Gender Bias Research Shows Parents, Mentors Shortchange Girls’ Chess Potential

Parents and mentors often believe that girls have a lower potential in chess than boys, a bias that is more pronounced among those who think chess success requires brilliance. These findings, the first large-scale evidence of bias against youth female chess players, were published in a study by New York University psychology researchers, co-authored by WGM Jennifer Shahade.

Beth Harmon, the main character of the Walter Tevis book and Netflix hit series The Queen's Gambit, was continuously underestimated in the male-dominated chess competitions she participated in. The study "Checking Gender Bias: Parents and Mentors Perceive Less Chess Potential in Girls," published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, brings forward "real-life" evidence of what Harmon faced as a young player. 

"While it is inspiring to see a fictional woman winning in a space dominated by men, real-world women remain underrepresented in chess," says Sophie Arnold, an NYU doctoral student and the lead author of the paper. "This study identifies one contributing reason as to why: Parents and coaches are biased against the female youth players in their own lives."

Most strikingly, parents and coaches of youth chess players peg the highest potential rating of girl players to be lower than that of boy players. This bias is even higher among coaches who think "brilliance" is required to succeed in chess, and they also believe that their female pupils will be more likely to stop playing the game due to a lack of ability than their male pupils would.

"It is striking that even the parents and coaches who have a vested interest in girls’ success hold biases against them and may also have some blind spots about the barriers to girls’ success," adds Andrei Cimpian, a professor in NYU's Department of Psychology and the paper's senior author.

"These beliefs are likely to be harmful both to girls who already play chess and to those who could want to: Would you be interested in participating in an activity where your potential is downgraded by your parents and by your coaches before you have even started?" says NYU alumna Shahade, author of Chess Queens and Play Like a Girl!, who was involved in the study design.

In the US Chess Federation (“US Chess”), only 13% of players are women, while this percentage is even lower in many other chess federations. Among all FIDE-rated players, 11% are female. Many studies have been published about this gender disparity, largely focusing on potential deficits in chess ability among girls. The current study is the first that puts the emphasis on adult leadership.

The researchers considered how the important people in girls’ lives—coaches and parents—may be biased against them when assessing their potential, even at a young age, and how these perceptions may help explain the huge gender gap in who plays chess.

"This line of scholarship can make the overrepresentation of men in chess seem like it’s a 'girls and women problem' rather than a 'chess problem,'" says Arnold. 

The New York University team interviewed nearly 300 parents and mentors—90% of whom were men—who were recruited through the US Chess Federation. In the survey, they reported their evaluations of and investment in approximately 650 youth players. In addition, parents and coaches were asked if they thought aptitude in chess requires brilliance—a measure that has been used in the past to detect stereotyping and gender bias in academic fields.

Notably, the coaches and parents didn’t recognize that their own presumptions may function as a barrier to girls succeeding in the game. Specifically, coaches who thought brilliance was required to succeed in chess also thought their female mentees would be more likely to stop playing chess due to a lack of ability than their male mentees. And, in fact, parents and coaches did not believe that girls—relative to boys—encounter a less supportive environment in chess and might stop playing chess as a result.

However, not all news was bad. For example, coaches and parents don't think girls encounter a less supportive environment than boys, or that girls might be more likely to stop playing as a result. The researchers also did not find bias in the amount of resources—such as time and money—coaches and parents reported being willing to invest in female relative to male youth players.

“This study provides the first large-scale investigation of bias against young female players and holds implications for the role of parents and mentors in science and technology—areas that, like chess, are culturally associated with intellectual ability and exhibit substantial gender imbalances,” notes Arnold.

The paper’s other authors were April Bailey, an NYU postdoctoral researcher at the time of the study and now an assistant professor of Psychology at the University of New Hampshire, and Weiji Ma, a professor in NYU’s Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science who has previously examined gender bias in chess. Shortly after The Queen's Gambit came out, Ma summarized his findings in this excellent article, highly recommended for anyone interested in gender and chess.