Gender Proportion in Chess

I don't understand how they found a population where the particpation of women was equal to men. The study says somthing about scholastic chess in Oakland, but it seems incredible to me. (?!)

I read the information and my conclusion is that this was another unsubstantial document on the issue; which reminds me on the article also mentioned in Chessbase on measurements on the performance of World Champions (remember?).
In our culture, the role of funding based on published papers leads to these kind of articles; not only relative to chess, also in science and research in general.

By the way, interesting how several entities provide funding for research, but the researchers have certain ability to manipulate (or split a research in several articles), given the diference of knowledge between the ones who have the resources and the ones who do research. Of course, this kind of behavior is not generalized, but it is a fact, and in several countries is a major problem when governments give resources to research and the distribution of them gets severally affected by that... Oh, I have a topic for a paper (just kidding) :)

Sandorchess sort of stole my thunder. This "study" had absolutely no substance whatsoever. It was rendered not credible by the astoundlingly poor excuses made to pander to political correctness. A prime example of how liberal thinking is completely shuting out truth. Bottom line, most women aren't interested in this pursuit that combines an affinity for logic, critical thinking and spatial relations with a requisite competitive nature. There is the occasional female who demonstrates an interest and ability on par with males, but it's the exception rather than the rule. Deal with it ladies!

I think "George" is using another handle that begins with "n".

The episode of _This American Life_ titled "Testosterone" provided some entertaining anecdotes on possible differences (including intellectual ability) between men and women. It's available as a podcast from thislife.org, or for download from iTunes and audible.com.

Sorry to say, but many people agree with me. There are some very rare women who might excel at sciences, but why would anyone want to go against generations of evolution and natural selection?

Of far more interest than the alleged disparity in chess ability between men and women, is the obvious disparity of men whose name begins with K compared to any other letter of the alphabet! Kramnick, Kasparov, Karpov, Kamsky, amd many other examples, proves something important about something, though I'm not sure what... Surely the huge number of K's in the FIDE rating list, and their obvious strength, shows a statistically significant gap between the K's and A, B, C, etc.

:-)
tjallen

Women also show less interest in comic books and first-person shooter video games. Does that mean they are inferior at the skills needed to read and enjoy comic books? That chess involves a certain skill set doesn't mean you can back-solve to that being the only factor, or even a factor at all, in women not participating in it.

Life would indeed be much simpler if you could discard everything based on your interpretation of the agenda behind the data. But you can't. Sometimes you actually have to deal in information, at least if you want to be taken for anything other than a crank with his own agenda.

"...why would anyone want to go against generations of evolution and natural selection?"

You might never, ever get within a country mile of getting a date otherwise.

Mig,
There are ~50women with 2400-2500, and 1 is with 2600+. With men, it's, say 500+ 2500+s, but also 150+ 2600s, and ~20 2700s. If the hypothesis of the authors was true, there should be at least several 2600+ woman players (expected number is 150* 50/500 = 15). The fact is that aside from Judith all other females have always been far away from 2600. To me, this simply declines the hypothesis of authors.
Indeed, there is absolutely no reason to suppose that those top-50 women have no interest in chess. I think at least half of them has dreamed of getting to male top-100.
Btw, FP shooters require insane reaction (very fast response time :)). It is a widely accepted fact that women have slower "response time": think of a woman Formula 1 driver ! This is why they are much worse FP shooter and RT strategy players than men. You cannot do anything with facts, unfortunately...

You miss my point. Popularity and aptitude are not necessarily correlative, let alone causative. Saying women don't play first-person shooters because they may have marginally slower reflexes doesn't make any sense. As millions of chessplayers can attest, you can enjoy something without being good at it. Saying women don't play chess because they aren't good at is silly when you look at all the life-long 1400-rated men who enjoy the game. It's not as if 1200-rated girls are driven out by boys based on skill level.

As for your math, as I said above, the other factors will weigh disproportionately the further up you go. That's why you have to start at a much lower level to start. Without a very wide base you aren't going to get the elite performers. There is also what is the biggest problem, in my opinion, of why there are 2450-2550 women but few higher, is that from a young age they play a steady diet of weaker opposition thanks to women-only events. If you are playing half, even a third, of your games in such a self-handicapping way it's going to have an effect.

In most fields, the very top and the very bottom seem dominated by men. There might be some genetic base to it, i.e. men are more willing/capable of devoting themselves fully to something so they get good at it, while women are more "diversified". Chess does not appear to be different...

"If you look at the participation rate of women and relate that to performance, you find that in cases where the participation rate of women and men is equal the disparity in ability vanishes."

Really ?

The "participation rate" is equal in schools and universities yet we also have only 1% women mathematicians and physcists at top level, i.e., the PhD elites-- which in fact is the only class that matters for research, authority in the field, and development.

There are more women studying and playing competitive chess nowdays than men 100 years ago. Are there many of them who play at the 2600-Chigorin, Maroczy, Tarrasch, Schlechter, Breyer, etc. level ?

There is definitely a social component. I've been training both girls and boys for years, and for some years, even in almost equal numbers. Usually the girls did the same progress and there was no difference in strength (it was a big help that often tournaments were not divided into boys/girls sections).

However, most the girls stopped playing between 15 and 20, or didn't improve further just because they didn't spend much time with chess anymore. Maybe they just had more common sense to avoid becoming a nerdy chess enthusiast, but definitely they felt (or they environment made them feel) that there are more important things in life.

The few girls who still continued with training and tournaments, were just to few in numbers to make it probable coming close to the top. Additionally, there is a lot of soft pressure to play merely in women's tournaments just because it is much easier to score victories there. Naturally, the weaker opposition kills each progress.

Even when participating in the men's circus, there is actually no need for improved female players to work hard. At the critical age of 14-20, you'll get invitations and publicity a boy rated 100 points higher would never receive.
(Blame it on the media - but also several organizers excel in marketing their events in an almost paedophiliac way. Independent of the results, many tournament reports consist mainly of pictures of young female participants).

So, why improve if you can have success in this cheap way?

Rank zero,

so you say the sexual advertisment is more rewarding (brings easire and more goodies home) than success in the competition, i.e., women can not (do not ) compete in chess at their full capabilities simple because it doesn't make sense for them being given that (once teen) they always have open the "other" road to success.

ok, agreed, but this does not explain why they don't play better, don't reach higher level of mastery, while playing in "only women" competitions

Being a woman, I find myself totally uninterested in this study.
Probably I don't have the mental ability to appreciate it.

why so Linux-fan, what is your opinion about the study, is it faulty , is it obviously true, or what ?

Mig,
seems I mis-expressed myself :)
I don't say that women don't play FP shooters because of slow reaction.
Let's assume that women form 5% of all average game-club FP shooter players. While this is a very small percentage to win WCG(World Cyber Games), it is enough to make to top-100. I say that if women and men were equal in other factors, those 5% base players would produce 5% top players. Meanwhile, they do not. So, there is some other reason. Slow reaction seems to be a very good reasoning to me.
As for my math, you say that other factors will overweight disproportionately the further up we go...why? Why not proportionaly? If you have 1 million balls, red and white, white is 5%, and you randomely select 10% of all balls, how much is the most expected percentage of white balls? 5% ! If you select further, 10% of remaining balls, the most expected percentage of whites still remains 5%. If the percentage of white balls decreases systematically the higher you go, there's something to do with your selection process. The quantities do not matter, only percentages. Ovidiu's gave an excellent example: a smaller base of men (1900's) has given a better quality.
Rank Zero's reason seems to explain everything, but after I thought for a while...that would "flatten" the curve of percentage of better woman players (that is, the percentage of players that make to "next level" given a fixed base of players), but in fact the curve doesnt flatten, it becomes horizontal(that is, no one makes from 2550 to 2600).
A number of woman players have systematically participated (Koneru, Kosteniuk, Cramling, Chiburdanidze to mention a few) in men events, but they have failed to achive good results. In fact, top-rated women tend to under-perform rating-wise when playing against men. This is a very interesting phoenomena, it'd be interesting to have some opinions why this happens.
To continue Ovidiu's example, how many top-notch women scientists (only precise sciences pls :) ) do you know? Marie Kurie? Other? And how many men? And how does this cope with the fact that in average there is not much difference between girls and boys grades in schools?

Ovidiu, I don't know, I didn't read it. :)

But please continue the debate, I'll go play CounterStrike in the meantime.

Dear Mig,

You said:

"... Popularity and aptitude are not necessarily correlative, let alone causative...As millions of chessplayers can attest, you can enjoy something without being good at it. Saying women don't play chess because they aren't good at is silly when you look at all the life-long 1400-rated men who enjoy the game..."

I believe that skill does correlate with interest. In particular, I have a problem with your interesting argument. To point out all of the 1400's who still play means little. Perhaps a vast majority of 1400 level players quit, and there not around for you to count.

In addition, besides "raw mental ability" (whatever that means), I think men are more willing to take failure and keep moving.
Is that social conditioning ("non-genetic")? Or is it testosterone etc ("genetic")? Probably a mix of both.

Ovidiu is right. Females will always point to the fact that more of them get accepted to universities. Funny thing is, none of them have produced anything of worth for years! Men are winning all the Nobel prizes; if it were not for the bogus Literature (hello Toni Morrison) and Peace prizes (Arafat was a fag but I'm not sure he qualifies) women would not win anything. Thus, affirmative action policies can get them in, but it can only take them so far.

Dear George,

I'm not sure I'd put it the way you did,
but in my experience, what's more ironic
is that the females in academia who benefit
from affirmative action at the professorial
hiring stage are usually the ones who deserve
it the least: i.e., children of professors themselves (who get years starting at birth
of mom and dad teaching them stuff blue collar kids of both genders never get to hear)... much like the Polgar sisters.

Dear George,

I'm not sure I'd put it the way you did,
but in my experience, what's more ironic
is that the females in academia who benefit
from affirmative action at the professorial
hiring stage are usually the ones who deserve
it the least: i.e., children of professors themselves (who get years starting at birth
of mom and dad teaching them stuff blue collar kids of both genders never get to hear)... much like the Polgar sisters.

Please, for a chess forum, there seems to be a lot more hearsay and proof from personal experience than I'd expect. If you want to talk about top notch female scientists, you'd have to look a little more deeply than just the scientists you'd learn about in fourth grade. Take physics: there are many top notch female physicists right now who are making great contributions in a very analytical and math-based field. You just haven't heard of Eva Silverstein or Lene Vestergaard Hau because a lot of cutting edge science doesn't make the regular news. Marcela Carena and Maria Spiropulu are some of the most well-respected physicists out there who are in charge of the most important studies right now in particle physics. And they are women. But they are no Einstein simply because physics isn't a popular science that is talked about at the dinner table anymore...

Dear brj,

You said,

"Please, for a chess forum, there seems to be a lot more hearsay and proof from personal experience than I'd expect...But they are no Einstein simply because physics isn't a popular science that is talked about at the dinner table anymore..."

I'm not sure who you we're referring to in your comment, but I'll respond anyway. No doubt there are many female scientists contributing to the field. But I'm sorry, these fine individuals are not Einstein because they have not made the revolutionary discoveries he did (nor say, Ed Witten), not because of dinner table non-talk.

In my own field of math, I admire a number of women mathematicians, beyond those I "learn
about in fourth grade". But none of them have
produced Fields medal winning work, not even close.

In relation to chess, there are some interesting
comparisons and differences to make between the game, physics and math. Obviously analytics is common. But a serious difference is collaboration.
In chess there is preparation, but during the game, you need to solve the problems that arise along, in an intense continuous mental struggle.

In academia, and in particular in physics of the
type your admired physics women work in, collaboration is key. Note, many of the collaborators of these fine people are men. That they _manage_ the group means less than it sounds like it should with regards to "natural talent".

Chess, science and arts and almost everything else belong to man's domain. I strongly believe that the only 'profession' women can excel is homemaking. The sole purpose and goal of a woman is to be a helper to her man and a good mother to her children. They are best at this monumental work. And all these studies about men and women have no substance and truth. There is no reason to debate. Feminism brought lot of destruction to the families. The country has become a nation of individuals than a nation of families. I think we have debated so much about this in the past. I am just wondering why the blogmaster wants to debate on this issue again.

>I am just wondering why the blogmaster wants to debate on this issue again....

perhaps because he isn't married, he should, it would cut short his illuisions on the matter

Wow. I don't think I've seen this loud a display of insecure masculinity since I stopped reading video game newsgroups.

"Barefoot and pregnant", eh, Ryan? Are you also a "believer" in "intelligent design"?

Mona Lisa would have painted da Vinci..had she been more secured in her feminity of course..

off topic.. Nigel Short joins the cheating allegations show, see the new chessbase article...

what we were afraid at the end of 2006 comes true sooner than forseen by some optimists here

Len,

Your last comment sounds about as "intelligent" as George and Ryan's.

Dear brj,
Please, make a list of top-20 or top-50 physicists of 20th century. If anyone female else than Marie Curie falls into your list, please let us know. Otherwise, please re-read your own post and let us know what do you think about it. As for myself, I think I might have not heard anything as ridiculus as comparing some Marias to Einstein and saying that they are comparable, but, indeed, Einstein has some dinner-time talk advantage ever since 4th grade.

It is strange that the people who slam the report as not being scientific are then happy to make so many pseudo-scientific remarks on what is really going on with gender in chess.

If we took their 'methodology' seriously, we'd also be willing to concede that, in addition to women, American men must have brain structures that are inferior to Russian men when it comes to chess.

More seriously, how can anyone dare to draw conclusions about male and female natures based on a game that both the overwhelming majority of men and women have never seriously played, much less had any interest in it?

The reality is that there are so many cultural factors involved in the question that a knee jerk sexism is not going to prove anything.

Playjunior,

Listing 20th century physicists is not a good way to go about thinking of women's aptitude in that discipline. The list should be dated from the time of widespread use of the pill (not even introduced in the US, until 1960 i believe... I have no idea how long it took to become widespread) and access to safe, legal abortion.

Until women achieved control over their own reproduction, falling in love, getting pregnant, and caring for an infant between 18-30 was both likely and disasterous for careers such as physics in which one's early work is the most common way to make a big contribution (Waiting until menopause to do your nobel prize winning research jsut isn't going to work).

Of course, though women in modern industrialized societies now have access to the means to control their reproductive systems, our cultural systems have only just begun to shift in the face of this fact. Witness the religious pressure in the Catholic Church on women to not take advantage of technology to control their reproductive systems.

So even in a post-pill list, we'll only see the tip of the iceberg in terms of what women can eventually contribute once our societies fully digest women's ability to decide when, where and if they want children.

Indeed, chesstraveler, it was faulty to try to make such a "suggestion", especially one so off-topic...

The reality is not that "there are
so many cultural factors" involved but that the nasty genetic factor too is decisively invloved ( just as in the IQ-"question" btw).

PlayJunior

I wouldn't dare to think that my list of top 20 or 50 physicists would be worth anything at all simply because I'm not a career physicist, just someone who likes to read about it. And in any event, there's no way such a list could be anything less than subjective, not anywhere near elo. The point I was trying to make was that the general tone of this thread is that women aren't good at science, math, or apparently anything other than homemaking, which is such a sexist and unqualified statement to make (where's the proof?). But saying that the reason why some women physicists (like Maria Spiropulu at CERN) are (relatively) famous is because they collaborate with men seems to me to diminish their accomplishments from a gender-neutral observer.

There are so many sociological factors that need to be taken into account why there aren't that many women in chess, like Mig mentioned. Boys and girls aren't treated the same, so we shouldn't be surprised that they end up in different endpoints.

"The reality is that there are so many cultural factors involved in the question that a knee jerk sexism is not going to prove anything."

It is possible, but it is also possible that men and women evolved to have different skills back in the days they were fighting animals in the wild and rearing children in caves. It is possible that men evolved skills that made it easier to do well in certain fields (science, chess, engineering...).

Also, I am not sure these "cultural factors" can be simply ignored, if women can't break free of them. Until men start being capable of bearing children, lots of women with lots of potential will interrupt their careers to become mothers (which is a good thing, otherwise the human race will be extinct...). It won't matter if their brains are identical to those of men, they still will deliver less -- I assume it is hard to produce Nobel-quality work while breast-feeding...

Of course, in any field you look at there are women who shine, but these are far outnumbered by the men who rise to the top -- a statistic that cannot be ignored. This statistic has become even more meaningful when one considers that women have been outnumbering men in universities for some time now, so they no longer seem at a serious disadvantage coming in.

On a side note: there might be something to a previous comment in this thread -- the one about pretty girls being invited to all sorts of chess events. This might explain why most of the good female chess players I've met (all of whom would kick my *ss in a game) were quite good-looking -- these are the ones who get most encouragement to stay in the game.

This is in strong contrast with the strong male chess players, many of whom are quite geeky. I guess the media favors good-looking women chess players, but they don't care much about the looks of the male players.

Len,

I appreciate your "retraction", it says alot.

Gutting:
In the final conclusion, what is more important for a woman? being a good mother and a wife or producing Nobel-quality work? I believe, the former is more nobler and higher work than the later. Men and women have a duty to do. It is not a good thing for women to have double curse on themselves. Yes, men, women and children, all of us can enjoy chess. But, I am afraid that you are very far from the truth in debating this issue.

Len:

"It is possible, but it is also possible that men and women evolved to have different skills back in the days they were fighting animals in the wild and rearing children in caves. It is possible that men evolved skills that made it easier to do well in certain fields (science, chess, engineering...)."

Anything is possible regarding these kind of hypotheses. After all, we have no firm concept about what human life was really like for the majority of our species' existence. Were there coed hunting parties in 100,000 BC? Who knows.

Given that is the case, I find it absurd to make judgements vis a vis men and women based no such hypotheses.

Len:

What I think is more important for a woman does not matter. It is up to her to decide and live her life by the best values she can come up with. If that means not being a mother, so be it.

You believe being a good mother is better than scientific achievement. Even if I grant that, it makes no difference as to whether women in general belong in the home or not.

For someone who has the talent to be a good mother, I'd say go for it. But many women do not -- witness all the bad mothers in the world. Who's to say their talents wouldn't have been better applied to something else.

Regarding IQ, yeah it's an underlying issue but good luck separating it out from the cultural issues.

Those of you talking about men and women evolving differently are not thinking clearly! The men and women we are discussing are men and women of the same species. Men give their genetic makeup to both boys and girls! Mothers give birth to both boys and girls!

Consider your hypothetical neolithic hunter-gatherer tribe, which some of you are imagining. Let's suppose that due to the physical hardships of life, all the weaker men are killed before they reproduce, so there are only the stronger men remaining. These stronger men pass on their genes to both their sons and daughters!! Your hypothesis does not lead to men getting stronger and stronger, and the women weaker, but rather, all the offspring getting the stronger genes.

Similarly, suppose all the women in this hypothetical neolithic tribe stayed at home, pulled roots and tubers from the ground, and the conditions did not favor physically strong and inteligent women. Guess what? They pass those genes down to their boys as well as their girls!

So those of you maintaining the crude version of this view are not even thinking clearly! Perhaps your mother's brain genes came to you, and not your fathers!

tjallen

or vice versa!

tjallen,

It could be that all the innate differences between men and women are due to the Y chromosome. Those genetic traits are passed only to sons, not daughters.

Men and women can be part of the same species, but their bodies are different in fundamental ways. Women don't produce testosterone, men don't produce estrogen.

I am not *claiming* that men are superior to women in any fields, I am just speculating there *might* be innate differences between the sexes that explain why men outnumber women in certain fields. This is exactly what Larry Summers from Harvard said, and got in so much trouble for.

Note this is an open-minded position, unlike that from Mig, feminists, and other people in this blog -- all of whom seem convinced (despite the lack of scientific proof) that men and women are equally capable in fields like chess/science/math, and that any differences are purely cultural.

"Women don't produce testosterone, men don't produce estrogen."

Your grasp of biology isn't so good, sport. Both steroids are produced in men and women. Relative quantities differ, however, and physiological effects--which are not so clean-cut as you may think. Consider that abuse of testosterone in males, just as with other "anabolic" steroids, can lead to gynaecomastia.

What really amazes me is the following. Supposing you're all correct, and women intrinsically suck at chess. Why should you care, then, that others think differently? How does this effect you, precisely? Does it screw with your endgame technic or something? Why fly into tantrums about feminism and family values when the subject comes up?

It's that readiness to freak out, to spam a frickin' _chess blog_ with laments about affirmatic action and suchlike, that makes me think George and Ryan and the rest probably are overcompensating for something.

A parting shot: Rosalind Franklin was smarter than James Watson. (But then being more clueful than James Watson didn't take much work.)

Murali,
Yes, I agree chess ability could be due to positive features conferred by the Y chromosome, or by detriments contributed by the X. That is why I said at the end "the crude version of the thoery" being espoused by commenters above.

There are other more sophisicated theories possible, too. For example, it may be that couples who divide the tasks of life unequally tend leave more children than those where men and women are more equal contributors. That too might lead to differences between the genders.

But these more complex theories were not being offered by those above. No such research nor complex explanations were being given above. People were arguing as though men and women were different species!

Thanks,
tjallen

BTW, just another related thought, is there even one single case of a grandmaster's son also being a grandmaster?

I know some have suggested that Mr. Polgar's experiment, to prove that anyone taught chess early and severely could develop great skill, is partially undermined by the fact that he is himself far above average chess player (wasn't he an IM?)

tjallen

"Your grasp of biology isn't so good, sport."

I knew this would happen, i.e. I would stand corrected (should have checked the facts out first). Maybe I should have used breast milk as an example, or do men produce that too in "small quantities"?

Anyway, my point stands: if men's and women's bodies are different, then the same *could* hold true about their brains. Just an opinion.

"Why should you care, then, that others think differently? How does this effect you, precisely? Does it screw with your endgame technic or something?"

I assume this comment was targeted at some of the other posters. I am not ranting against affirmative action & feminists; I just disagree with people who claim that something is true (i.e. "women and men are equal") when the truth is unknown. But again, this is just a disagreement; they are entitled to an opinion and to sharing it with others, just like me.

No, Papa Polgar is an 1800 player.

About chromosomes and hormones and all that stuff: it's not only in chess and sciences that women are nowhere, it's the same in business life, music composing and many other fields which are traditionally labelled as masculine.

We women do what you men want to see us doing. It's been that way for thousands of years. Of course men will respect a female scientist, or even work with her but she will have a very hard time finding a man who will romantically love her. Men in general don't love girls who do masculine kind of activities. They want us to be pretty, intuitive, understanding, and so we act that way.
In return, men will act the way we want them to, which is basically two kinds: alpha male or mommy's little baby.

I can't count how many times I got strange and yes, even frightened looks from guys when I was trying not to notice the limits of my gender. A very direct pressure exists in society to stop people from stepping out of the expected roles.

So while chromosomes and especially brain structure might have something to do with it, according to my experience 98% of it is just stereotypes.

You sure? I thought he was an IM.

Did Papa Paehtz ever get the GM title? If so then unless there's already a father/son team out there maybe Eli P might strike a blow for the sisterhood by claiming the quaint distinction of being the first offspring of a GM to gain the title.

Dear rdh,

I also heard Polgar's dad was relatively weak.
But anyway, after they got strong enough, he
got them GM trainers, so the point is mainly
moot.

Yes, I'm sure, I've know him since childhood.
Actually he wanted me to be the "fourth" Polgar sister and train with his daughters to prove that it's not genetics. (My dad didn't let me.)
Many years later he had the idea to adopt three girls from a Carribean island to show that not even race matters, but his wife said she was too tired to raise those kids, so the experiment failed right there.

Well, that will teach me to believe factoids I read in books by Raymond Keene.

Fascinating story - thanks. To judge by this thread maybe he should raise his next batch as video gamers?!

Dear brj,
thank you for your post.
I would like to clarify my point. Once more.
I do not argue that there are good woman scientists or chess players. I don't argue that the disbalance in numbers (male vs female) of top-notch scientists might have sociological reasons.
My point is
a) there ARE top woman chess players, that is, 2450-2550, as Mig pointed, approximately 50 ppl.
b) there ARE top woman scientists, who work in top-research institutions, CERN, for example. They form a certain percent. Let's say, 10% of all top scientists.
So, despite all the cruelness of our world, sexist remarks and so on, those women break to the top.
But they have no greats. 10% of top-notch scientists should produce 10% of Nobel prize holders. They should have 10% in you list of top-50 scientists, whatever subjective it is. They do not. They fail to achieve the highest level. Note that you cannot address this to social issues. I am sure that if Koneru Humpu wants to do some chess, no one makes her to stir the dust. Maria Spiropulu, I am sure, isn't forced to cook all day for a huge family. They go to restaurant. Social issues go void for this level.
Please, give us your reasons-why the no-cooking and no-dust-whiping 10% gives 0% greatests.

Hi,

Further to PlayJunior's remarks. I'm pretty sure
that in math, if a female came even within a mile
of qualifying for the Fields medal (the "Nobel prize" of math), one would be given to her. Also,
unlike the Nobel prize, which is usually given later in life, the Fields medal is only given to those under 40. Yet year after year, no female has been able to claim this prize. I don't think it's discrimination.

Dear rdh,

So Keane claimed Polgar's dad was an IM?
Of course, now we have Wikipedia (to the extent
it is accurate):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laszlo_Polgar

which asserts he is a "mediocre" player. Of course, that is ambiguous phrasing. But it also says he is an expert theoretician. So perhaps he's an IM at postal chess?

The intellectual advantage of men over women (in dealing with abstract concepts better and applying them to real world problems ) shows itself in more than just chess. Women are good at memorizing and regurgitating -- but that will only get one so far. Men dominate many other areas (science) besides chess -- and show their advantage in solving new problems never seen before. A good example is the IMO (International Math Olympiad), an international math competition for 20 year old’s and under and with no post secondary education.

See ... http://imo2006.dmfa.si/index.html

My observations suggest that males don’t really start to show significant differences (in areas like math) until they hit the age of about 14-16 years old, so many of the tests on younger people may not really be that valid in making conclusions that older men/women don’t differ in cognitive abilities.

There was an article in New Scientist that stated -- to the effect -- that boys and girls achieved about the same marks in high-school. But another article (a few months later) on education stated that boys were doing 1/2 the homework in high-school as the girls (they were wondering how to get boys more motivated in school). If the boys are doing 1/2 the work and achieving the same marks, then just looking at the results surely doesn’t tell the whole story. I knew several boys in high-school that got very good marks in math even though they barely opened a book. Of all the girls I knew getting very good marks in math -- they were studious, and spent many hours/week hitting the books.

The ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest is another competition that is even more dominated by men than the Math Olympiad …

See ... http://icpc.baylor.edu/past/default.htm

In abstract things like art, architecture, and in particular musical composition, men dominate because these are some of the areas where their strengths lie. Music composition in particular, is one particularly striking area where men’s cognitive strengths show themselves. In classical musical composition there has never been a “first-rank” female composer. We hear of Mozart, Bach, Handel … etc., etc., but women composers are a footnote in the history of classical composition. Some like to claim that women weren’t given the chance to compose -- but that is pure rubbish. There is no evidence that anyone stopped female composers from making their mark. The situation for the composition of musical scores for movies (program music -- almost like a modern classical composition) today is no different than it was over 200 years ago in the time of Mozart -- men completely dominate. From the theme to 007, Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Zhivago … etc. … etc., etc….they are all musical scores written by men. One would be very hard pressed to find a movie with a sound track scored by a women -- it just isn’t one of their strengths. Although there are a fair amount of women sonwriters in pop music -- it is a little know fact that men still score most of the music to these songs.

Dear LarryK,

Thank you for your detailed post. You said:

"Some like to claim that women weren’t given the chance to compose -- but that is pure rubbish."

I would like to make two counterpoints in the interest of balance.(I have agreed in my posts above that there are likely genetic differences and that affirmative action in academia tends to only benefit women whose upbringing makes them least worthy of it.)

1. In academia, collaboration is important, as is supervision. When I collaborate with men in my work, there's no problem saying "hey, come over and we'll work all night". With women, there's always uncomfortableness with that sort of thing, as there is with female students. This is a disadvantage.

2. Women get pregnant at important stages in their careers.

3. There is this bias, among people like myself, that women are not as strong, or as devoted as men. Classical studies show that when you expect less from people, you'll get less.

LarryK:
Thank you for an interesting post. As I said earlier that men and women are equipped with different qualities and powers. One cannot treat them as same or equal. They are two different people with two different minds and bodies. It is totally absurd and cruel to expect women to do whatever men do.

Peace...

I am utterly amazed at some of the arguments being presented here. "10% of op-notch scientists should produce 10% of Nobel Prize winners" and arguments of the like ar ludicrous, because there is much more that goes into accomplishing greatness than just ability. There is some combination of talent, motivation, and opportunity, and it is quite clear that people either willingly or inadvertently overlook the influence of the latter requirement. Many societies are structurally built to favor men, and men just don't notice it because such circumstances are considered "correct" or "natural". The fact is that self-motivation and talent can only allow one to make maximum use of the available room for growth that is structurally allowed; it is the motivation of dominant groups and flexibility of structural systems that creates the great gaps that we see in society today across stratification systems. It is all too comforting to point to biology or individual shortcoming as the reason that women are less successful than men over the board, or that black students achieve less in the classroom than do white students, or that lower-class people are unable to escape intergenerational cycles of poverty. In reality, structural advantage and disadvantage bring overwhelming pressure to bear on the situations of subordinate groups, and pretending that this is not so, and that the resultant comparisons between groups therefore reveal some innate superiority of one group over the other rather than just some created advantage, is poor rationale, indeed.

Hotep,

Maliq

Huh, if there is 5% of women playing games (or chess) there should be 5% of women in top 100???PlayJunior, where did you have your stats classes? If I were, I would aks for a refund! You know, there is something called the bell curve and applies in this case as well. So, if there are 20 men on every women (actually, there are 17 rated men on every rated women) and even if everything is the same (talent, intelligence, practice), men will clearly outnumber women at the top (there shouldn't be a single one in the top 200). The distribution of women will look the same as that of men but it's right tale (where are the best players) will only reach to the very good men players. It's a simple statistical fact (imagine you have numbers from 1 to 100 in a hat and you pull 200 and 10 times out of hat. What do you think, which pulling will produce more numbers closer to 100?) and it's amazing how some people can't see beyond their presumptions. As a end note, there is no studies showing any unambigeous association between intelligence and chess. So, this all has nothing to do with mental skill...

Huh, there were more comments that ?% in participation should result in the same number of high achievers (or achievements). Oh boy, I am starting to doubt that you are male guys... you are supposed to be good at stats and maths... something went wrong somewhere ;)

Dear Meke,

I find your analysis interesting, and my stats weak. Can you explain your expected number of
women in the top 100? In particular, your example is hard to follow:

"...imagine you have numbers from 1 to 100 in a hat and you pull 200 and 10 times out of hat. What do you think, which pulling will produce more numbers closer to 100?"

OK, suppose I model men and women playing chess as
pulling 10 numbers out of a hat to represent women (without replacement) and 90 numbers out (without replacement). I assume no replacement because we don't have two or more people sharing any place.
(Although I don't think this affects things in any essential way, it just is easier to imagine.)

Suppose I hypothesize that men and women are equal. It seems natural to ask (as you do), how many of those ten numbers are expected to be in the range [91,100] (the "top ten"). Well, by equality of the sexes, I think this is a binomial distribution question, where each draw has a probability of .1 of being in the top ten, and .9 of being outside. So the expectation of a women being in the top ten is .1*10=1, which is what PlayJunior would think.

So analyzing your example doesn't seem to draw out your point. I'm confused. Can you make your analysis more precise?

Dear Maliq

You say:

"In reality, structural advantage and disadvantage bring overwhelming pressure to bear on the situations of subordinate groups, and pretending that this is not so, and that the resultant comparisons between groups therefore reveal some innate superiority of one group over the other rather than just some created advantage, is poor rationale, indeed."

I'd rather say that exclusion of either nature or nurture in this debate is "poor rationale". Let's take the analogy of basketball. I'm asian, and Canadian. Neither of which are typical for basketball stardom. (Indeed, I suck, despite playing it quite a bit and enjoying it.) My black friends are typically quite good, and almost all better than me.

Did society hold me back from success in this game? Maybe a little. Perhaps my parents could have encouraged me more. My teachers probably didn't come to me after gym class and suggest I try out for the team. I'm also pretty sure the ball was not passed to me as much. Also, Canada is not exactly a place to find the best players to practice with.

However, did these disadvantages prevent me or people like me from joining the NBA? Well, in my case, probably not. (Likely there was someone with similar disadvantages who did, but anyway.) The reason we don't see more people like me in the NBA is because generally speaking Asians are smaller physically. That's a bummer for BB.

Of course, no one can dispute this! But with the brain, it's something we cannot see as easily, so it's more abstract. I personally hope there are no differences. But seriously, are there any a priori reasons why there shouldn't be?

That being said, these are not good reasons to discriminate based on gender or race. It would be horrible if the Polgar sisters were denied opportunity because of their gender, or Yao Ming for his race, etc etc. But denying that genetics plays no role doesn't help the case for equality either, IMHO.

Maliq

It is foolishness indeed to ignore the obvious - that chess itself is structurally built to favor men. It is not a fair representation for an inter-group comparison.

TG makes a good point about his inevitable shortcomings at basketball. Clearly basketball (and running 100 meters very quickly) are structurally built competitions that inherently favor American-Caribbean males of black African ancestry.

Maliq said: "some combination of talent, motivation, and opportunity"

Yes, but most of all determination! And there it is, the almost stupefying desire to spend a lot of time on something you will never be the best at. And (we) men are clearly doing this in every thinkable and unthinkable situation, memorizing sports trivia comes to mind.

That is my theory, not to scientific, but women seem to be smarter about such things...

greg,
and I shall keep my mouth shut if my stories have such destructive effect on you vs Mr Keene...

I mean not greg, rdh.

tg, thanks for you feedback. I am afraid, however, that Elo rating follows (more or less)normal distribution as most perfromance based games. Maybe that is why my hat example was difficult to follow - should have added that the numbers are normally distributed (most around 50 and least around 1 and 100). So, even if you have two distributions with the same average and variability, the distribution with 20 times more members will clearly have more extreme values. Does it mean that you should expect 20 men on every women in the top 100? No, and if you imagine those two normal distributions (with most people in the middle and much less as we move towards both tails) with over 50 000 men and under 3 000 active rated women, it may become clearer. I am sorry I can't draw it here but if you give your email, I will be more than glad to send you the distributions (with a more detailed explanation). Meanwhile, I can only recommend you the previous paper on the topic - Charness and Gerchak (1996) in Psychological Science (google scholar may have it).

Dear Meke,

I think the confusing thing for me is that PlayJunior and I want to talk about placings (first, second, third...) and you speak of ratings (chess IQ).

Suppose W_1,...,W_10 are independent, random variables normally distributed with mean 0 and variance 1. This corresponds to the 10 women
vs 90 men in my previous post.

Suppose we assume some r would put someone in the top 100. (In real life, this makes sense, perhaps if someone tells us he is rated above 2600, we can deduce (s)he is in the top 100.)

So the probability one of these women W_i is rated above r is an integral from r to infinity of that
exponential thing e to the minus one half x squared. For r large enough, this probability is small, say less than ten percent, say for the sake of argument, the probability is 5 percent. Therefore, the expected number of women that are in the top 10 (to which we have chosen r to correspond to) is only .5, rather than the 1 we expected naively.

Under those kinds of assumptions, I can understand your claim. Of course, there's that calibration of
"r to top 10" that's a bit fuzzy, but I think I see your point in principle. Thanks.

linux fan,

Thanks for a most enlightening post...the one beginning..."No, Papa Polgar..."

tg, glad it kind a hit home. However, although placings and rankings come from rating directly, they clearly have no same properties. It is clear that using placings/rankings instead of rating we lose valuable information. Ranks are just categorical (we don't know how much is no.1 better than no.2) while ratings give a precise information on the skill of player . Also, while I have no clue how you should treat rankings, I know for sure that rating follows the normal distribution and all the laws connected with it. Once you plug the current data for the top 100 in the formula given by Charness and Gerchak (predicting the rating based on mean and standard deviation + number of players in the population), the expected difference and the real difference between top 100 men and women chess players are remarkably similar. If anything, the top 100 women perform better than they are supposed to given their relatively small number. It goes without saying that Judit Polgar is an outlier - she performs around 150 points more than she is supposed to given the number of women!

In establishing that male supermacy in chess is due to their superior intellectual abilities, one needs to show two things: 1) that there is no statistical artifact associated with participation rates of men and women, and 2) that chess skill is associated with intelligence. Honestly, I really think that the whole excercise is pointless. It does not seem even possible to rule out the statistical explanation, let alone show a clear, unambiguos association between chess skill and intelligence.

Hi meke,

You say:

"It does not seem even possible to rule out the statistical explanation, let alone show a clear, unambiguos association between chess skill and intelligence."

I'm tempted to say that it probably is possible, even within the ambiguity that is statistics: but it's hard, since there isn't enough data, and there isn't enough interest (especially since it's politically risky to do anything that "proves" inequality of intellect). The case to think of is that "smoking causes cancer", which took forever to establish, even though its patently obvious.

Peace...

ggg: I wouldn't go so far as to say that the game itself is structured to favor men, but rather that the tournament scene and the road to the top is where the gender divide exists. Quite frankly, women who become good at chess make it through a much more daunting gauntlet than do men who achieve similar success; the same effort and talent will yield markedly different results for men because they are expected to do well, are given more opportunities, etc. (This is similar to why it took so long -- relatively speaking -- for Hikaru Nakamura to get opportunities to play against the elite, despite the fact that he was already outperforming other youngsters who were getting the shots. Hikaru comes from a nation that is not known for producing great players, and he suffered because of this structural bias that favors young European players.)

tg: I agree that arguments that only account for nurture, but not nature, are often flawed. However, what you are talking about is being disadvantaged within an arena that is not essential for survival and prosperity, whereas intellect surely does not fit classification.

Quely: Without question, the characteristics that you apeak of are developed through socialization. I am skeptical of the claim that women are "smarter" than are men with regard to pursuing hobbies that will get us nowhere in life; I would, instead, argue that ideas on the value of leisure activities vary across societies and across time, and that people have been socialized to take up certain things as hobbies.

Hotep,

Maliq

Well it seems some of you have completely missed the exact conclusion of the article:
"We conclude that the greater number of men at the highest levels in chess can be explained by the greater number of boys who enter chess at the lowest levels."

This is despite the preliminary observation on the overall average: "The disparity between men and women in ability exists at the beginning and persists across all age groups. At least ostensibly this would lend credence to the ability distribution hypothesis in the sense that it suggests the mean ability between men and women are innately different"

This is contradicted and refuted by the key reason is, as reported by Jake Young:
". If you look at the participation rate of women and relate that to performance, you find that in cases where the participation rate of women and men is equal the disparity in ability vanishes."

Hence the real reason why women perform poorly is *not* that they lack ability. They do actually *show* lower ability on average. But they *only* *show* inferior ability to men (on average), when they are in a minority - compared to men.

What it proves, is that chess results is *not* an objective measurement of chess ability, but that chess results are heavily influenced by social environment - i.e., in this case, being in a minority makes you perform worse.

Indeed, this article contradicts all the arguments made here about Nobel prizes, Field medals, top scientists, ... because in all those environments, women are in a minority, and the same effect *could* happen.

Dear Julie,

Your summary of the article's conclusions is useful to me. However, you go further and take their study and apply it, in my opinion, too widely. For example, you say

(1) "What it proves, is that chess results is *not* an objective measurement of chess ability..."

and

(2) "Indeed, this article contradicts all the arguments made here about Nobel prizes,..."

From what I understand, the one place where they found equal participation was in some Oakland (California?) scholastic school program. Besides dearth of data even to conclude about chess and genetics in general, I don't see how you can extrapolate to other businesses and deduce this is a "contradiction".

Dear Maliq,

Thanks for your response. You said:

"tg: I agree that arguments that only account for nurture, but not nature, are often flawed. However, what you are talking about is being disadvantaged within an arena that is not essential for survival and prosperity, whereas intellect surely does not fit classification."

From this I interpreted you to mean "any human trait that is essential to survival is not effected by genetics and evolution". This is an interesting argument.

However, there are many diseases that effect fitness, and which are genetic. To pick one, certain cancers. Isn't not having cancer essential for survival and prosperity?

tg,

"From what I understand, the one place where they found equal participation was in some Oakland (California?) scholastic school program."

They looked at the places where girls were >= 50% ; there was 4 such places. In all such places, the difference of rating between boys and girl was not significant - while it is dramatically significant if you take all boys and girls of the country. How come? What is your explanation?

The explanation of the authors is that being in minority could be the reason why girls perform less well. Their article - with this statement - was peer-reviewed, was accepted and published.

As for the generalization, the authors themselves say: "Beyond the domain of competitive chess, our results show how male-females differences in factor other than cognitive abilities may account for sex differences in observed performances".

Indeed the fact that most Nobel prize winners are men for instance, does not *automatically* means that men are more naturally talented in science than women, since the same effect *could* happen [and other effects could happen as well, btw].

Hi Julie,

Thanks for the details. I think that the authors are stretching their conclusions beyond what they have to support it.

What about high school students and valedictorians? I believe women make about half of all high school students, but do they make about half of valedictorians?

Julie, reason is sometimes powerless against preconceptions. I think you are right - this paper showed not only that the perfromance is clearly a by product of participation rates (which was already well known) but also why there is such a discrepancy in the participation rates. In all places where girls outnumbered boys, they were better and stayed longer in chess than the girls in the places where they were minority. You can freely say that they were bullied out of chess... and now apply that to other minorities...

Meke, "freely (saying) that they were bullied out of chess..." is rather harsh. It could be taken to suggest that the boys involved, at some point, consciously chose/choose to "bully" the girls to drum them out of organized (or otherwise) chess. While some may consciously display intentionally negative behavior towards girls, I doubt that the vast majority does/did. Surely, the "social forces" can be described rather more accurately as something other than "bullying", which implies direct, volitional intent to commit harmful acts.

Dear Meke:

You said:

"...reason is sometimes powerless against preconceptions....You can freely say that they were bullied out of chess... and now apply that to other minorities..."

Since you brought up this issue. How about Jewish
participation in academia? The percentage of Jewish students is certainly above their overall population in the US. But the percentage of academics who are Jewish goes well beyond even that percentage. So if one is able to "freely" claim participation is so crucial, and apply that to minorities, why shouldn't there be relatively few Jewish Nobel prize winners, professors etc?

"That being said, these are not good reasons to discriminate based on gender or race. It would be horrible if the Polgar sisters were denied opportunity because of their gender, or Yao Ming for his race, etc etc."-TG

Many chess players are being discriminated against because of their gender, but not because they are female--because they are male. It is hard to justify the special conditions and prizes given to women in Gibraltar and other tournaments. You score more points than someone, she gets a higher prize because she is a woman? How is that not discrimination? I can't think of any other competitive activity where players compete together, but prizes are determined by gender. Nor can I think of any activity where people get special conditions (hotel, free entry, appearance fee) for being a woman. I think this is probably illegal. Some physical sports (i.e. tennis) have separate male and female competitions, but they never simply give women more money than equally- (or better-) performing men. And chess is not a physical sport, there is no reason to imagine that women cannot compete with men, especially since that is what they are doing.

Even decent GMs have difficulty making a living playing chess, but this opportunity is granted to 2300-2400 female players, through all the special opportunities they get. Besides tournaments like Gibraltar and some other ones, there are the national championships, the Olympiad, the Women's world championship, and some other special tournaments (the "Monroi grand prix" for example). Not to mention added exposure, which gives the chance for more work teaching and doing exhibitions. Oh, and often free entry fees, where higher rated male players must pay (the 2007 World open, for example, gives discounted entries to all WGMs, and American IMs must pay the full rate. IM is a higher title). None of this is available to male players of the same level. Nobody was born a top GM, you need money to be able to go to tournaments, to have a trainer, to be able to work on chess. But male players 2400-2500 have to give up chess for another profession (if they are lucky enough!) or find work teaching beginners (again, if they are lucky enough).

I just found this in Reuben Fine's 'The Psychology of the Chessplayer', something that might reveal why men are more interested in chess, if you go for these kind of theories:

"Chess is a contest between two men in which there is considerable ego-involvement. In some way it certainly touches upon the conflicts surrounding aggression, homosexuality, masturbation and narcissism which become particularly prominent in the anal-phallic phases of development. From the standpoint of id psychology, Jones' observations can therefore be confirmed, even enlarged upon. Genetically, chess is more often than not taught to the boy by his father, or a father-substitute, and thus becomes a means of working out the son-father rivalry."

Well, anonymous, tennis gives very large prizes to women who are weaker players than men:

"but they never simply give women more money than equally- (or better-) performing men"

Just amusing, what is so special, as victims, as 'American' IM's?:

"gives discounted entries to all WGMs, and American IMs must pay the full rate."

Women with decent chess strength can make a LOT of money as coaches much easier than men, because parents trust them better around their children:

"or find work teaching beginners (again, if they are lucky enough)."

Looks like surgery could catapult you into a real chess utopia, right anonymous?

"Just amusing, what is so special, as victims, as 'American' IM's?:"

There is a provision that foreign IMs get the discounted entry fee, while American IMs pay the full rate. This is supposedly to give norm-seekers a better chance. But WGMs (wherever they are from) get the discounted entry fee, even though for norm purposes they count as IMs. This is just a small example, of course--a tournament soon in Oklahoma and the one in Gibraltar is much more outrageous.

"Looks like surgery could catapult you into a real chess utopia, right anonymous?"

Yes, this is true. People with similar credentials of chess are living on completely different levels because of their sex, and it is shocking.

In tennis, there are separate competitions. They don't give the female players big prizes for only losing 2-1 for example, in an open competition. And tennis is a physical sport, it is reasonable to expect that most women cannot compete with most men, unlike in chess. In tournaments like Gibraltar and others, we see women competing with men and simply getting bigger prizes for less points, plus better conditions.

CHESS RATINGS DATABASE
International chess ratings for both males and females are available on the FIDE site and are easy to download (see link 1) and further analyse statistically in Excel. Contrarily to many other related academic studies the findings below only require a few hours analysis and an elementary knowledge of Excel.

ANALYSIS OF A RECENT DATABASE (April 2009)
The FIDE April 2009 database comprises the ratings for about 100,000 rated chess players from all parts of the world. Actually on 4 May, the database had 99,761 valid data records which showed actual ratings (92,159 for males and 7,602 for females). The average male rating was 2045 whereas the average female rating was 1958. The difference is significative at nearly any confidence level. The standard deviation were very slightly lower for males (197.6) than for females (202.9). An important finding is the under-representation of females at upper levels. Whereas females represented 7.6% of the whole sample there was only 1 female in the top 100 chess players (1%), 21 females in the top 1,000 chess players (2.1% ) and 295 within the top 10,000 chess players worldwide (sligthly less than 3.0%). Within the best 20,000 chess players worldwide there were 675 females or slightly less than 3.4% of the whole sample.

COMPARISON WITH OTHER STUDY FINDINGS
The increasing paucity of females as chess performance levels increase are at variance with the conclusions of several recent studies (see links 2 and 3) where the authors contend that most of the top performance chess gender gap could be accounted for by lower female participation rates. In effect if lower participation rates were the main factor explaining the gender gap in top chess performance one would expect a relatively stable proportion of female chess players (about 7.6%) in sufficiently large subsets of the FIDE ratings database for April 2009, and in particular in sufficiently large subsets of top ranked chess players. This does not turn out to be the case since for example the 10,000 top ranked chess performers worldwide comprised much less than 7.6% females (slightly less than 3% of females as mentioned above).

CONSISTENCE WITH OTHER STUDIES
This simple analysis of the FIDE database suggests that males seem to be favored at upper tails of distributions of chess ability and -assuming top ches performance demands exceptional mental skills- is not dissimilar in its findings to related findings regarding gender distribution of top mental skills (see links 4 & 5).

link 1 : http://ratings.fide.com/download.phtml
link 2 : http://eprints.ma.man.ac.uk/1225/01/covered/MIMS_ep2009_13.pdf
link 3 : http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=871186
link 4 : http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/269/5220/41
link 5 : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_intelligence

Chris,
These observational studies reveal but little that isn't known already- fewer females at the top echelons of chess. What they don't (and cannot) tell us is why? Observational studies are good for hypothesis generation but do not determine causality or otherwise, or the direction of causality.

Hardy,
Your make a point with your remark. However intermediate causality for the paucity of females in abstract disciplines like top chess, mathematics or theoretical physics for example, may be related to the difference in statistical distributions of mental skills shown by simple tests as for example the higher male standard deviation in IQ tests. As you say this does not show the ultimate causes but points to the fact that the main causes may not be "social" at all after all (including female lower participation rates as a "social" factor).
To come back to the chess participation rates,
Russia (largest chess country in world) shows that higher female participation rates have no effect on the paucity of top female performers. In effect based on the FIDE database, females represent 7.6% of the worldwide chess rated population, 2.7% of the talented players (the best 5%) and 2.1% of the elite players (the best 1%). In Russia females represent 12.5% of the FIDE rated Russian players, but only 2.5% of the Russian talented players and 1.0% of the Russian elite players. So Russian female chess players perform relatively worse than female chess players globally even though their participation rate (12.5%) is much higher than the global one (7.6%).