Why men are higher rated than women

[Jon Tait]

A lot of statistics and analysis of female participation in chess in different countries, summarized by a strong player:

https://www.davidsmerdon.com/?p=2075

And he's just written a piece on stereotype threat:

https://theconversation.com/whats-behin ... ess-150637

[Joseph Conlon]

It’s possible to point out incidents of sexism in English chess quite easily. It was noticeable in the summer with the coverage of the Online British Blitz Championship. Of the substantial commentary on the event available, only really Natasha Regan gave the woman’s side of the event a proper look, (while Matthew Sadler had technical difficulties). Simon Williams said point blank he didn’t have time look at it. Adam C Taylor gave it a quick look over as a bit of a filler.

This doesn't seem a particularly strong argument - there aren't Mens and Womens sections, there's an Open section and then restricted sections. That the British Senior Championship or the various British Junior Championships don't attract the same attention as the (much stronger) main British isn't evidence of ageism.

On the original post, there is an interesting article to be written on the different disadvantages and advantages of being a minority/majority in an activity, but that wasn't it - personally I compare and contrast my experiences as a chess parent and dance parent of a son. I do wonder, though, how much the writer knows about chess and the age at which players become world class if they can list childcare duties as an obstacle to progression to the top of the game.

[Nick Burrows]

Well I was employing a personal pronoun as a stand-in for copyright law

Uh huh

Simply well disguised concern. I should have known better

[Nick Burrows]

Hikaru Nakamura discussed the same article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09ZdlbKVU7Y

Edit: I say "discuss", I should have said "reads".

He basically has a pop at Nigel Short. Reads the whole article out loud, then makes some comments at around 17:30

[John Moore]

I suppose it’s simply a stereotype that is true until it’s not. I remember in heavyweight boxing, probably between 1956 and 2000, there was a strong stereotype that white men made inferior heavyweight fighters. There was the term ‘the Great White Hope’ coined. And I’m sure many so called forum experts came up with reams of reasons from genetics upwards why it was so. But now it’s seen as clearly just a myth, as hulking fighters from the East such as the Klitschko brothers and Lancashire’s own Tyson Fury have reasonable arguments to being a least amongst the best heavyweights of all-time. So perhaps in chess it’s just a case of waiting. In the future there might be a lot of woman in the world top 100.

Not forgetting Rocky Marciano of course. If chess is still a man's world or a male sport for want of a better term then you would expect men to be dominant overall. The real tragedy is that it would be better overall if more women played...if late at night, you value female company over the accompaniment of a pile of dusty chess books that is.

Female company, of course, late at night. But for the stronger player and for the bibliophile, there is always room for a pile of dusty books, whether chess or otherwise.

[MJMcCready]

Hikaru Nakamura discussed the same article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09ZdlbKVU7Y

Edit: I say "discuss", I should have said "reads".

He basically has a pop at Nigel Short. Reads the whole article out loud, then makes some comments at around 17:30

He's not the first nor the last to have a pop there. If you recall the BBC documentary Grandmaster Clash, this topic comes up and the Polgar sisters are interviewed about it, what is said there is somewhat lacking in political correctness compared to today's standards.

[Matt Bridgeman]

There’s your latest article Nigel; https://lifestyle.livemint.com/news/tal ... 19695.html

I think I prefer Hikaru’s statistics argument a lot more. I wonder whether you can take a country where there are a lot of female players and compare it to a country with similar total players. For example in Russia would there be as many female players as there are total players in Australia? In terms of rating I don’t think the top 20 in both countries would be so dissimilar, although to fair I’ve not checked

...having had a small check now. The top Russian woman is rated 2593 and the 100th on the active list is 2139. The overall combined lists in Australia have a range of 2597 to 2030. Randomly Greece have 2623 to 2215. I don’t know how big the pools are in each country though.

I don’t see how it would be much of a stretch to imagine if there were 10 times as many Russian woman players than there are now, that they couldn’t have a range of 2600 and maybe even 2700 players in their ranks. I think if there was the actual financial incentives for woman players to make a career of chess you’d start to see the high player numbers and high ratings. Until that happens you’re probably safe in your white men are terrible heavyweights type myths.

[Matt Bridgeman]

It’s possible to point out incidents of sexism in English chess quite easily. It was noticeable in the summer with the coverage of the Online British Blitz Championship. Of the substantial commentary on the event available, only really Natasha Regan gave the woman’s side of the event a proper look, (while Matthew Sadler had technical difficulties). Simon Williams said point blank he didn’t have time look at it. Adam C Taylor gave it a quick look over as a bit of a filler.

This doesn't seem a particularly strong argument - there aren't Mens and Womens sections, there's an Open section and then restricted sections. That the British Senior Championship or the various British Junior Championships don't attract the same attention as the (much stronger) main British isn't evidence of ageism.

On the original post, there is an interesting article to be written on the different disadvantages and advantages of being a minority/majority in an activity, but that wasn't it - personally I compare and contrast my experiences as a chess parent and dance parent of a son. I do wonder, though, how much the writer knows about chess and the age at which players become world class if they can list childcare duties as an obstacle to progression to the top of the game.

Matthew and Natasha are doing a superb job covering the a range of British Online events on the Game Changer Youtube channel. They are certainly generating as much interest and insight from looking at the restricted sections as the Open sections. The audience I think is really enjoying seeing such an excellent variety of games being discussed, and it probably goes to show you don’t need to just focus solely on the Open every time.