Why do women get different medals? WGM or simply GM?

Look at the proportion of potential women players to potential players who are men purely based upon culture you have to eliminate the entire middle east minus israel, north africa, many asian countries like india, and places like central and parts of west africa. There is a far lower sample size of women who could play furthermore even when they can there's little encouragement to pursue it. There is no evidence that they are intellecually lesser now stop being an incel.

wem ist as good as gm

wgm

Not at all.  It means woman have historically been less successful.  That's something entirely different. 

Titles (and title requirements) have changed a lot, historically. At one point, master titles were only granted by a secretive committee, who had no formal stipulations, and would decide who is awarded a chess title via group debate, and agreement, alone.

Also, at one point, players could be stripped of their titles, if a committee felt that their recent performances weren't respectable or impressive enough.

Female titles are a more recent addition, as far as I'm aware. And, like the earlier chess titles (which were considered, exclusively, for male players only), female titles will inevitably go through their own evolution of sorts.

Maybe they'll expand, to include a larger ratings range. Maybe they'll narrow and become more exclusive. Perhaps they'll vanish entirely.

Only time will tell.

Female titles aren't so much about gender and chess ability, though - that's a different debate altogether. Such titles are more about participation, funding, cultural expectations, and all sorts of other complex socio-political systems ...

The first women titles were conferred at the same time as the first overall titles were conferred: 1950. 

Ah, okay. I stand corrected.

Perhaps I'm conflating FIDE titles with the earlier Soviet titles ...

These numbers are slightly misleading if one says Chess is holding it's own.  One has to include the population.  While USCF membership is higher than 1971 it is less than 2003 and the population is growing.

Chess USCF members 1969    13,488      population---207,659,273     .01% 

Chess USCF members  1974   59,979      population---217,114,898      .03%

Chess USCF members  2003   95,388      population---289,815,567  (peak membership)    .03%

Chess USCF members  today  82,803      population---332,915,073   .02%

Sadly it appears that Chess popularity is currently slowly going down in terms of the total population.  While due to the lockdown and Beth it may have an increase in popularity the real test is whether people maintain an interest.  

It seems to me Chess players are a very small minority in the US population and I would bet that is not going to change significantly unless we see another Bobby Fischer but that was a very unique set of circumstances.

Most of the post-Fischer growth has been in Scholastic Chess, something the USCF became heavily invested in.   

I think it is great to promote Chess in schools.  At least some kids have been exposed to it, and some have deeply appreciated it.   But despite that it appears that Chess is not increasingly popular.  I believe the Beth Harmon excitement will also die down.  In Japan and Asia there was a boom in GO due to Hikaru No GO anime series.  Both printed and tv series.  But that died off as other fads took its place.  There are still players who start and love the game because of it.  But the boom is over.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyllVL9fpe0

There is also a new Chinese remake with real actors.  I have not heard of its impact though.

probably a Musacha troll bumped this, so boring 5 years on..

lol I did not even notice the original date

Haven't heard that name in some time. 

Seems that's an oversimplification.

https://physicsworld.com/a/overlooked-for-the-nobel-chien-shiung-wu/

Anyway, why can't both be truth?

Mediocre women are routinely given more recognition than they deserve, while great women are routinely given less than they deserve.

Highly controversial assessment, Llama, but that does seem to be the state of things these days.

I don't know if it's true or not, but it seems somewhat intuitive that both cases can stem from the same sentiment i.e. seeing women as something like children. You praise a child for doing mediocre work, while at the same time not taking them seriously.

     The first women's title FIDE introduced was in 1927 when the first Women's World Champion was crowned (Vera Menchick). The WIM title was established in 1950 but the WGM title didn't appear until 1976.

The best men are better than the best women. Even if participation rates were the same, it doesn't mean the averages are different... and in fact one poster graphed the male vs female FIDE ratings, and they were almost identical.

To put it another way, being male doesn't make you better at chess (and being female doesn't make you worse) but being male may increase your chances of winning the genetic lottery for the potential to be very good at chess.

(The averages will be the same when being male also increases your chances of "winning" the genetic lottery to be miserably bad at chess, and in fact in some non-chess areas this is exactly what happens i.e. equal averages with men representing the best and worst)

It takes a very different body type to be a good sprinter vs a good marathon runner. The population of Africa has a very high amount of genetic diversity. There are more different types of people Africa than anywhere else in the world. You have the best sprinters and the best marathon runners.

The irony is lumping them all together as "black" when in reality this is only possible because the population is very diverse.