More on Scientific Basis for Sex-Based Differences in Chess Performance

Physorg.com weighs in on recent study about the differential in chess performance between males and females and what accounts for it: Why Men Rank Higher than Women at Chess (It's Not Biological) January 12th, 2009 by Lisa Zyga in General Science / Other (PhysOrg.com) -- In the recorded history of chess, world champions have always been male, not female. Further, there is currently only one woman in the top 100 chess players in the world. Because chess is often considered to be the ultimate intellectual activity, male dominance at chess is often cited as an example of innate male intellectual superiority. But rather than resort to biological or cultural explanations, a recent study proposes a different explanation. A team of researchers from the UK has shown that the under-representation of women at the top end in chess is almost exactly what would be expected, given the much greater number of men that participate in the game at all. Researchers Merim Bilalic, et al., have published their research on this statistical sampling explanation in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The authors analyzed the population of about 120,000 German players as recorded by the German chess federation in April 2007. Based on more than 3,000 tournaments per year, the German chess federation measures the skill level of all competitive and most hobby players in the country (the rating correlates highly with the widely known Elo rating). The sample population included 113,386 men and 7,013 women (a ratio of 16:1). First, the researchers estimated the expected performance of the top 100 male and top 100 female players. Then, they compared the expected differences in points between these high-ranking male and female players with the actual point differences. Theoretically, the size difference between the male and female groups should correspond to the point differences between the top performers in the two groups. The results showed that the top three women had more points than expected, the next 70 or so pairs showed a small advantage for the men, and the last 20 pairs showed a small advantage for the women. Overall, men performed slightly better than expected, with an average advantage of 353 points, whereas the expected advantage was 341 points. Nevertheless, about 96% of the actual difference between genders could be explained by the statistical fact that the extreme values from a large sample are likely to be larger than those from a small one. In the study, the scientists also discussed the question of why so few women participate in chess at all. While it's possible that there exists a self-selection process based on innate biological differences that leads women to drop out of chess early on, this argument rests on a controversial assumption, the researchers say. That is, it requires that there is an innate difference between genders in the intellectual abilities associated with chess - an assumption that has little empirical evidence to support it. Whether or not statistical sampling covers all the bases of explaining male superiority in chess, the researchers hope that the explanation will be considered by both experts and laypeople. In previous discussions of gender difference, there is often no mention of participation rates, although a wide range of other reasons receive attention (e.g. different interests and gatekeeper effects, etc.). In addition, the researchers question whether a statistical sampling explanation might explain the predominance of men at the top of science and engineering fields - although performance in these activities is much more difficult to measure than in objectively ranked chess populations. More information: Bilalic, Merim; Smallbone, Kieran; McLeod, Peter; and Gobet, Fernand. "Why are (the best) women so good at chess? Participation rates and gender differences in intellectual domains." Proceedings of the Royal Society B. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2008.1576. © 2009 PhysOrg.com

How You Ask the Question May Determine the Answer-2

One of the reccurring questions regarding women in chess is "why don't they play as well as men?" and we have published articles over the years at Goddesschess discussing this issue and approaching it from many different angles. Until recently, no one had come up with what I considered a satisfactory answer to this question. Silly me - I should have realized - all along the question was being phrased in the wrong way. Duh! We recently published an article at Goddesschess "The Experts Say - It's Just a Numbers Game." It provides a summary and overview (in layman's terms) of statistical evidence and a discussion of cultural and other phenomena from which can be deduced reasons why there are so few women playing chess relative to the percentage of men playing chess and relative to their numbers in the population (we femmes are a slight majority, at least in the USA). It also addresses the issue of why there aren't more women in the "top" ranks of players which - except for Judit Polgar - are all men. I feel, at last, that the correct question has been asked and that is - why aren't there MORE women playing chess? In order to answer that question, a number of subsidiary questions must first be framed and then answered. I'm paraphrasing now and summarizing very badly but, basically, the research indicates that at early ages - at least in the United States - boys and girls start out playing chess in equal numbers (there might actually be slightly more girls playing than boys at the earliest stages), and they do about as well as far as developing playing skills. Some players are better, some players are not so good, but basically playing good chess is not a gender-derived skill set. But then something happens; as girls approach puberty they begin to drop out of chess, despite the fact that statistically there is no reason for them to be doing so, win/loss wise. And as they enter their teen years, those girls who have stayed drop out more and more. Until there are very few left. By the time a female reaches age 25, in the United States, well - the numbers speak for themselves. And so the question really should have been all along - WHY do the females drop out? Statistically, when girls drop out of the chessplaying ranks in larger and larger numbers, the figures get skewed and data reads "false" - that is - the data shows that males are "superior" to females in chess simply because there are so many more of them left playing the game. That data does nothing to address the underlying issue of why the girls are leaving the game in droves after a certain point and, therefore, says nothing about alleged male superiority in chessplaying skills. At most, all it can give us is a relative ranking of male v. male "superiority." So - one of the underlying questions - what can be done (if anything), to encourage girls to stay in the "sport" of chess. Well, I can name one thing right now - don't continue to insist in calling chess a fricking SPORT. It is NOT a sport. Chess has no similiarity whatsoever to any sport that I know - baseball, football (NFL football, that is), basketball. On a skill level, it is perhaps more closely aligned to billards - is billards considered a "sport?" On a mental level, it is perhaps more closely aligned to certain card games. Whatever chess may be, it's not a SPORT. FIDE is grossly wrong in pursuing that avenue in a vain attempt to increase the popularity of the game and trying to get it admitted to the Olympics as a permanent feature. Oh, please! About three-four years ago, Susan Polgar put together a first "girls only" mega-tournament and, since then, has continued to develop events, bigger and better each year, and now her Polgar Chess Foundation is sponsoring a boy's event too. Susan Polgar was raised by two parents who are well-versed in educating young people and they are vital and active people; I wouldn't be surprised that the senior Polgars have kept themselves well abreast of all the latest research on educational theory during the years and, as an owner of a chess school, Susan Polgar would have made herself familiar with these theories too. I recall reading, first starting a couple of years ago, an article here and there in my local newspaper about the really "upscale" schools (in the high property tax districts) experimenting with going back to "girls only" and "boys only" classes during part of the school day. I wouldn't say it's an avalanche, exactly, but more of such articles have appeared, invariably reporting on the success of such fledgling programs and, so I read these days, the students like the separation of sexes a lot. I don't know what this all means; I never thought about it as a girl going to school with boys along with all the rest of the kids in the neighborhood; I never felt I was "competing" with them - they were just 'boys' - you know? And so doing good at math and science didn't phase me; I was jealous of Keith Klima because I was no good at gymnastics (I could hardly get my butt over the "horse") and he was very good. But he sucked at ancient history and I got A+++ all the way through and I was teacher's pet - I know I was :) We shared a few dates in high school and a kiss or two, and it had nothing to do with how either of us were doing in school, or ancient history, or gymnastics. He was cute and I was cute and we'd had each other's eyes for years before those few dates in our junior year. That was enough to know. We weren't going to be a "couple." Things seem to have gotten oversexed somehow, these days, for the young ones. Well, maybe that's the wrong description; things seem to have gotten so much more complicated between boys and girls now; and yet I don't believe we've changed all that much, on a fundamental level. And so you have girls liking "all girls" classes and boys liking "all boys" classes - and somehow this seems like a big step backward to me, because we've lost the ability to "speak" to each other. So - maybe we're still not asking the question in the right way?