Women not cut out for chess

[Roger de Coverly]

I'm assuming that the level of overseas participation would be statistically insignificant for the conclusions of my analysis, when set against the whole of graded chess activity in England. I'm more interested here in overall participation than strength.

I was looking at top players only as I thought it was Nigel's contention that female players with a couple of exceptions don't play chess at the highest level. That rather than that they play chess at lower levels more "badly" than males.

It's been within the realms of possibility that we could have had a female British chess champion. Ketevan Arakhamia-Grant formerly Georgia, now Scotland was within range a couple of times in the mid 2000s.

[PeterFarr]

Roger, yes sorry I know, I was trying to move the thread on from just a sterile debate about innate ability - I appreciate that you are also trying to get at some facts.

I just thought that the participation question was relevant - if so few females play chess after the age of 18, it does get hard to say anything meaningful about innate ability anyway was my thinking.

[MartinCarpenter]

Yes, its very hard Especially since innate ability and participation do get linked at some point - you only get to be a hugely strong chess/bridge/etc player if you're astonishingly single minded about the game for at least some period.

Chessbase has the article and one of his counter examples in that in terms of population curves is definitely wrong.

Yes, the bridge population in terms of say ECF members is very balanced. That is however to a large extent due to all the semi casual people who take it up after retirement and are never going to threaten the top echelons in a million years. Bridge participation rates in terms of serious players are much closer to chess.

Probably in terms of the overall strengths the top players reach, although its always much harder to judge precisely with bridge.

The other one - apparently much higher rates of Georgian women playing chess without moving their top grades would obviously bear investigation if anyone truly cared about pinning down the reasons for such things.

[Stewart Reuben]

Let us assume the ratio of male to female players approximates to 7/1. Naturally the males are going to generate a stronger playing pool.
Naturally more females are going to abandon the game, or not take it up in the first place, because they find the chess environment somewhat 'hostile'.
One year there were 45 players in the British U15 Championship, 15 of them were girls. Peter Barton then retired from chess administration. The following year we were down to 3 girls in the U16. Coloma Convent was a source of many girls players while Colin Clifton was in charge there.

Georgian female chess became popular because of Nina Gaprindashvili. Why are not the Georgian women stronger? I had a conversation with Nino Gurieli which provides a pointer.
Nino, 'Why does Smagin get better conditions than me (at the Lloyds Bank Masters)?'
Stewart 'Because Smagin is a GM and you are a WGM.'
Nino, 'It's the same thing.'
Maia Chiburdanidze was one of the leading juniors, irrespective of gender. She became Women's World Champion at 17. She then made no substantial progress as a player until Pia Cramling came along to offer a challenge. Pia, of course, had the attitude she wanted to be the best player possible.
Thus I suspect the attitude of society in Georgia at the time was certainly encouraging of females, but it was thought adequate to become a high ranking female player.

England has been a pioneer of encouraging chess for females.
The first World Junior Championship was held in Birmingham in 1951. But the first World Girls Championship was held, again in England, in 1926. Vera Menchik was the reason and the winner.
Lloyds Bank Masters began to offer women players conditions in the late 1970s at Leonard Barden's behest. That was long before other events encouraged them to play in mixed tournaments.
Tradewise Gibraltar is at the forefront of world chess in the conditions and prizes offered for females in the open tournament.

[Paul McKeown]

http://www.davidsmerdon.com/?p=1662

[Nick Burrows]

http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/ar ... vw.twitter

[Nick Burrows]

Does anyone know if information is available for the comparative participation rates for male/female juniors versus comparative ratings?

[Brian Towers]

Have just done a very quick analysis of the ECF grading database. Be warned I'm not familiar with any quirks there may be in the data, and my excel skills are rusty, but this is what I found:

Ages 4-8 - 891 players, 25% female
Ages 9-13 - 2145 players, 17% female
Ages 14-18, 981 players, 10% female
No age shown on database; 10,036 players, 3% female.

I have excluded players where no gender is recorded, about 15% of records. I haven't excluded players with zero games.

So it does seem to show that quite a lot less girls get into chess in England in the first place, and that the proportions then decline all the way up to adulthood. Of course you could conjecture all sorts of reasons for this. Maybe there is a bit of a vicious circle, where the predominantly male environment becomes increasingly an issue, puts off some girls, and then has a knock-on effect on the rest

From a statistical point of view I suspect that to draw meaningful conclusions you would need to compare participation rates with other activities in order to eliminate possible general different drop out rates between the genders. For instance, it may be that girls discovering boys has a much bigger detrimental effect on their participation rates in general than vice versa.

[David Robertson]

it may be that girls discovering boys has a much bigger detrimental effect on their participation rates in general than vice versa.

Why isn't this true for boys then? Just asking

[Martin Benjamin]

Comments are superfluous. The inane reactions speak for themselves.

I am reading a book by Rajiv Malhotra: "Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism", HarperCollins 2011. He shows how the West's history-centrism drives it into claims of exclusiveness. It results in anxiety over differences which it seeks to resolve through projects of digestion in order to obliterate whatever seems challenging. Instead, says Malhotra, we must preserve difference with mutual respect--not with mere "tolerance". He alerts the reader to the grave dangers of a difference-negating "sameness" that is marketed worldwide by secular and religious streams in Western culture. The doctrine of 'sameness', the idea that everything is the same, cannot be used to guide our actions in this relative world. He says:

"The suggestion that difference must be seen as positive and be examined openly by all sides is often met with resistance from Indians and westerners alike. I call this resistance 'difference anxiety'. The term refers to the mental uneasiness caused by the perception of difference combined with a desire to diminish, conceal or eradicate it. Difference anxiety occurs in cultural and religious contexts frequently.
Such an anxiety seeks the relative comfort of homogeneous ideas, beliefs and identity. It runs counter to the natural world, where differences are inherent in the immense variety of animals, plants, flowers, seasons, rocks, and indeed at every level of the cosmos. I will argue that we must not try to erase differences but, rather, respect them--even celebrate them. First, however, these differences must be defined and acknowledged.
As a way of resolving difference, Western civilization is given to isolating the elements of other civilizations and placing them in its own conceptual categories--categories formulated by the 'white', 'Christian', and 'progressive' race. This categorization privileges the Western gaze and enables it to declare itself as the universal norm for others to emulate. It is a system for gaining control." (Kindle Loc. 480-489)

The doctrine of 'sameness' surreptitiously privileges Western thought as universal. Malhotra exemplifies with Christian proselytizers, in India, who deploy "inculturation" to give the appearance that they embrace sameness whereas what they truly believe is that the dharma traditions are illegitimate. It is a way of 'tolerating' differences ostensibly while paving the way for the elimination of difference through conversion. As a result, the universal potential of Indian thought is downplayed and ignored.

Western universalism espouses toleration. 'Tolerance' is the catch-word of today. Yet it is really a form of chauvinism that underlies much Western thought in its encounters with other cultures. "Tolerance is a patronizing posture, whereas respect implies that we consider the other to be equally legitimate" (Kindle Loc. 321-322). Malhotra says:

"I wondered aloud if anyone in the audience would like to be told at the upcoming luncheon that he or she was being 'tolerated' at the table. No husband or wife would appreciate being told that his or her presence at home was being 'tolerated'. No self-respecting worker accepts mere tolerance from colleagues. Tolerance, in short, is an outright insult; it is simply not good enough. I pointed out that this notion of tolerance had emerged from religions built on exclusivist claims according to which other religions are false. Hence, tolerating them is the best one can do without undermining one's own claim to exclusivity.
Religious 'tolerance' was advocated in Europe after centuries of religious wars between adherents of the different denominations of Christianity. In many European countries, Churches functioned as religious monopolies according to which the mere practice of the 'wrong' religion was a criminal offence. 'Tolerance' was a positive attempt to quell the violence that had plagued Christianity for centuries in Europe, but it did not provide a genuine basis for real unity and cooperation, and so it often broke down." (Kindle Loc. 324-332)

And so it is with everything. The refusal to see genuine differences between the sexes means that a wet blanket is used to smother feminine nature, which cannot be respected--only tolerated. This wet blanket is the ideology of sameness. It means the inculturation of the feminine, the smothering of the feminine archetype.

M. Winther

Forgive me for being unkind, Mats, and maybe it is more about Rajiv Malhotra than you, but this reads like an entry in Pseuds Corner in Private Eye.

[Brian Towers]

it may be that girls discovering boys has a much bigger detrimental effect on their participation rates in general than vice versa.

Why isn't this true for boys then? Just asking

Being facetious it could be because boys are just uncaring, low EQ barstewards.

More seriously the differential effects of high doses of testosterone versus similar high doses of oestrogen.

[David Robertson]

the differential effects of high doses of testosterone versus similar high doses of oestrogen.

Yes, I understand how puberty works. But what might hormonal changes have to do with chess performance; and why should it affect females negatively rather than males?

[Brian Towers]

the differential effects of high doses of testosterone versus similar high doses of oestrogen.

Yes, I understand how puberty works. But what might hormonal changes have to do with chess performance; and why should it affect females negatively rather than males?

Let's just try revisiting my original comment -

From a statistical point of view I suspect that to draw meaningful conclusions you would need to compare participation rates with other activities in order to eliminate possible general different drop out rates between the genders. For instance, it may be that girls discovering boys has a much bigger detrimental effect on their participation rates in general than vice versa.

Go away and do the additional statistical analysis on participation rates in other activities and then see where that takes us. Until you do that it is mere speculation. Fun, possibly, but essentially fruitless.

[David Robertson]

Go away and do the additional statistical analysis on participation rates in other activities and then see where that takes us

I don't need to go far. Let's pick, say participation in Maths or Engineering and kindred fields versus English, History, Sociology and kindred fields. The observation record, and the stats, indicate clear participation imbalances between males and females where choices are allowed. Are you arguing that hormonal changes provide a significant basis for explaining these divergences?

[Brian Towers]

Let's pick, say participation in Maths or Engineering and kindred fields versus English, History, Sociology and kindred fields. The observation record, and the stats, indicate clear participation imbalances between males and females where choices are allowed. Are you arguing that hormonal changes provide a significant basis for explaining these divergences?

No, I'm not arguing for any particular position. If you read my original response it starts with "It could be ...". I'm merely suggesting possible explanations.

Look, I remember seeing reports in the newspapers a few years ago of girls performing much better after puberty in maths, physics and chemistry in single sex schools than they do in mixed schools. One suggestion at the time was that girls perceived these subjects as somehow less "sexy" for girls and therefore declined to perform in front of boys in these subjects. Is that really the case? I don't know. I've never seen any follow up research which would back up that view.

Bringing the topic back to chess for a moment, the statistics would certainly suggest that at world championship level women are not as good as men. Since there are other fields where women have excelled on a par with men despite what one imagines were high levels of sexism both individual and institutional this would suggest something different about chess and maths compared to those other fields.

Those other fields would include physics (Marie Curie - Nobel prize winner in 1903), chemistry (Marie Curie - Nobel prize winner in 1911, first double Nobel prize winner, only double winner in multiple sciences, Irene Joliet-Curie - Nobel prize winner in 1935), government (Thatcher, Indira Ghandi, Golda Meir, Benazir Bhutto), show jumping and I'm sure many others.

Edit: Rereading that last paragraph you can scrap the bit in the previous paragraph about "women have excelled on a par with men". There is no "on a par" about it. They have excelled, full stop, and exceeded the men.