Why do we have woman categories?

No, I only want women's titles taken out, because I feel that gender alone shouldn't matter so much in getting good at chess; in other words I think, unlike national championships and stuff, that to separate based on gender is rather stupid. Now, if it's proven otherwise like in sports that gender does in fact matter, then sure, but until then I'd want to be extremely conservative. It's probably more likely that chess isn't the type of thing most women like to do; but hey, you have exceptions like Judit who is so dedicated to chess; why not just wait for another Judit to come along and praise her, rather than praise any 2000 woman to make them look better?

This does not apply to stuff like national championships because I think the reasoning for them is much better.

"Less people would be recognized for whatever they did and only the highest of the high would receive any mention."

Well, better higher rated players get the recognition than lower rated players; certainly, though, I would not want lower rated players to overshadow higher players like they do now!

The sad truth in life is that if you don't succeed, you don't, e.g., getting to GM -- why can't people just deal with it instead of complaining about it? But no, we have to compensate for incompetence -- make it easier to get recognized and have a title -- would you agree that that is one thing that we are essentially doing with these titles? Maybe it promotes female chess, but doesn't it also do what I mentioned?

Why not just make titles for every rating level? That way everyone's happy, right? Can't make it past 1600? Let's get a title made for it to make mere 1500s feel better! Cool!

Hey, I've got a better idea: Let's pit 1600s from America, Russia, Germany, Japan, everywhere, and see who the best 1600 is! We'll put it on TV! Of course, we don't care about the 1800s, as they are too strong to compete in this division.

You could nearly replace 1600 with "women," and 1800 with "men."

Too abstract for you guys? I'm saying, what if we humans as a whole start to perform a lot worse -- would, or should, there be compensation? In other words, would we make it easier to become grandmaster? Would we start to put 1600 tournaments on TV just to make the 1600s feel better? Ok, 1600s don't perform as well as 1800s; but with this reasoning we would end up giving the 1600s more respect than the 1800s. If we substituted 1600s with "2300 women" and 1800s "2400 men," would you say this higher recognition for the former is justified because their group as a whole performs less well, for unknown reasons?

If yes, you either postulate that a: women are less capable than men in chess (again, the reasons for their lesser success have not been proven), or b: if a group does not do well, it should become easier to "do well." Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the latter go against the principle of rewarding someone for their skill and hard work, and instead judging them based on something as superficial as gender? Didn't America fight against this kind of prejudice when it came to racism? But it's ok here? Moreover, doesn't that take some of the meaning or value out of "skill?" If we gave 1400s titles, how much would a title even mean at that point? We want everyone to feel good, but this is planet earth, where only few are exceptionally successful in chess.

Do you think this is reasonable? Do you think that, if, say women as a whole even substantially failed to become WFMs (there could be some cutoff statistics), should the rating requirements be lowered further? Because that is the reasoning we are demonstrating currently.

lol, finally someone realizes this!

I tend to think people just blindly accept it without really thinking about the statements being implied, both for men, and women.

Maybe some day we'll have segregation based on height, if the statistics back it up!!

 Ive made that point myself, but nobody seems to see it.

The top female chess players of the world, who know exactly what women are capable of, and an overwhelming majority of whom do play in these women-only tournaments, certainly don't seem offended. This might have something to do with what I showed in post #380.

I totally agree. In some ways it is annoying to see some women so content with the extra benefits, not realizing what it implies. Or, more likely, they, in a biased manner, are quick to justify it with some dubious, rushed reasoning. Or, thirdly, they do know but don't care because they just want the "stuff." And I don't mean specifically playing in them, I mean not having a problem with them in general: perhaps some women are offended but feel they may as well take the benefits.

But as offensive as it could be, ultimately, to women, I still think the biggest problem is how it affects men, as it makes it harder for them to get recognition for no good reason really, unless one is to assume they don't have to work as hard to become good chess players because it's in their blood or something.

Azukikuru has been saying that because of the statistical differences, we should assume that women deserve easier titles. But the interpretation of these statistics is just so ambiguous that to assume anything is downright laughable. He's saying "we don't know, so let's do this"; I'm saying "we don't know, so let's not mess with anything until we have a better understanding. After all, when you mess with nature, it's possible to create many more problems than you solve!" In my opinion, if a woman doesn't make it to a certain level, it's her fault, and same for a man. There are exceptions obviously (again for both genders), but this is a free country (haha... excuse my American bias ) and you don't really need a lot material wise to study and play this game; more important is your attitude towards the game and perhaps higher concentrations of certain mental attributes that may complement your play. Now, if women were shown to have slightly lower concentrations of these "attributes," we would still have to decide if that is enough to do something this radical, or if it's better to just wait for these "female problem solvers" like Judit Polgar perhaps to come along and dominate the game.

I have been called "idealist" on this thread, yet I'm the one willing to accept that you can hardly force someone to be good at chess. I say the exact opposite: those favoring female titles actually think that these artificial, sexist policies are actually going to make women better players? You can try to "create skill," I suppose by forcing everyone in the world to play chess for example, but it's a pretty rough process and in general you need motivation in the first place. Do you really think "free pizza for women" put into a tournament will make women like chess? Same as how you couldn't get any guys to join a book club just because they say "free beer for guys!" Or could you?

"Let's not mess with anything"? You're proponing that we abolish women-only categories. How's that not messing with anything?

And where do you get this obstinate prejudice that men and women must be completely similar? If we don't know better, our premise should be "we don't know" instead of either "men are superior as a fact" or "men and women are equal as a fact", both of which make an unfounded assumption about a gender, and as such, are sexist statements. As for knowing better, everything I have shown in this thread points to this: when the effects of differing participation rates and social pressures are annulled, men will perform 200 rating points better on average than women. So, even though this is not 100% conclusive (and by this, I mean it's more like 75% than 1-2% conclusive), you'll have to forgive me if I'm a little bit skeptical about your premise.

""Let's not mess with anything"? You're proponing that we abolish women-only categories. How's that not messing with anything?"

Well, it's too late now of course, but female titles came from the result of messing with nature, indeed.

So are you saying that it is likely that men are biologically inherently more capable of playing chess than women (just for clarity here)?

I don't say men and women are completely similar; I'm saying we should not assume that the inevitable, though controversial perhaps, differences necessarily justify something as radical as a separation, which is what is being done now.

Nope: two genders are too similar for one thing, AND it affects higher performing men sometimes by them receiving more neglect. For me to accept female titles, there would have to be strong evidence that women are at a biological disadvantage, and a big one at that.

Did Azukikuru prove that with his data? lol, I dunno, maybe . He'll tell me.

Are there the same specific problems with the other separations? Not in my book. For example with national championships you'll get more recognized in your country, but the same applies to everyone, as everyone is from a country, as long as theirs has a national championship; actually, that is very consistent with equality!

Yes, but the difference here is that with women it is, essentially, assumed that they are doomed to the limits of their biology -- which is worse?

To be born in America has practically nothing to do with your biology; to be a woman, does.

Don't you think it's a little unfair that men can't go to "men only" tournaments? Women are getting something that men aren't. If a woman has the right to play in a tournament of her own gender, why shouldn't a man?

"It could just been seen as a separate venue of competition."

Yes, a seperate venue that excludes men, yet there is no respective one excluding women -- unequal.

Unfortunately, when based on gender, it doesn't matter how much older men are and become -- they will still, never, be able to play in a tournament of their gender for "encouragement," in case they wanted; in other words, it's assumed that only women should be able to have it "if they want it."

See the problem? Just being born a man dooms you to never having this right, it seems.

Alas, that would do nothing to augment equality, the real problem here.

I really don't care what extra right they get -- if it's an extra right based on gender, it bothers me, because that delivers a sexist, and prejudiced, message.

Ok, so you can say men don't often want this sort of thing; women might... this sort of proves that society will give you something exclusive if either you complain about something (perhaps in this case, "social pressures?" Which is, of course, incontrovertibly exclusive to women), or in order to compensate (or should I say, reward? Because it is an extra right after all) for a history of lesser success as a group(ooh! Generalization again!)... I don't like that for one

I'm saying that all the evidence I've gathered points in that direction, yes. All attempts at discrediting this kind of evidence usually consist of trying to negate it (providing reasons for the perceived gender gap, such as different participation rates, social pressures, etc.) instead of providing any evidence to the contrary. I would be very interested in seeing evidence in favor of men and women having equal potential in chess; but the available quantitative evidence seems to be limited to chess ratings, which currently yield the result that registered male players are, on average, better, and that their advantage is actually growing because social pressures are crumbling and more mediocre female players are registering a rating.

This evidence does not surpass the 95% confidence threshold usually required to make something an acceptable fact. Even past that point, many will certainly remain skeptical. But remember: despite the scientific consensus, even global warming wasn't an acceptable fact until earlier this year.

In addition, this is a very flammable subject, and so you'll see me trying to be extremely diplomatic (and maybe a little ambiguous) about it; but every time someone confidently states that the complete opposite is an absolute and undeniable fact, I feel compelled to speak up.

Depending on the field, it may be difficult to quantify gender differences; a century ago, if the only available data was participation rates, this would certainly have favored males because of social norms. Now, we have standardized tests, but they are usually performed on a large scale only before maturity (at school age), which favors those who mature more quickly (women). As for chess, we have a very large data set of reliable quantifiers (ratings) from mature individuals. Unfortunately, as far as I know, this does not apply to any other intellectual field.

As I have said many times before, I invite alternative interpretations to the data I have shown. In particular, I would be interested to hear another explanation for why the gender gap in average performance has steadily increased for the last two and a half years. As for me, as a scientist, I choose Occam's razor.

Certainly. But could this then be construed as an inherent lack of motivation? As far as the justification for women-only categories is concerned, it doesn't matter whether what causes the gender gap is a lack in pure calculating intellect or in competitive motivation, as long as the reason is biologically imperative. Remember, I'm not advocating that men are more intelligent than women - only that men currently perform better in chess, and that recent statistics indicate that this trend isn't going away. The fact that I don't know the reason for this is why we're having this conversation.

I would say that women's categories are completely justified. Current statistics indicate that a newly registered female player is probably going to have a lower peak rating than a newly registered male player; therefore, women would be at an unfair advantage in a unisex player pool. The situation is comparable to either junior categories (where the players can still improve over time but they cannot compete with the best) or senior categories (where the players cannot improve) - we don't know which, but we certainly take for granted that having separate categories for both junior and senior players is perfectly acceptable, as LordNazgul has pointed out.

It has been suggested that participating in women-only tournaments is detrimental to the ratings evolution of female players. However, it should be noted that most male players also play in pools with lower average ratings (e.g. national championships, etc.). Therefore, as long as women are allowed to participate in both women-only and general categories, their ratings should evolve naturally towards the "correct" end result.

Well, Azukikuru, there are lots of people who do not agree with your conclusions yet still support female titles -- these are the ones whom I do not understand. Because then you're just saying "We're equal; therefore we should give women extra rights that men can never have," which is obviously ridiculous.

I don't care one way or the other, but one possible justification for seperate titles  (maybe a biologist could confirm this) was presented by a radio psychologist some time back. In males the left and right brain is seperated from interaction with each other, whereas in females they are not.  This would be the basis of an objective, not cultural difference. whether or not that results in advantage for either gender is not determined.

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