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

you don't see many blokes winning wet t-shirt contests either.

you just aren't going to the right kind of bar

good one!  lol

"It's the fault of the chess players themselves. I don't know what they used to be, but now they're not the most gentlemanly group. When it was a game played by the aristocrats it had more like you know dignity to it. When they used to have the clubs, like no women were allowed and everybody went in dressed in a suit, a tie, like gentlemen, you know. Now, kids come running in their sneakers. Even in the best chess club-and they got women in there. It's a social place and people are making noise, it's a madhouse." (on the lack of financial support for chess)  - Bobby Fischer.

Schopenhauer on gays is way funnier than Fischer on women

nowadays juniors play mature.the age for becoming a grandmaster has been decreased considerably since we are living in computer era.FM and IM are suitable for them.no need for JGM and...

Ah, proof by Internet glurge. Not quite bulletproof though.

Arguments about how it's because women haven't historically been encouraged to play chess need to explain why GMs are cropping up in China where they barely looked at the game until the 1920s. 

Few nations empower women the way China or America do.

Just look at the recent Olympics. While these 2 swept the medals, the vast majority of those medals were won by women.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world wonders What happened, griping how the Olympics are "stacked" in Americas and China's favor.

grow your own dope ----

plant a man!

I thought it was oil money that caused America to win so many olympic medals...now I know it is EMPOWERMENT.

Also: you clearly have a different defintion of "vast majority" than I do XD

Everybody in this thread is cleary overestimating the influence that society, or culture, does on people choosing their activities.

We choose the activity, or in this case the pastime, that we like the most. Now because the human brain responds to dopamine and we get a dopamine shot every time we are successful at something, it's common sense that people like to do what they are good at. Or we can say, what they tend to be naturally good at.

A boy and a girl pick up a chessboard, play around with the pieces, and the more they understand the game the more they like it. They more they like it to have an intellectual challenge and solve puzzles, the more they'll get hooked to the game. The club, the chess community, the tournaments will come much later. So the fact that these are male-dominated environments is meaningless.

If a girl likes the game, she likes the game. She doesn't need to go to the chess club at all, and if she goes to find good opponents then she's there to play and not to socialize. Why would she even care that there are more men than women there?

Same thing, if one day I discovered that I was good with the trumpet you can bet I would enjoy playing it. But I suck with music. And I'm not going to blame the fact that there are not enough white people into jazz so I feel discouraged because I'm in a minority. I'm discouraged because I simply suck with any musical instrument.

Women are less intelligent than men (on average), thus they don't like "intelligent activities". They don't like them because most of them would simply fail hard. Much more comfortable to spend time on facebook.

That's why there are so few women that are good at chess. Same reason why there are few women that are good at poker. And on a side note, women have even more problems with gambling than men nowadays, so hopefully this won't be raised as an argument.

you're certainly not referencing up-to-date IQ scores for that research.

Personal examples (you and the trumpet) almost universily make poor arguments.  An example to make a point is fine, but it can't be the argument itself.  I.e. just because you don't like jazz trumpet because you're bad at it and not because you're a minority the same cannot be said for women.

If people experience success at something, they're more likely to continue the activity, true... but it's not the only reason people become good at something.  How many women who experience the first roadblocks to improvement (as we all have) decided it wasn't worth it because they didn't feel it fit them anyway.  It's rare that someone is so passionate about an activity that their desire lets them ignore all opposition, and if a person feels out of place in an activity they're less likely to continue (or bother to begin in the first place).

As for you last paragraph, I didn't realize we had intelligence tests, or had even defined intelligence.  I wonder how you can make these statements without certain qualifiers.

Gambling addiction (and addictions in general) is an entirely different topic by the way... lol.

If that was true, the Saudis would have done far better.

I'll say again though that people ought to have willpower. Do any of us quit something the moment someone says we can't do it? Even if you are struggling a little bit, I would hope people at least quit something on their own terms at least to a reasonably large extent. If anything else is the case, I think society should work on their willpower within -- it'll probably help them with getting through any obstacle in life. Nobody should discourage anybody, but I kind of feel like quitting too soon because of it is like espousing that two wrongs make a right. The first wrong is obviously wrong, but the latter (quitting) isn't ideal either.

I don't buy the idea that "willpower is not in our DNA" or something, that no matter what our conscious opinion of something is our unconscious will always do something different just by our nature. Yes, perhaps we can't have 100% control, I get the point, but I still think one can help it to a decent extent. For all the examples of rational beliefs not affecting our actions, you could probably come up with more examples of rational beliefs affecting our actions after all -- we take gravity pretty seriously for example; we certainly live life in accordance with that belief.

Psychological studies often try to cherry pick the very few situations where our minds fail us -- like how we can't notice a monkey on a basketball court when counting how many dribbles and passes are being made -- yet 99.999% of the time, the way our mind works helps us function way better. But yes, if you searched really deeply, sure, you can probably find a situation where the way our brain works doesn't perfectly suit a situation -- just as how in chess you can try to set up the pieces in such a way that being up a queen isn't a big advantage (like a really blocked up position with no pawn breaks), even though it is an advantage 99.99999% of the time.

People have varying amounts of willpower. Some people quit more easily than others, even in the face of struggles. I think it depends on the individual, just like a lot of things. This could be a facet of "chess talent" if you will, as much as cognitive abilities.

It's not like we're talking about whether or not a person will become another unibomber... on a society wide scale chess is a pretty minor activity.  If I'm conditioned from an early age that chess is not for me what do I care?  There are a million other things to hold my interest in life.

Ideally it shouldn't have an effect?  Well actually ideally it should, that's what makes communities cohesive, we obey all the illogical standards we learn while were too young to know what they even mean

If you mean for individuals, yes, they should be able to decide on a case by case basis.  But because there are only so many hours in a day we can't reevaluate everything... for someone to realize they want to be a professional chess player they have to be interested enough to begin in the first place... and that's what these titles and tournaments are about right?  Creating opportunities for girls to begin and decide for themselves.

Do I think it's a perfect solution?  No.  I've often disagreed with it on the forum.  But I can understand the logic behind it.

The answer is short and simple, men think and play better than woman:)

I'm not sure why it ideally should have an effect -- when you obey a standard as a kid you're not really thinking about why it is right or not -- you're doing it because you are told. Anyway, I don't think the ideals for kids apply to those for adults -- adults should decide for themselves. I would hope though that even as a kid their parents tell them their competence doesn't depend on the competence of those around them -- even as a kid, I don't think the opposite is a healthy "standard" to be taught.

Girls have an opportunity with chess if they have a chess board and their parents teach her the game. This isn't like women not being able to vote wafflemaster -- tournaments are open to men and women. You act like they can only decide for themselves if they have girl's only tournaments.

"But because there are only so many hours in a day we can't reevaluate everything"

So you're saying there isn't enough time in the day to evaluate whether you want to play chess or not? I don't buy it. We evaluate whether we want to play sports (and then which sport), we look at all sorts of careers, we evaluate what food we should or shouldn't eat every day -- we're evaluating animals.