In chess there are two kinds of tournaments: women only and open to all. For some reason or other, men dominate in chess, so it makes sense to have a separate women's tournament imho.
The reason (in chess at least, which is what I'm familiar with) is to encourage more women to play chess, to close the gender gap formed in the first 150 years centuries of international organized chess.
Many (most?) events aren't separated by gender, but most games will still be man vs. man. Men outnumber women in chess by almost 6:1. At higher levels, the ratio is more extreme (something like 40:1).
There are women-only competitions to encourage more women to play and to give them some visibility, but it's not the same premise as separated sporting events, that women have an inherent disadvantage.
There was a lot of good discussion about gender in chess a few years ago when Queen's Gambit was released on Netflix[1].
We have separate events for women in chess tournaments as well. Could it possibly gasp be that womens brains are different to mens? Or is that utterly too horrifying to some to comprehend...
I completely agree with you. As noted by others, this is not a question of managing gender equality in competition: chess has no inherent gender advantage. Though there are significant structural biases for men in competition which is why the ratio of women to men in competition is so low.
This is entirely about political, religious, and social pressure attempting to limit social change that they strongly disagree with.
Just checked Wikipedia as well, and it sounds like Chess mostly isn't separate by gender so I stand corrected:
The majority of chess tournaments are open to all participants regardless of gender. Very few, if any, international tournaments are restricted to men, but a few are restricted to women, most prominently the Women's World Chess Championship and the Women's Chess Olympiad.
In sports where men and women can't compete equally I think separation by sex is appropriate. Is chess such a case? If not then make the tournaments open to all.
There is no male-only chess, women can also compete. Female-only chess clubs and tournaments are a way to encourage women to get into chess in a less hostile, more welcoming environment. Ultimately it's an attempt to bring more diversity to the male-dominated game. In 2019 for example, women made up a higher percentage of chess players then ever before, but still only accounted for 14.6% [0] of registered players.
It's not strictly gendered - women are free to enter any tournament and hold any title. There are a number of women-only tournaments and titles, purely to improve the visibility of women in the game. Without women-only tournaments, you'd see very few women at major events.
Only one woman has ever qualified for the world championships (Judit Polgar in 2005). Hou Yifan is the best female player in the world, but she's ranked 105th overall. The second highest ranked female player is 303rd.
Gendered tournaments aren't ideal, but the alternative is worse. Most countries do a dismal job of promoting female participation in chess, with China being a notable exception. Western women just aren't being encouraged to take up the game and aren't made to feel welcome when they try.
Plainly, to give women a chance in a field that is excessively male-dominated for systemic reasons. Not saying this was a good or bad idea.
Not that women are less capable than men at playing chess, but boys were historically way more encouraged than girls to partake in "intellectual" activities such as learning, playing, and mastering chess. Obviously the end result is that you get way more men than women that are good at chess. It's a bit like noticing that the most impactful people in the history of science were (mostly) men. Men are not inherently smarter, but it's a bit easier to do stuff when you can get yourself an education instead of getting married at 20 and raising the kids.
If chess didn’t have a women’s league nearly all top level chess would be men so a woman’s league is a way to encourage more women to play chess. It’s the same premise as an all female gaming server or gaming tournament
The categories aren’t male and female, the categories are women and “open”, so anyone who wants to can compete in the open category. I’m disappointed they don’t consider trans women women because they are but chess having a women’s league isn’t that weird
As the article states, the top 100 chess players in the world are male. The field is incredibly male-dominated and even though women and men should be equal, the reasoning between splitting it tournaments by gender is that women would otherwise get discouraged.
It's not a male/female split. It's an open-to-all/open-to-just-women split.
It might look like there are separate male and female things unless you look closely, because not many women play. It's easy to miss them. For instance, on the top 100 list, there is only one woman, Judit Polgár, down around #50. She has been as high as #8.
I believe that the usual argument for women-only tournaments is the same as the argument for women-only hackathons or women-only coding boot camps. Like programming, chess is a de facto male activity, and so women can feel uncomfortable participating. A woman-only tournament gives them a chance to play without hang to deal with being part of a tiny minority.
With almost all sports males have a dramatic physical advantage[1] so it's not really fair to have males compete with females.
With chess there is no physical advantage, so why keep separate tournaments for males and females? What is the reasoning for preventing males and females competing in chess?
[1] In the 90s, ISTR reading about a tennis match between a #3-rank female player against a #5000-something-ranked male, and the male player simply dominated. I wish I could find that article now, but it was a print mag and I don't remember which one it was.
Women's chess tournaments are to encourage more women to get into chess.
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