Chess Sex Differences Reasoned
Why there is only one woman player in the FIDE top 100 players list and there has never been a female world chess champion? A recent Royal Society study suggest that the reason for this gender differences is not biological, historical or cultural but purely mathematical – since the number of men chess players is significantly larger than the number of women players, the top players will obviously be men.
The difference in the chess performances of men and women have long been the center of many studies and debates. It was often suggested that women are intellectually inferior to men, a suggestion supported by the separated chess competitions and the unique FIDE titles for women. In other times, it was cultural inequalities that push women towards and away from specific directions to blame for the small portion of female players among the elite of chess, as exemplified by Judit Polgar, who avoided playing women's chess tournaments and rose above her male colleagues by reaching number 8 at the FIDE top players listing.
The Royal Society's study entitled Why are (the best) women so good at chess? Participation rates and gender differences in intellectual domains offers an unusual outlook on the subject, aiming to replace the men's superiority reasoning with a surprisingly obvious thesis, according to which there are less women chess players at the top from the same reason there are (theoretically speaking) less women at the bottom – simply because there are more men chess players than women. Or in the researchers' words:
"Before considering cultural or biological explanations … a simple statistical explanation must be considered. Even if two groups have the same average (mean) and variability (s.d.), the highest performing individuals are more likely to come from the larger group."
The difference in the chess performances of men and women have long been the center of many studies and debates. It was often suggested that women are intellectually inferior to men, a suggestion supported by the separated chess competitions and the unique FIDE titles for women. In other times, it was cultural inequalities that push women towards and away from specific directions to blame for the small portion of female players among the elite of chess, as exemplified by Judit Polgar, who avoided playing women's chess tournaments and rose above her male colleagues by reaching number 8 at the FIDE top players listing.
The Royal Society's study entitled Why are (the best) women so good at chess? Participation rates and gender differences in intellectual domains offers an unusual outlook on the subject, aiming to replace the men's superiority reasoning with a surprisingly obvious thesis, according to which there are less women chess players at the top from the same reason there are (theoretically speaking) less women at the bottom – simply because there are more men chess players than women. Or in the researchers' words:
"Before considering cultural or biological explanations … a simple statistical explanation must be considered. Even if two groups have the same average (mean) and variability (s.d.), the highest performing individuals are more likely to come from the larger group."