Women & chess

bigtoe7

there is an obvious lack of presence of women in chess clubs and tournaments and the question is why ?. my theory is simple, women do not play chess because their brain is not wired for playing it .the reason it is not wired for the game is that over tens of thousands of years men have been hunters and in order to hunt effectively , timing , logistics ,co-ordination and spatial awarness are vital and as result of evolution these qualities have developed better in men , same factors that are important in chess . a good modern example is parking a car , men ( in general ) are far better in parking cars than women as result of these evolutionary developments. what do you guys think or have any of you have other theories ?

Sparks

bigtoe7 wrote: »

my theory is simple, women do not play chess because their brain is not wired for playing it

Well, that's certainly a simple theory. I think the Polgars might point out that it's full of excrement though.

Perhaps these might be worth watching:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHHIZv42bYo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDjzZ4ufMwg

bigtoe7

@ sparks . so what is your theory for low turnout of women in chess clubs and tournaments ?. I just wasted 7 minutes of my life watching your youtube videos which proved nothing and full of false statements in them such as ( girls like to learn chess more than boys ) ( girls have to learn chess from their fathers ) a woman speaking in one said i am teaching a 5 year old girl because they want a female role model ( the truth is that family trust their 5 year old girl with a woman and not a man ) .men & women are biologically different and have different natural abilities and in alot of sports where physical power is not important such as darts , snooker , archery men prevail and to blind ourselves to this fact is useless. here a video on youtube with nearly 4.5 million hits of a woman parking

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf4TIWECZ30

Sparks

bigtoe7 wrote: »

@ sparks . so what is your theory for low turnout of women in chess clubs and tournaments ?

It's not my theory, it's what we know from a few decades of studying why we have gender imbalances in the STEM fields. After those few decades, we have learnt that the reason is just culture. If you keep telling women and girls that they're biologically wired to be awful at chess (or science or maths or engineering or medicine), even though you're wrong and the science has proven you to be wrong, then they'll eventually just quit and go elsewhere because who wants to listen to dross all day?

I just wasted 7 minutes of my life watching your youtube videos which proved nothing and full of false statements

Dross like that, for example.
Here are statements by women playing chess (some of them amongst the greatest chess players in all history from either gender) and coaches who are working with women and girls in chess and who face the gender imbalance problem every day and have for years; and all you can say is "false" without giving any proof, any data or any reasoning that withstands five seconds of thought.

That, especially when you start into the thread with an opinion that's been fairly conclusively proven to be wrong in psychology experiment after psychology experiment for the last fifty years or so, is dross. It's tiring to listen to. And results-oriented people, of either gender, take one look at it and think Why the hell would I bother to sit here and listen to this nonsense when I can just go play online and disable the chat function, thereby getting my chess game without all the dross?

men & women are biologically different and have different natural abilities and in alot of sports where physical power is not important such as darts , snooker , archery men prevail and to blind ourselves to this fact is useless.

Actually, it's the other way round. Women are consistently better in sports like archery and target shooting, regardless of age (though when they're juniors the differential is much higher than in later life). That's been a known fact for a long time now, backed up by years and years of observation and experiment (and when I say years and years, remember that target shooting records go back to the 1600s or so in most of Europe).

here a video on youtube with nearly 4.5 million hits of a woman parking

And now I have another theory for you and it goes like this: if I had a daughter, I wouldn't let her play chess with you, or within earshot of you, because you'd try to convince her she was naturally inferior because of her gender and it's a parent's job to prevent people from doing that to their kids until they're old enough to not be swayed by idiots; and after that point, they'd just find being around people who behave like you just did to be boorish and dull and they'd go elsewhere anyway.

So if your attitude is commonplace, then that's a pretty good guess at why Irish chess is basicly a sausagefest. Happily, the vast, vast majority of the people I've come across in Irish chess so far aren't that kind of person, but it doesn't take more than one or two to ruin it for everyone else.

Rev Hellfire

If this thread is looking to survive its going to need to provide some verifiable evidence to support the opening premise.

the_syco

bigtoe7 wrote: »

my theory is simple, women do not play chess because their brain is not wired for playing it

I wonder how you perceive stay-at-home dads with such ridiculous notions?

Pherekydes

Judit Polgar pretty much debunks the OP's myth on her own. If she was limited by her biology she'd never have reached 7th on the ranking list, nor beaten every top grandmaster, nor become the (then) youngest ever grandmaster at age 15.

But just in case, here's a link that disproves the OP's silly theory, citing a huge study undertaken in Germany.

The simple answer, evident from the study, is that men outnumber women in Chess by between 10 and 16 to 1. Hence, the likelihood is that there will be far more male GMs than female GMs.

bigtoe7

@ rev hellfire . gimme sometime to prepare my evidence .i think there is a misunderstanding here regarding what is meant by not wired for chess , it does not mean that women have lower intelligence than men , just they are different and women are better in certain tasks then men and vice versa .

Boys and girls approach the game of chess very differently. Most boys are results-oriented and focus on winning and losing. Most girls are very different; they have a greater appreciation for the artistic and social aspect of chess. The problem we face is that most people expect girls to learn the game and enjoy it the same way boys do. They don't, and we as educators, parents or coaches need to understand this.

i still don't get why women wear high heels , when it looks uncomfortable and bad for feet ?

Sparks

bigtoe7 wrote: »

The problem we face is that most people expect girls to learn the game and enjoy it the same way boys do.

No, it really isn't, the same way it wasn't when Summers said it about why "girls are bad at math".

But let me help you with that evidence:

• http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/276/1659/1161.short
• http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejsp.440/pdf (this one's a depressing doozy of a read btw, because it basicly shows through research that the old boys clubs have convinced women that they're naturally inferior players)
• http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=1230948
• http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40062906?uid=3738232&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102136689923
• http://em-journal.com/2012/08/women-in-chess.html

i still don't get why women wear high heels , when it looks uncomfortable and bad for feet ?

It's a holdover from a period where it was fashionable to look androgynous and women started to wear the same clothes as men.

What, you thought high heels were originally female attire? Eh, no, they were originally military equipment.

RQ_ennis_chess

Pherekydes wrote: »

Judit Polgar pretty much debunks the OP's myth on her own. If she was limited by her biology she'd never have reached 7th on the ranking list, nor beaten every top grandmaster, nor become the (then) youngest ever grandmaster at age 15.

But just in case, here's a link that disproves the OP's silly theory, citing a huge study undertaken in Germany.

The simple answer, evident from the study, is that men outnumber women in Chess by between 10 and 16 to 1. Hence, the likelihood is that there will be far more male GMs than female GMs.

I'm not sure if the situation if quite as clearcut as you make out. You don't address the issue of why so few women relative to men play chess. Its possible that some subtle differences in brain organisation between genders may play some role in this.

I also agree however (and the scientific evidence seems to show) that major differences in brain organisation between men and women (how the brain is wired if you like) don't really exist. There is far more variability among women or among men than there is between sexes.

Sparks

RQ_ennis_chess wrote: »

I'm not sure if the situation if quite as clearcut as you make out. You don't address the issue of why so few women relative to men play chess. Its possible that some subtle differences in brain organisation between genders may play some role in this.

It's possible -- but it's highly unlikely. It's far, far more likely that gender stereotypes are the driving factor behind the participation rates, and pretty much every study after that confirms that if you have highly disparate participation rates, you get highly disparate performance levels (which in and of itself is also an argument in the open-v-closed discussion about the Irish Championships, but that's a tangent).

Take a read of that second link above: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejsp.440/pdf
It'd depress you if you had daughters...

RQ_ennis_chess

Yes thats an interesting study, however I would still raise a question over why so few women bother playing chess in the first place. Its possible that biological factors are involved to some extent. There was a study (I think it was by Gobet) which showed that those who score higher on the personality trait of agreeableness are less likely to play chess than those who score lower on that trait. Women typically score higher on agreeableness then men. Or maybe its just that women have far too much sense to devote lots of time to a pasttime like chess :-)

Sparks

Does that not strike you as being the gender stereotyping the study was talking about?

RQ_ennis_chess

Not really, because traits aren't stereotypes. Personality traits are measurable characteristics that are thought to underly peoples behaviour. Gender differences have been reliably measured for certain traits e.g. women typically score higher on agreeableness (agreeableness has been found to be negatively correlated with chessplaying ability). Biological factors are likely to play some part in these observed gender differences.

Sparks

See, that's how Summers got into trouble - he saw a disparity in genders in the STEM fields and said "Oh, that's because women aren't oriented towards math", without ever managing to understand that it wasn't that women weren't oriented towards math, it was that they were strongly discouraged from early infancy onwards to not be oriented towards math and have been for decades and still are today. The bias is so pervasive and so embedded in society that it's actually hard to see unless you look for it.

That's why the Polgars are the refutation of the theory that women can't play chess; it's not that they're one data point to hold up as an example, it's that they were raised to play chess almost as an experiment (and ethics be damned, though it's not the first time this kind of thing has happened...). When raised without the bias, what do you get? History's highest rated junior chess player (regardless of gender), the then-youngest ever GM, and three GM-level players out of three test subjects (yeah, that's not a nice way to talk about them, but in this very specific context, it's accurate).

Also, agreeableness might be negatively correlated to chessplaying ability, but (a) being female does not mean being agreeable, and (b) I'd call shenanigans on the idea that it's a causative link unless you had some deeper proof than observation of correlation (and with the amount of research in this area, if there was such a link, I think we'd have found it by now).

And that whole idea that chess==conflict and therefore agreeableness!=chess ability seems highly suspect to me anyway. I get the strong feeling that this whole "you must be aggressive to be good at chess, women aren't aggressive, therefore women aren't good at chess" is just so much hokum from people who don't understand why they're good at a thing (and yes, that happens all the time - people just aren't good at self-analysis).

Besides, every time someone says that you have to be aggressive to be good at chess, I can't shake the idea that if chess ability was that strongly linked to aggression, you'd win the game by pushing a bishop through the other player's eyeball :pac:

Sparks

BTW, if you don't think it's a bias, take a closer read of that second link above - when the female chess players thought they were playing female chess players, they played more strongly than when they thought they were playing male chess players -- regardless of the actual gender of their opponents. And similar research has shown that when men are playing women, they change their behaviour as well - they choose more aggressive strategies (irrationally so because they do not succeed more with those strategies, they lose more).

RQ_ennis_chess

Sparks wrote: »

That's why the Polgars are the refutation of the theory that women can't play chess; it's not that they're one data point to hold up as an example, it's that they were raised to play chess almost as an experiment (and ethics be damned, though it's not the first time this kind of thing has happened...). When raised without the bias, what do you get? History's highest rated junior chess player (regardless of gender), the then-youngest ever GM, and three GM-level players out of three test subjects (yeah, that's not a nice way to talk about them, but in this very specific context, it's accurate).

No one is suggesting women can't play chess. The most important factor in anybody getting good at chess is deliberate practice so it's no surprise that the Polgars became very good at it. Interesting though that only one of them, Judit , ever got right to the top of the sport. The question asked by the OP was why so few women play chess in the first place. A couple of people completely dismissed biological factors as playing a role, I simply said that the picture is not so clear cut.

Also, agreeableness might be negatively correlated to chessplaying ability, but (a) being female does not mean being agreeable, and (b) I'd call shenanigans on the idea that it's a causative link unless you had some deeper proof than observation of correlation (and with the amount of research in this area, if there was such a link, I think we'd have found it by now).

Across a large number of studies the trait of agreeableness has been shown to be higher in women than men. You can speculate all you want about the reasons for this but the difference exists and is clear to see. It was also shown in the study I mentioned that agreeableness and chess ability were negatively correlated. There isnt a huge amount of research in the area of personality traits and chessplaying ability and more needs to be done before arriving at definitive conclusions.

And that whole idea that chess==conflict and therefore agreeableness!=chess ability seems highly suspect to me anyway. I get the strong feeling that this whole "you must be aggressive to be good at chess, women aren't aggressive, therefore women aren't good at chess" is just so much hokum from people who don't understand why they're good at a thing (and yes, that happens all the time - people just aren't good at self-analysis).

Where did I say that agreeableness is linked to chessplaying ability because of conlict or aggression? I simply mentioned a study that measured agreeableness in chessplayers and found that lower levels of agreeableness were associated with higher levels of chessplaying ability. There could be a number of reasons for the observed correlation.

Besides, every time someone says that you have to be aggressive to be good at chess, I can't shake the idea that if chess ability was that strongly linked to aggression, you'd win the game by pushing a bishop through the other player's eyeball :pac:

Will to win and competitiveness are important in chess if you want to get to the top. You only have to look at Fisher or some of the other top players to see that.

RQ_ennis_chess

Sparks wrote: »

. And similar research has shown that when men are playing women, they change their behaviour as well - they choose more aggressive strategies (irrationally so because they do not succeed more with those strategies, they lose more).

If it were actually the case that men were choosing more risky and aggressive strategies against women, then women should be kicking mens asses at chess!

hinault

Judit Polgar is a fine player and would beat most of the male chess-playing planet.

Bobby Fischer was quite disparaging about the ability of women to play at the very highest level.

It would be good for the game generally to have more female participation rates.
Chess is one activity in which men and women can compete on reasonably even terms ie. inequalities with regard to physical strength don't apply.

Pherekydes

RQ_ennis_chess wrote: »

No one is suggesting women can't play chess. The most important factor in anybody getting good at chess is deliberate practice so it's no surprise that the Polgars became very good at it. Interesting though that only one of them, Judit , ever got right to the top of the sport.

Susan Polgar qualified for the world men's chess championship in 1986 at age 17. She won 10 medals at chess olympiads. In July 2005, Polgar gave a large simultaneous exhibition in Palm Beach, Florida, breaking four world records: the largest number of simultaneous games played (326, with 309 won, 14 drawn, and 3 lost); consecutive games played (1,131); highest number of games won (1,112); and highest percentage of wins (96.93%).

I'd find it pretty strange if a man with these credentials was dismissed as not having reached the top.

Sparks

RQ_ennis_chess wrote: »

If it were actually the case that men were choosing more risky and aggressive strategies against women, then women should be kicking mens asses at chess!

That was what the study showed - given players of equal strength, the men chose riskier strategies and lost as a result; but it's a statistical outcome, not a deterministic one (ie. it doesn't happen every time, but consider enough data points and it emerges as a real trend).

Sparks

hinault wrote: »

Bobby Fischer was quite disparaging about the ability of women to play at the very highest level.

That doesn't mean much though - Bobby Fischer was also a great fan of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and by all accounts was already becoming mentally unstable before the '72 championships. Great chess player, but that doesn't mean he was a great neuroscientist, sociologist, psychologist or even a decent human being at the end

hinault

Sparks wrote: »

That doesn't mean much though - Bobby Fischer was also a great fan of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and by all accounts was already becoming mentally unstable before the '72 championships. Great chess player, but that doesn't mean he was a great neuroscientist, sociologist, psychologist or even a decent human being at the end

Possibly the greatest chess player of all time.
So Fischer's view as to the relative strength of female players is interesting.

As for the rest of the stuff you allude to (above) - it's extraneous at best.

Sparks

RQ_ennis_chess wrote: »

No one is suggesting women can't play chess.

No, but some (not just here, this has been talked about for a long time worldwide) have suggested they can't play well as a general rule...

The most important factor in anybody getting good at chess is deliberate practice so it's no surprise that the Polgars became very good at it. Interesting though that only one of them, Judit , ever got right to the top of the sport.

Hold on - the whole point of mentioning the Polgars at all is that they were in effect the subject of an experiment to see what happens if you encourage girls to play chess without the "women aren't good at chess" bias -- and out of three test subjects, all wound up highly competitive GM-level players, and one reached the top of the sport.

The point was that it took such a small population to achieve that. Put it this way - if you bought three lottery tickets, would you expect to win money on all three?

Yes, the diligent practice is needed, but all GM-level players have that; the point of the Polgars is that when all else was kept equal (the same exposure to chess, the same practice and so forth) and only the bias was changed, all three of them excelled the way any male chess player would have; which was the point in the first place.

If there really was something physiological or neurological in women that adversely affected chess abillity, you just wouldn't have seen that; you'd have seen at least one of them being unable to play well - and you didn't see that.

Across a large number of studies the trait of agreeableness has been shown to be higher in women than men. You can speculate all you want about the reasons for this but the difference exists and is clear to see.

But the reason for that is the whole point. If that agreeableness is down to something physical, that'd be one thing, but that's not been proven as far as I'm aware, so the nature-v-nurture question is still open (and most of the stuff I've read on this over the last decade or two comes down heavily on the nurture side for explanation).

And if it's nurture and not nature, then the whole thing is just a social convention that can be reversed (yes that's a rather overworked "just" there, but the point is still valid).

Sparks

hinault wrote: »

Possibly the greatest chess player of all time.
So Fischer's view as to the relative strength of female players is interesting. As for the rest of the stuff you allude to (above) - it's extraneous at best.

No, it shows that his opinions outside of the field that he was an unparalleled expert in should not be given the same weight as his opinions inside that field.
And the whole "can women play chess well" question isn't about chess; it's about sociology, neurology, physiology and a few other fields that Fischer had no experience or qualifications in. And those people who were equally as expert in those fields as Fischer was in his say that he was wrong about that point.

hinault

Sparks wrote: »

No, it shows that his opinions outside of the field that he was an unparalleled expert in should not be given the same weight as his opinions inside that field.

You agree that Fischer was an expert in the field of chess, possibly the greatest chess player ever, but you disagree that Fischer was correct about the relative merits of female players?


Classic stuff.

biko

Reading the op reminds me of when Aristotle claimed women had fewer teeth. Aristotle never actually bothered to check how many teeth his wife had.

jill_valentine

RQ_ennis_chess wrote: »

If it were actually the case that men were choosing more risky and aggressive strategies against women, then women should be kicking mens asses at chess!

Exactly.

The males tend to play aggressive openings against female opponents of the same playing strength, even if it increases the probability of losing the game.

So male players play more aggressively against opponents they know to be female even though it costs them. So it's irrational, and costly, but they persist in it, handing wins to their female opponents that they would not concede if exactly the same player had been labelled as male.

The very big, and very troubling problem is why they're behaving like that, if it consistently fails to offer them anything. Because the question which would follow is that, if male players are behaving in such an irrational way on the actual board, then is the same underlying psychology transferring to other aspects of the community, the "social" side of the thing too?

So you have, on the one hand, a majority-male playerbase which tells female players they can't be as good until it becomes self-fulfilling, and then on the other hand, treats those players with a mild or otherwise element of irrational hostility that they will not demonstrate towards each other. Which, as you can imagine, is not going to be a very fun environment to start dipping a toe into very early on.

I'll confess now, I'm not a chess player - this research cropped up on my radar while I was studying videogame development with an eye to online play. Though you'd never know it, it's believed that more than 45% of online console gamers are female. However, they remain effectively invisible because every girl gamer in the world knows what happens when they switch their mic on - suddenly, rather than playing an 8 player free-for-all match, they find themselves effectively playing 7 against 1.

And I can tell you from experience, even though the more aggressive banzai charges can give you a short term advantage, it gets old real fast, it makes for a much less level field and a far less engaging experience. In that situation, every win you have will be ascribed to dumb luck - while every failure is treated as confirmation of your gender's inherent weakness at COD. Why bother when you could just crack on Mass Effect instead?

Now, while I realise there's a world of difference between PSN and the higher echelons of the chess ecosystem, I do not believe that they are so totally divorced as to have no parallels. I would suggest that in the early stages of getting into serious chess where - for the most part - you can't simply mute your headset and hide the fact that you're female, that effect poses a significant barrier to motivating you to stick with it long enough to get good enough to make it to the big leagues.

Perhaps not the only one, but certainly, a significant one.

JMO, for what it's worth.

Sparks

hinault wrote: »

You agree that Fischer was an expert in the field of chess, possibly the greatest chess player ever, but you disagree that Fischer was correct about the relative merits of female players?

I strongly disagree with the notion that Fischer knew enough about the differences between male and female neuroanatomy, endocrine systems and social conditioning to be able to even have an opinion on whether or not women can, in general, play chess as well as men, let alone an accurate opinion.

Could he have had an opinion on the specific women he played? Sure. But selection bias would mean that that opinion wasn't of any merit when considering the general case.

hinault

Sparks wrote: »

I strongly disagree with the notion that Fischer knew enough about the differences between male and female neuroanatomy, endocrine systems and social conditioning to be able to even have an opinion on whether or not women can, in general, play chess as well as men, let alone an accurate opinion.

Could he have had an opinion on the specific women he played? Sure. But selection bias would mean that that opinion wasn't of any merit when considering the general case.

I'm really not interested in whether you agree with Bobby Fischer or not.

Sparks

hinault wrote: »

I'm really not interested in whether you agree with Bobby Fischer or not.

Did you notice that whether or not I agreed with him wasn't even mentioned there, or were you too busy trying to find an ad hominem that let you not listen to the point of the argument and not think about your own position too carefully?

hinault

Sparks wrote: »

Did you notice that whether or not I agreed with him wasn't even mentioned there, or were you too busy trying to find an ad hominem that let you not listen to the point of the argument and not think about your own position too carefully?

As I said I'm not interested in whether or not you agree, or disagree, with the views of Bobby Fischer with regard to female chess players.

I included Fischer's view to elicit a response from posters.
We have your response - and at this point I'd be far more interested in reading other posters views.

If you'd like to have the last word on this, so be it.

Sparks

So, to paraphrase, you'd like to troll people?

hinault

Sparks wrote: »

So, to paraphrase, you'd like to troll people?

Given that you replied to me first, who set out to troll whom here exactly?

Sparks

You did, fairly obviously...

hinault

This shows who insisted on replying to whom first. Obviously.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=85359595

Sparks

But not who set out to troll on this thread. That's shown here, here, here and here.

hinault

Sparks wrote: »

But not who set out to troll on this thread. That's shown here, here, here and here.

If someone insists on replying to me, the least I can do is be polite and reply in turn.

Sparks

I would have thought you could have read the post and replied to it, instead of what you thought it said. You say Fischer had an opinion about women in chess; I point out that that's a subject area that he couldn't have known about (because it's not specific chess players we're talking about, we're talking about whether or not half the human race have an inability to play chess); and you immediately respond as though I was saying I knew chess better than Fischer.

That's not exactly replying, it's more making stuff up.

hinault

Sparks wrote: »

I would have thought you could have read the post and replied to it, instead of what you thought it said. You say Fischer had an opinion about women in chess; I point out that that's a subject area that he couldn't have known about (because it's not specific chess players we're talking about, we're talking about whether or not half the human race have an inability to play chess); and you immediately respond as though I was saying I knew chess better than Fischer.

That's not exactly replying, it's more making stuff up.

I read your first reply to my initial post to this thread containing Bobby Fischer's view.
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=85359595

Would you prefer me to ignore your direct replies from here onwards?
I can do so if you'd prefer.

Sparks

You didn't read the reply, or you'd have noticed the comments regarding neuroscience, sociology and psychology; and nowhere in there was there any grounds to think that I was saying anything other than that an expert in one field is not by default an expert in another, entirely different field. But hey, it's your time you're wasting. I have to be awake, I'm feeding an infant, but you could be off sleeping or playing chess online...

hinault

Sparks wrote: »

You didn't read the reply, or you'd have noticed the comments regarding neuroscience, sociology and psychology; and nowhere in there was there any grounds to think that I was saying anything other than that an expert in one field is not by default an expert in another, entirely different field. But hey, it's your time you're wasting. I have to be awake, I'm feeding an infant, but you could be off sleeping or playing chess online...

But I did read your initial reply. I read it in full actually.

If you care to check I even went to the trouble of quoting your full reply in my second post to this thread.

Peanut

Sparks wrote: »

It's not my theory, it's what we know from a few decades of studying why we have gender imbalances in the STEM fields. After those few decades, we have learnt that the reason is just culture.

I'm not sure that always assuming a cultural explanation for any study which may show a difference in predisposition (or perhaps more importantly, greater variance between sexes) is especially helpful either.

If we believe that other brain functions such as sexual orientation are not purely cultural phenomena which can be changed by "re-learning", then it seems at least possible that exposure to sex hormones etc. may affect other mental traits such as competitiveness - e.g.

http://dare.uva.nl/document/181761
http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/schipper/hormbid.pdf

These are quite interesting as they hint at correlations between higher-level behaviour and various hormone levels over the menstrual cycle.

By the way, I'm not suggesting that this is a primary reason for gender imbalances in certain areas - I think answers to that are complex and not easily explainable by appealing to purely nature/nurture by themselves. Although of course a lot of it can be due to inertia and ingrained assumptions about gender roles/interests.

cdeb

jill_valentine wrote: »

So male players play more aggressively against opponents they know to be female even though it costs them. So it's irrational, and costly, but they persist in it, handing wins to their female opponents that they would not concede if exactly the same player had been labelled as male.

The very big, and very troubling problem is why they're behaving like that, if it consistently fails to offer them anything.

It doesn't "consistently fail to offer them anything" though. I presume the point is that every now and again, it leads to very impressive wins, which makes the male look cool. Not the most scientific of terms, I grant, but then it's not the most scientific of approaches either!

jill_valentine wrote: »

Though you'd never know it, it's believed that more than 45% of online console gamers are female. However, they remain effectively invisible because every girl gamer in the world knows what happens when they switch their mic on - suddenly, rather than playing an 8 player free-for-all match, they find themselves effectively playing 7 against 1.

How does this work? If 45% of gamers are female, a group of 8 should have 3 or 4 females in it. Do females turn on themselves too? Should we read anything into that?

(Genuinely curious, btw)

Sparks

Peanut wrote: »

If we believe that other brain functions such as sexual orientation are not purely cultural phenomena which can be changed by "re-learning", then it seems at least possible that exposure to sex hormones etc. may affect other mental traits such as competitiveness - e.g.

http://dare.uva.nl/document/181761
http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/schipper/hormbid.pdf

These are quite interesting as they hint at correlations between higher-level behaviour and various hormone levels over the menstrual cycle.

There are interesting hints, yes, but I wonder how much experimental bias they're showing since it's also been pointed out that relative performance feedback (in chess, that's given by publication of ratings) eliminates any such variation in men or women:
http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/21097/

And it's even less clear when you notice that cultural context has a significant impact on these kind of tests:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10683-011-9282-8

jill_valentine

cdeb wrote: »

It doesn't "consistently fail to offer them anything" though. I presume the point is that every now and again, it leads to very impressive wins, which makes the male look cool. Not the most scientific of terms, I grant, but then it's not the most scientific of approaches either!

Fair point actually, yes,

How does this work? If 45% of gamers are female, a group of 8 should have 3 or 4 females in it. Do females turn on themselves too? Should we read anything into that?

(Genuinely curious, btw)

Honestly, I haven't drilled down into that figure much. It was pretty shocking even to me.

I haven't gamed online much in the last two years, and I get the impression there's been a huge leap upwards in that time, so my experience on that score is probably obsolete to some extent. But before that, in all the time I spent playing COD Free-for-Alls I never once encountered another female voice. So where they are, I don't know. That figure doesn't, AFAIK, include "casual" social gaming like Facebook stuff - which bumps the figure up to 60% by some accounts, so it's not simply that.

Anecdotally, my impression is that a very significant chunk of female gamers online tend to stick to semi-private gaming circles among themselves rather than just float around the public matchmaking services, but I've nothing to back that up with on a wider scale, it's just how my friends would operate. And I suppose yes, to some extent, female or not, if there's blood in the water, as a player you would be inclined to follow it.

Of course it's cultural, and it's a shame
Female attendance at chess tournaments went up a lot when I was playing though, from the first one I went to where I was the only girl, onwards and upwards

Lucena

bluewolf wrote: »

Of course it's cultural, and it's a shame
Female attendance at chess tournaments went up a lot when I was playing though, from the first one I went to where I was the only girl, onwards and upwards

What time-frame was that, and to what would you attribute it?

bigtoe7

i think a major factor is cultural as mentioned and chess not seen as a game for women , the question was whether men had a better natural ability than women in playing chess and evidence i got so far is inconclusive. as i said before,women in general are better in some tasks than men and vice versa. forget different genders ,in sport even in same gender there are different natural abilities in humans .in athletics one human race dominates in boxing , sprint running and long jumps but no where to be seen in swimming or high jump competitions and it is dominated but a different race due to different natural abilities .

sparks is a category moderator here which i think is a bit unfair .it is like a football game where one of players is also the referee and can give any other player a red card any time. i don't mind moderator dipping his toe into the pond from time to time but sparks who is obviously a bright guy has thrown himself into the pond in fetal position and making the biggest splash .

cdeb

bigtoe7 wrote: »

sparks is a category moderator here which i think is a bit unfair .it is like a football game where one of players is also the referee and can give any other player a red card any time.

Eh? Should boards moderators not be allowed contribute to the forum at all? That's a very silly comment. And the referee analogy is irrelevant as Sparks isn't a mod here, so can't issue infractions.

Complaining about someone apropos of absolutely nothing is quite ignorant, if you don't mind my saying.

Pherekydes

bigtoe7 wrote: »

i think a major factor is cultural as mentioned and chess not seen as a game for women...

I don't think this is disputed by anyone.

... the question was whether men had a better natural ability than women in playing chess and evidence i got so far is inconclusive.

The survey I linked to is fairly conclusive. Also, too, are the examples of the Polgar sisters. If women were unable, the Polgars would be unable. It's really that simple.

forget different genders ,in sport even in same gender there are different natural abilities in humans .in athletics one human race dominates in boxing , sprint running and long jumps but no where to be seen in swimming or high jump competitions and it is dominated but a different race due to different natural abilities .

You've lost me now. What different races? You mean blacks and whites. Like "white men can't jump" kinda thing? Better tell it to Ivan Ukhov, Andrei Silnov and Stefan Holm, the last three Olympic high jump champions. Greg Rutherford is the Long Jump champion.

sparks is a category moderator here which i think is a bit unfair .it is like a football game where one of players is also the referee and can give any other player a red card any time. i don't mind moderator dipping his toe into the pond from time to time but sparks who is obviously a bright guy has thrown himself into the pond in fetal position and making the biggest splash .

Sparks is not a moderator for this category, though, so your point is irrelevant. Plus, even if he were a mod, he's entitled to weigh in. Nothing he's said has been in the slightest bit controversial.