women who are not chess players why they don't play chess and i ask if they might want to learn to play. What do you suppose their replies might be?

The problem with Summers is that he didn't bother to check his facts. He claimed, for example, that the underrepresentation of women on maths and science faculties was due to the fact that women weren't looking for those jobs. In fact, at his own institution, women made up fully 50% of applicants, but only 20% of hires.

In Sweden, where gender equality has progressed much farther than the US (where it isn't even expressly guaranteed in the Constitution), a study was done on hiring practises in maths and science departments, where it was found that a woman had to be at least ten times as qualified as a man (in terms of number publications, number of times her work was cited, magnitude of contributions to the field) to get hired for the same position.

The thing about a lot of these studies that show purported gender differences in various skillsets is that they are necessarily carried out under highly contrived conditions (as is the case with most human psyschological research), and have  results that may or may not actually be confirmed in real-world conditions. By the time these studies make it to the popular press, their inherently tentative nature usually is obscured, and they are presented as conclusive proof of whatever the particular publication's science writer thinks the study says based on a cursory reading of the abstract.

A hundred years ago, the accepted science of the day held that women's ovaries would shrivel up if they pursued higher education, and that non-white people were inherently inferior in all relevant respects. Now, anyone who would make those claims (outside of circles like the Human Biodiversity Institute, where variations of some of those claims have some currency) would be rightly dismissed as a nutter. The evidence, of course, has not changed (there was none then, and there's still none). The biology of non-white people and women has not changed in the course of a mere century; however, the ideological climate  does not require such ideas to be backed up by science. Historically, when it comes to ideologically charged and scientifically inconclusive matters in a particular society, science will tend to confirm the dominant ideological currents. When we run into studies that do so, we should always approach them with scepticism.

Good point. Its not just chess though, in my experience women just aren't overly interested in games. Elguero's foul mouthed friend has hit the nail on the f*******  proverbial.

And batgirl... I love your posts, you really know how to get your point across.

and yet for women, netball, soccer, and individual athletic achievements are well supported.

why would that be, do you suppose?

(i note that spatial awareness would be a key skill for many sports, and it seems these women like competition too!)

"And batgirl... I love your posts, you really know how to get your point across."

Thanks, and your descriptive posts are genuinely funny.

Thanks elguero. Now I have to wonder what men who don't play chess think about the game.