Chess is a feminist issue.

Angela Eagle:

gendercriticalwoman.blog/2023/06/22/angela-eagle-mp/

I used to work with a bloke who was very very good at chess. He reckoned that women were less good at chess because chess is a war game and you need a propensity for violence to be good at it.

I took that as that chess is played by men who ideally would be fighting in bus shelters on a Friday night but who don’t have the “physique” to do so. (I’m an actuary - I know a lot of chess players!)

If only Scrappy Doo had discovered chess….

Yup. 0.5% of the population claim a special identity. Even if all of them were male, which they're not, there would have to be fewer than 0.5% men claiming to be women in chess for the demographic to be underrepresented.

Angela Eagle never fails to disappoint;

There is no physical advantage in chess unless you believe men are inherently more able to play than women - I spent my chess career being told women’s brains were smaller than men’s & we shouldn’t even be playing - This ban is ridiculous & offensive to women

There was I thinking she supported all women's shortlists. No, sorry my mistake TWAW. Not sure what her argument is.

Chess player here.

The reason we have separate tournaments for men and women, including world championships, is mainly because a lot more men play and study chess than women. This means the world's top players are dominantly men, so separate women's tournaments allows the best female players to get more recognition.

AFAIK I don't see any reason why being male or having more testosterone etc would provide an advantage in chess. Unless you want to make a case for more testosterone would make you play more aggressive moves or something, which certainly helps you win.

I organised chess tournaments for many years, mostly for children. In my experience, at the primary age it is about 35-40% female, but there is a huge drop-off in the teenage years.

The boys seem to be more willing to play in secondary school, but competitive chess is intellectually demanding, and as the boys start working towards a career, in seconday school and in university, chess becomes a recreational activity for most. Probably a good thing.

The world championship has two categories, last time I checked, "open" and "female". No woman has ever qualified for the open championship. As a previous poster said, only one woman has ever cracked the top 100 rating list, and she was very much an outlier.

Someone once said that women are too smart to play chess.

Really interesting article.

The main Twitter thread, i.e. the one Salter is linking to, has a lot of the usual bleating about "two underrepresented groups." Makes me wonder if that's actually the case. We know the basis for male advantage in chess is laid in childhood, and there's certainly plenty of men who say they're women in related fields like IT. So breaking it down proportionally to their share of the population, doesn't that make it even more probable that this particular group may even be overrepresented in chess?

I love Mumsnet for little nuggets of info like this. Thanks, @Waspie

way back it used to be the King who was the most powerful piece on the board, and the Queen piece didn't exist. All of the pieces were male. The Queen piece was introduced to honour a medieval Queen and her power as a piece rose until she took over from the King. I can't remember the full story but I like to think that women, at least in the ruling classes, used to play chess to a very high standard.

There has only ever been one woman who has reached the standard of GM - Judit Polgar. No other woman has come close to her (yet).

FIDE introduced the WGM title (and WFM, WIM etc) to encourage women into chess and to develop their skills alongside other women. I think the ELO for WGM is 200 less than GM standard.

My son plays at a decent level and in his chess club there are only a handful of women out of the 50+ registered players.

In the past decades the main chess playing nations were USSR and USA and they treated chess as an extension of the cold war! Women were just not encouraged, Countries like China and India are now investing heavily in chess development but neither of these countries is really known for it's forward thinking when it come to sex equality, although it's good to see some really strong girls from these countries in the junior tournaments.

Chess is wonderful, and something in which women could truly excel if given the right encouragement and support. It's opportunity over the past decades they have lacked, not innate capability.

Maybe one day chess will be more like dressage (minus the horses!) and be more representative of the fact half the world is female. But until then female-only tournaments are an inclusion measure. And Dunt and all the other professional bloviating lefties are supposed to support inclusion or so they keep saying.

Leaving aside the issues for a moment, that is easily the best written Twitter thread I have ever seen. It is a pleasure to read. If only I could write half as well as Michael Salter.

Just wondering if pieces can be transed?

Would be handy to turn a King into a Queen, or vice versa.

Or maybe when trans join the female category, the poor women players' pieces all turn to pawns in the new MRA universe.

Also I don't recollect ever playing a female player in the other teams ...

I agree.

At uni there was an inter-college chess league.

My all female college struggled to even make up a team of 5, simply not enough girls had taken up the game when school aged.

Some other colleges had 5 teams and people to spare.

It's a sheer numbers game. You need separate female competitions to encourage and reward. Then an 'open' competition where the best women can compete against the men.

TW haven't had the disadvantages of girls growing up. They should not be in the female competitions.

As and when girls take up chess in more equal numbers to boys then maybe they won't need the separate female competition.

Even at primary age, the numbers of girls taking part in chess tournaments is dwarfed by the boys. There is definitely a case for having this female only. Even if that case is - girls and women want it. Then why shouldn't they have it?

and as always, how on earth does it benefit women to allow men who say they have woman feelings into their space?

Exactly. If there is any case for something to be female only, males shouldn't be there.

Ok, I understand. Makes sense to split by sex. You grow to love a sport/activity because you are good at it. Having a chance to win is key to that. It's also likely that girls come to chess later than boys, so women will have less experience. It may not be right to split it for ever, but it does while so few women are taking part.

Thanks - makes sense, I was seeing this through the narrow lens of sports competition really (as a coach in an endurance sport where physical differences are very real). I wonder if this applies to other board games too? Actually, I now realise I have no idea whether competitions are a thing in other board games!