Chess is not ONLY about intelligence. I have known many chess players in my life that I believe were smarter than me but they were weaker chess players. Women just dont seem attracted to games as much as men. I am guessing there are also more male backgammon players and checker players than women. Perhaps women are more practical and see games as a waste of time that they could use to do something more useful. It bothers me that such things are seen by many as an attack against women these days. Is it an attack against women to point out that men are physically stronger than women? If a statement is factual I dont see why so many take it as an attack. Most serial killers are white males ....is this an attack against white males?
The Status of Female Players in Chess
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Unbeliever wrote: Reb wrote: The simple truth is that men and women are NOT equal in everything and chess is simply one of the things that men are better at. Does thie mean women are intelectually inferior? No, I dont think it means that at all. There are many sports where men are vastly superior to women and I , for one, am NOT afraid to point out this simple fact.Chess is a game of intelligence, and, as I pointed out in the beginning, it is statistically improbable that women are just not as smart as men in chess. In many sports, men are superior to women because us men have different hormones than women, and have a greater ability to gain muscle mass. There is no male hormone for increased intelligence, so again I ask, why do more men play chess than women?
Reb wrote: The simple truth is that men and women are NOT equal in everything and chess is simply one of the things that men are better at. Does thie mean women are intelectually inferior? No, I dont think it means that at all. There are many sports where men are vastly superior to women and I , for one, am NOT afraid to point out this simple fact.
But some women are better at having babies!
to be honest i think it's the stereotype of the ''nerd-chess-player''. chess is regarded as a game for nerds most of the time. and girls try to be popular and cool most of the time (women feed on male attention for some reason). and chess simply isn't cool so why would they start playing ?? ofcourse this example only really applies to high school where you have the big differences in groups but then again i don't believe many people will start liking chess on a later age (and if they do they will certainly not compete in tournaments).
i hope i made myself clear (what i highly doubt though) but i am dutch after all and only 16 years old so my english still lacks a bit here and there.
For whatever value it may have in this discussion, I would like to compare the role of women in chess with women in real estate. In making this comparison I am unable to come to any definitive conclusions, but some observations may be interesting.
According to the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) 59% of Realtors® are women http://www.realtor.org/libweb.nsf/pages/fg109. The numerical predominance of women is in residential real estate because in commercial real estate, the percentage of women in 2005 (the most recent year for which statistics are given on the NAR website) the percentage of women was 36%.
I would like to share some of my thoughts about how these figures for women in real estate may be relevant to this discussion about women in chess.
Success in residential real estate is similar to success in chess in that your own performance is the major factor in your advancement. Unlike other careers in which your advancement may be impeded by the practices of an irrational bureaucracy, and by the whims of individuals higher up in the hierarchy, in real estate there is an objective performance criteria which has nothing to do with whether your supervisor likes you or does not like you: The dollar value of your closed transactions speaks for itself. It that way it is like chess: Your "performance review" is not determined by whether you have been favored by a higher-up, it is determined by the games won and the games lost.
At least in theory, the opportunity to advance on an objective performance standard which has allowed women to push past the "glass ceiling" in real estate, should have a similar result in chess. And yet, unlike real estate where the majority of practitioners are women, in chess the population of players is heavily skewed toward males. Success in real estate depend much less on how your "boss" (or supervising broker) feels about you, than on whether ordinary people trust you. In any locality there are many competing real estate professionals, and buyers and sellers can choose who to work with. So it is your potential clients and customers -- not some stiff in a suit -- in whose hands your success lies, and it is your own performance which determines your reputation and brings you success through word-of-mouth referrals. That undermines the power of the "Old Boys."
So if both chess and real estate are intrinsically conducive to egalitarianism, why are the actual results so different? My uncertainty in the answer to that question is why I say that I am unable to come to any conclusions, but can only to share some observations.
One big difference is that becoming a chess aficionado is more of a pure choice: Unlike picking a career, economic pressure is hardly a factor in becoming a chess nut. Of course that does not tell us why so few women are attracted to chess. Another difference is that real estate -- particularly residential real estate -- is very much a people business. The ability to listen, empathize, care, and offer real help are huge personality traits in real estate success. It is generally known that women tend to be more feeling oriented and people oriented than men. With chess enthusiasts whom I have played on this site, although I have had some interesting conversations and warm contacts, there seems to be a higher than random percentage of people who just don't connect that well on a human level. Perhaps it is the abstract quality of the game which draws a large percentage of males: You can relate to another human being over a chess board and not have to say very much.
One contradiction in asking on this site the question about why there are so few women in chess is that the only women we are likely to hear from are women who ARE interested in chess. Their responses, of course, will be of particular interest. Nonetheless, we are not likely to get any feedback from women who do not play chess, and those responses -- which are are unlikely to hear in this forum -- are necessary to our inquiry.
If there is some way to get statistics for the percentage of men v. women players of various other games, those figures might be very interesting. For example, I suspect that there is a much higher percentage of women Scrabble enthusiasts than women chess players. It would be interesting to find out why. What games tend to have a high percentage of women players? Bridge? Mahjong? Finding out why women who love games other than chess feel that way might shed some light on our inquiry.
Here is a relevant link which may be of interest:
This is a N.Y. Times report of a survey comparing men and women for competitiveness in games. The results seem to indicate that men, as a group, are only slightly more competitive than women, but that as individuals most women are just as competitive and ego-driven as men. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/31/opinion/31tierney.html
As a teacher, I ran a school chess club in a secondary school (ie teenagers) for many years. Over all the years, despite my best efforts, only one girl ever attended.
In the same period, I helped run the school debating society. In public competition, debating can be aggressive and confrontational, and yet girls v boys participation was more or less equal.
I also produced many school dramatic performances (musicals etc). Girls participation outnumbered boys by about 10 to 1.
Merely observations.
I go to a chess club and the director who is a man, very good at chess, and has educated both his son and his daughter in the game believes that the reason COULD be that boys tend to be more competitive and girls tend to be more pensive. He knows that this is not always the case though. I have to admit that when I started playing, I felt bad when I competed with a boy who played a good game but ended up getting checkmated by me. There really is no right answer but I think that this is a good reason.
Reb wrote:
Always some yahoo who points out that Polgar is better than lots of men when this topic comes up. Why? As good as the best Polgar is she wouldnt stand a chance against any of the top ten males in a match, maybe top 20. How many of the top 100 chess players are male? I think in general women just arent as fanatical as men are when it comes to competition of any sort. Ofcourse there are some notable exceptions.
It sounds like you fell victim to one of the Polgars.
Reb wrote:
Women just dont seem attracted to games as much as men. I am guessing there are also more male backgammon players and checker players than women.
I don't think it's as simple as that. There appear to be more female than male Scrabble players.
HowDoesTheHorseMove wrote: Reb wrote:
Women just dont seem attracted to games as much as men. I am guessing there are also more male backgammon players and checker players than women.
I don't think it's as simple as that. There appear to be more female than male Scrabble players.
That may be the case, but ALL the recent World Champions appear to have been men:
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0932509.html
Ray_Brooks wrote: HowDoesTheHorseMove wrote: Reb wrote:
Women just dont seem attracted to games as much as men. I am guessing there are also more male backgammon players and checker players than women.
I don't think it's as simple as that. There appear to be more female than male Scrabble players.
That may be the case, but ALL the recent World Champions appear to have been men:
That doesn't seem to contradict my point.
My comment wasn't intended as a contradiction (the very reason I didn't contradict you), merely a curious observation.
Jan 1, 2008
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#33
The argument should include the notion of self-selection. Becoming a chess player requires a person to choose to play chess. I spent thousands of hours playing in places and areas that would have been considered not as safe for women as for men. In fact, elderly men in some areas were mugged. One example was Abe Kupchick, an early 20th century opponent of the likes of Capablanca who lived a few decades beyond Capa's death. However, at an advanced age, chess players are already very attached to the game. Some died at the board. The security and the social conditions have to do with a person choosing any activity. Some people who prefer political activity do so to meet people, often of the opposite sex (not the pc gender) not to express their ideals. This choice is more limited in chess. Considering the idea of self-selection goes beyond only considering chess itself excluding women (as certainly has been done) or innate differences in intellectual capacity. An example of ignoring self-selection, are studies of the effects of alcohol that ask people how much they drink and draw conclusions by correlating their health conditions with alcohol. People who drink and people who do not drink are self-selected. Perhaps, some who do not drink already have health problems and cannot drink. That does not make alcohol use a way to avoid their conditions. A scientific study would offer a drug to a number of individuals and a placebo to an equal number (control group). Individuals would not know which group they are in.
Jan 1, 2008
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#34
Polgar? There were three of them at last count! Each and every one of them a "real" GM, at least one of them participating in the process to crown a new world champion. Each one of them has been playing since preschool. Perhaps academic and with a very small sample size, 3 out of 3 girls nurtured into chess rock, playing top level tournaments, getting the usual GM instructional fees of upwards of $100/hr., doing simuls, etc.
Perhaps the world reaps great benefits in raising girls in such a way that guarantees that nearly all of them will become hopeless chess incomptetents as a side effect, though to me this sounds a lot like racist talk of a generation ago. If you find a case that contradicts the "can't play" argument, the argument should be dropped.
Personally, it does not bother me that the Polgars have not walked off with the world championship. They may be average, no talent GMs. That means that pretty much any of them could consistently beat Reb. Being an NM, Reb can in turn beat pretty much beat the whole lot of us here without thinking. Dang, those Polgars play awesome chess. Just like tons of other GMs--the Korchnois, Shorts, Reshevskys and Timmans of the world.
also, Rather than intelligence, to me it seems that chess relies on consistent use of a set of really specific set of computational skills.
Topics such as this have been in the new recently and I read an article in a newspaper a couple of weeks ago and the argument went something along these lines.
The roles and attributes that the sexes seem to have are derived from thousands of years of evolution. The male (hunter) has adapted and honed skills that help him to be successful at the hunt these skills are focusing and concentrating on the problem at hand, in other words how to kill and live to tell the tale. Males do not discuss the pros and cons of an action in general they act.
As a result of farming, our hunting skills have diminished but not our inherited desire to do so. These emotions 'the buzz' and adrenaline rush is now transferred to competitive sports and games and of course risk sports.
Women on the other hand have over the same time span have evolved to be communal and thereby more communicative. Their role in ancient' primitive society would have been to nurture and to gather, hence the female's obvious advantage in communication and multi-task (supposedly). Of course there are exceptions to the rule but the if we examine the statistics in other games and sports the pattern would be the same, the majority of participants would be male with a small yet highly skilled minority of women (excluding camp followers of course).
Personally, I think women are too smart to become obsessed with chess 
I guess so haha! that is a particularly male thing too obsession!
My sister is a long time chess player, and she had this observation:
"This is a topic that is endlessly recycled, why don't more women play chess. The environment of most chess clubs is hostile toward women. I remember one time, I was seated during a tournament. My opponent, a woman, arrived a few minutes late. She asked me my name, we had to confirm we were playing the correct opponent. I confirmed it and we started to play. The man next to me got up and complained to the tournament director that we were making too much noise. The TD told the complainant that we had a right to confirm we were playing the right person. Last year, I had the pleasure of beating this man. "
Vive la difference! Yummy!!