Why are women not as successful as men in chess?

But, men's forearms, arms and hands are/can be HUGE(compared to women's), yet you just know most women could straight whoop some men bad in a butter churning competition.

Smaller brains. 

Because men are conditioned from an early age to get used to rejection, denial and disdain, so they are less easily discouraged when the going gets rough.

I mean, did Columbus discover the New World because everyone around him was all like "Sure, you're a man, whatever you want, go out and get it - you can do it!" or did he have to overcome a vast barrier of "You can't sail West to China - it's far too far and any idiot knows it" and have to go begging from court to court across Europe until he found some king and queen who were prepared to punt the cost of three small ships on what was probably going to be a total loss?

According to the late GM Donner it is because they lack intuïsm. 

And the facts to support this statement would be...?

/waiting

This thread was dead for a reason; knowing the history of the content within, please let's all stop looking for petty business and just let it be.

Otherwise, a moderator can force it to be let be. If you all would like, I can contact one to ask him/her to do just that.

There are other ways to cope with boredom.

Let's not 'live' in a way that would cause a disruption to the nice pleasant flow of things here on chess.com.

Otherwise, again, if you would like to see the smiling work of a moderator as he taps his/her foot into this thread, that too can happen.

There is nothing wrong with women not being as good at 'something' as men are.
Women are MUCH better than men at MANY things.
At the end of the day, "this particular topic" isn't a negative subject.  
Life is all about perception(in such manners, and topics as this one), the reality you perceive is your own reality. 
In general(overall) women are just quite a bit less aggressive than men, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
There are no victims here, so 'don't imagine' you are one.  And I do see humanity evolving to a state where women could become more capable of figuring out how to work around a natural state of submission in chess, and coming up with new, more evolved systems.  Chess can be won using defensive minded stances.  But(with that said), overall the greatest players of all time, ALWAYS 'go for the jugular' right from the first look at the board.

"I strongly agree with you on that"

No, there isn't.

There's merely a problem with topics that will lead to arguments; it's an even bigger issue when the revivers know the history of the thread.

Thanks for the acknowledgement.

The thread was better when it was done.

And some Black people agree that Blacks are inferior; so much so that some even go as far as bleaching their skin, so that they can live as a White person....

Point of fact, bubba: women and men alike found a lot of the (petty) insults that happened in this thread unpleasant and unnecessary.

Arguments(disagreements) are great, as long as everyone is reasonable, respectful and civil.  Just because one person has 'strong feelings' about a certain topic doesn't mean that another person has to shutup, and agree with them.  "That" is actually an EXTREMELY uncivil, dated, mindset(caveman stuff, or should I say cavewoman?). 

@JMurakami: I think that there are a thousand reasons why women could be better or worse in playing chess. And they could all intermingle with one another within each individual, making it very difficult to extrapolate across individuals.

One set of arguments might be around the notion that chess is not some objective game. It has been designed - presumably by men. Therefor might it be that to be able to compare the capacity to play chess for men and women in an objective way the game of chess has to be changed into a gender neutral type of play. Whatever that may imply.

"One set of arguments might be around the notion that chess is not some objective game. It has been designed - presumably by men. Therefor might it be that to be able to compare the capacity to play chess for men and women in an objective way the game of chess has to be changed into a gender neutral type of play. Whatever that may imply."

I don't think that applies here. If you are saying that the game being made by men makes it more likely that they would be good at it, that's merely another possible explanation for why there is the gender disparity. We are talking only about the game chess, not some hypothetical game that would have turned out differently if it were invented by different people. Such a game, would not be chess.

"And, from an statistical point of view, it's a fact that less women than men play chess."

Right, but we want to know what it is that creates those different stats. And that tends to break down into the typical combination of biological and social explanations. Also, women have on average lower FIDE ratings than men, and a lower average isn't something that fewer females playing would be able to account for.

Well, I suppose the discussion is civil now, but I was merely going off of the disrepectful bickers and insults that has defined at least a few pages within this 88-page years-old thread.

I suppose it's fine now, now that we're able to keep it civil. But again, I don't mind tapping a moderator on the shoulder if it gets out of hand (again).

"Civil folk" do their best to not be riled by the sewage feeders of humanity.   Online it is usually said as "do not feed the trolls"..  ;D
 

I don't think your analogy is good, though. In chess, having a FIDE rating just means signing up to play chess, pretty much. You have to play a few FIDE rated games, and that's it -- you get a rating. There is no subjective selection process going on there. They have access to the same game, same study materials, etc. It's just a matter of whether they choose to use those things.

There is a considerable number of women who play chess. It's just also a small percentage of the world. Well, there is a very small percentage of men who play chess, too, since the majority of people just don't play serious tournament chess. Yet we wouldn't say that the amount of men who play chess is so inconsiderable that it doesn't even count as a valid group for statistical analysis.

So I think, of course having thousands of women who play chess is a perfectly good sample. The typical statistical argument made is that there are not enough female players to create an outlier of world champion strength. That is true, but when you just go by averages, women are not punished for that fact. If women were about as good as men, you would expect their average ratings to be similar -- you wouldn't expect there to be as many female world champions, but you would expect their average ratings to be similar. The fact that Magnus Carlsen is world champion doesn't mean much in terms of averages -- he is just one single data point among the thousands of men who play chess. So the fact that we have a male world champion and not a female world champion doesn't have an effect on the overall average ratings, and so, does not explain the disparity in average ratings.

"Then, we don't need to know what makes those numbers different, since we become aware those numbers lack validity to compare genders."

Besides, this assumption being true is at odds with the typical statistical argument. The point of the statistical argument is to suggest that, it's perfectly normal for men and women to be equally good at chess, yet there not be a female world champion or contester, because the numbers would predict that it shouldn't happen yet due to the small sample size. But if you're saying that the numbers have no validity, then you can't use stats to claim whether there "should" or "shouldn't" be a female world champion by now.

If you can't use the stats, then naturally you can't use an argument based on those stats to counter the claim that men have a biological advantage over women. Of course, you can still use social arguments to explain the gender disparity, and that's the approach I would recommend if you want to counter the biological argument.

When I study(<strong word for what I do) a player like Susan Polgar's games, especially her early middlegame, and middlegame I quickly notice a major difference in the way she approaches the game vs players like Fischer, Kasparov or even Morphy.  Whereas if I compare the last mentioned 3 player's games(all very simple 'study', a brush over) I see a STRONG similarity in these guy's basic methods. 

Easily explained using everyone here's understanding of how Morphy would MANY times 'prefer' to start a game with less pieces on his side, so that he could "attack" faster.  I am not saying that Polgar doesn't 'attack', and she isn't the best example of a standard female chess player, because she was a MONSTER, one of the best women players of all time.  But still, when I glance across a chunk of her middlegames(especially in losses), you'll notice she tends to 'shut down' the board, you know, jam it up, create a very complicated, drawish style of game.  She has a more 'defensive' style of play.
Obviously we all know Morphy was a genius, and he was playing many overrated numbskulls(in comparison to today), but Morphy still laid down the blueprint for how a player should proceed into a game of chess.  You gotta go in with "killer instinct".  Women are not mother nature's hunter(killer), they are designed more to nourish, and 'need' others(for the birthing process, and raising of the children).  Women are nesters, long-termers in real life.  In chess I have noticed women tend to try and make the game 'linger' more than men.  Men ALWAYS pull the blade, and put it against the jugular.   Even young males, and inexperienced players(such as myself, but more like complete beginners).  Men always 'envision' the other player as dead before the game even starts.  IMO women(the majority) tend to see a chess game as more of an opportunity to create a long-term situation.
I am not saying women are passive do nothings, that is ridiculous, women will slash a throat as quick as a man.  I am saying 'overall', when you put all chess players in the world together and compare strength, I think the main thing that separates 'the power' of play is simply the difference in natural "attacking instinct".