Why is this game so male-dominated?

Probably, but some people do hold that viewpoint, so it's worthy of a debate.

Yeah, obvious troll post hits two ignorant stereotypes.  First is that chess = intelligence and second is men > women.  Very few on topic valuable posts.  People get off topic so quickly and easily I wonder if they even realize what's happening.

yea. but Tal also became a world champion even though he was smoking and drinking

the 69th square is probably the board itself...lol

I'm going to ignore most of the (sometimes absurdly) sexist posts on this thread and address the original question.

"Why is this game so male-dominated?"

The way the question has been phrased is illustrative.  How many other games could we ask this question of? 

Soccer, basketball, poker (I don't know a lot about poker, but I can't imagine I'm too far off the mark), Chinese chess, Magic the Gathering, D&D, most any other strategy-intensive board game...

The original question is posed as though chess is some sort of exception, but it's really a much broader pattern.

In fact, we could go a lot broader, and go from games to the workplace and replace "this game" with "this career".  Computer programming, engineering, 'business', medicine, etc.  We could go even broader, and in place of "this game" say "economic life" or "politics" or "science" or "literature" or even "society". 

I'll tell you this: the answer to this bigger question is not about anatomical differences or brain differences between the sexes: most of those arguments have been shown to be tenuous at best, or worse, thinly veiled rationalizations for inequality.

The answer is about a lot of things more complicated and more social than that.  It's about what girls and boys are taught to expect out of life, it's about guiding them into career paths that are economically stratified between the sexes (and the resulting economic dependency and feminization of poverty among single mothers), it's about women working the double shift, taking on the vast majority of household tasks and childrearing duties (typically unpaid labor), and, especially in the case of chess, it's about men having more uncompromised free time.

I don't think that's the whole story, but that's in my view the most important part of the story to be told. On the more specific case of chess, I have a couple of points.

1) The question certainly can be answered in terms of different preferences between the sexes (i.e. women just don't have as much interest in chess, which is certainly true), but I think that leads us again to questions of socialization: why don't they have this interest? Women's interest in practicing law used to be nonexistent, but that has somehow changed in the last half century in spite of the supposedly vast differences between male and female brains.

2) Also, once something becomes a male preserve, like chess, it is extremely difficult for women to break into it.  Look at how long it's taken women to make inroads in high-paying professions like law and medicine.  It takes incredible motivation, including economic incentive.  In chess there is no real economic incentive: women have more important fields to break into than one in which the very best of the best barely even rise above average incomes.

By the definitions given, I'd agree that women are more right-brain inclined and men more left-brain inclined (in general, there are plenty of exceptions), but I wouldn't agree that chess is primarily a left-brain game. Playing good chess requires skills from both 'sides of the brain'.

Maybe guys like math more. Perhaps it's because chess doesn't require much talking. Perhaps it's just a more subtle "argument."

That's just sad to read. It sounds to me like you're saying that women should not be "taking on the vast majority of household tasks and childrearing duties." I hope I'm interpreting it wrong. True, there is a big problem with women taking the "double shift," but the part that should be cut out is not the taking care of the children and home, but trying to take on the men's job of providing for the family.

With this whole trend of feminism, people are wanting to feminize men as well as turn women into men. Both are wrong. And really, trying to make women more like men is in essence saying that men are better than women and that's why women need to become more like them. But no, men and women are very different, but that does not mean one is better than the other. I wish people would stop trying to turn each gender into the other and just appreciate the differences. Men should keep their masculinity, and women should keep their femininity. Women shouldn't be ashamed of being physically weaker, more feeling/emotional, and more gentle and graceful. There's nothing shameful about that. And men shouldn't be ashamed of being strong, brave, and daring. Women are suited for tenderly caring for their husbands, children, and homes, while men are suited for leading, protecting, and providing for the family. And if it was kept that way, we would be so much better off.

agreed

Most girls are not interested in playing chess anyway, not that they can't, they just won't. And that's fine. If a man wants to do something, let him do it. Why push it on women??

And if women wants to do something, let them do it, why push it on men?

As long as they can take care of each other,  there is no problem. 

There is this thought that man should be able to do what women can, and vice versa. If this were so, there won't be any need for either one. One kind would have been enough.

The one thing is that when either gender sets out to PROVE themselves, everyone has to put up with their crap. It is exhausting. Go climb a mountain or something.

<irony>

I mean, it is well-known that women are better at cooking and household than men, and men are better at playing chess and work hard and bring money. Why change it ? Why push women to go over stereotypes, when that organisation works ?

I mean, it is well-known that slaves are better off working in cotton plants, anyways they are too stupid to choose what to do if they were set free ; they get food and their owner gets cheap workforce. Why change it when that organisation works ?

</irony>

It looks like many posters assume that women are instinctively attracted to (knitting / household / nail painting) and men to (chess / career / T-rex hunting).

The only reason is cultural (see #3 that basically nails it).

Very, very long ago, societies had a rational, biological reason to be organized with men on top : muscles were an important part of survival, and tasking the men with mammoth hunt and the women with cherry picking was more efficient than the other way round.

Then society kept on like this because some traditions cemented it, and here we are when it has no rational fundation anymore. Hunting mammoths do not require much muscle now that we have machine guns.

As for the salary gap between the genders : it is mainly, but not only, due to the diploma difference.

Some posters claim this is a myth because if it was so, the invisible hand of the market would give incentive to hiring women and this would narrow the gap. They are missing the point completely. Discrimination does not come from an economic equilibrium. Would you say salary discrimination against black people does not exist, because, well, if it did, firms would massively hire only black people to take advantage of the cheaper workforce ?

I will not answer any posts, my time is more precious than trolls'.

testosterone imo

I read that as an explanation for why men play chess and women don't. If the tasks and duties were shared equally, then if women wanted to play chess, they'd have the time to play.

Nobody is trying to turn one gender into the other, but neither should anybody be pigeon-holed into a specific role. 

Gender stereotypes only hold people back. People are different. There will be men that are more feminine, and women that are more masculine. One point of feminism is to break this mold and allow people to freely choose what they want to be.

Best thing I've read all week, Sunshiny

Except feminists encourage mothers to go out and get jobs saying that they have just as much right to be bread winners as their husbands do, and many look down upon the stay at home mom as if she's inferior to other women. But then what happens to the children? Both parents out working and the children left to fend for themselves and get into trouble...lots of trouble. And then our whole society winds up in trouble as a result.

And that's what bothered me about the way the initial quote was worded. It sounded to me to be talking about women who do housework and care for their children in a very degrading way, as if it was some ignoble thing for a woman to do.

There are a lot of people who just don't have the honesty or objectivity to know what advantages they have and from what they really derive, and stubbornly misidentify the source.  Misogynists are really just ignorant insecure misanthropists who try to put themselves up on a pedestal by any means possible.

A waste of time to argue with those idiots too.  They'll never change, they can't be convinced, but they'll waste your precious energy.  Rather than trying to correct them, better to make some objective point or illustrate the truth in means other than engaging or attacking them personally.  That way you do more for a cause without embroiling yourself in nonsense.

Thank goodness feminists are encouraging women to wait to have children in some parts of the world! And I've personally never met a feminist who looked down upon mothers who raise their children. 

It's been a slow week.

No, I actually wanted to convey that I agree completely with what Sunshiny wrote.

Show me an "effiminate man" and I'll show you a man that is chastised by both genders for being soft.

Show me a masculine woman and I'll show you a woman that's branded too "intimidating" to be around.

 People like to bash gender roles, and rightly so. But they ignore the fact that they are usually followed not for some ridiculous delusion of control but because of peer pressure and stereotypes associated with those that do not follow them. It has been in my experience that some people tend to stand against gender roles only when it's beneficial...

Irontiger you could bécome famous overnight,todays Wall Street article about England tells a completly different story then you did about money. Irontiger u refuted The Wsj and Karl Marx theory about money, Time for u to write a book or were u just trolling an unsuspecting Idiot with inferior english skills??