It’s not a physical game, yet I have never seen any women playing against men. I remember once there was a charity game where men and women played but not official Fide tournaments.
Forgive me if they have, they r very rare at least.
Is there a proper reason ?
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There are open tournaments and women-only tournaments.
They do play against each other, you might get that impression because the most popular tournaments are between top players and there are basically no women among the top players.
I won county championship and 2 of my 6 opps were female. Beat them very easily so I thought it was unfair. When went state level 9 out of 9 were males, I won vs 6 but rest of our team got ripped apart so I didn’t see much beyond that.
Poker has a very similar dynamic.
A majority of tournaments are open to all.
There are a small number of niche tournaments just for a subgroup, such as just children, just women, just people of one nation, just elderly folks. Sometimes it’s fun to have an event “just for us”.
They do. You can watch star Youtuber Anna Cramling playing guys twice a day in competition on her channel right now.
These are two different ways that separating men and women in sports and games can increase women’s participation:
* not making making women compete against men where they have a physical disadvantage
* ensuring women compete in equal numbers to men where women are a minority of all players
Chess is segregated for the second reason; the fact that there are simply many more male chess players than female means that, if they competed against one another, the top tier of the sport will have very few women in it. Having separate men’s and women’s competitions ensures both genders are represented.
Men and women do play against (and with) each other. However, because of its history and *gestures vaguely at the world*, there’s a lot of misogyny in the chess world. For example, there are plenty of female chess streamers who have shared stories of sexual harassment and assault at chess tournaments, including while they were still children. That’s before we just get to hostility, bias, and unfair treatment.*
Not to mention the battle to be taken seriously. There was a recent instagram post from 18 year old Divya Deshmukh pointing out that in the recent Tata Steel tournament in after-match interviews her male colleagues were asked about the chess they’d just played, whereas she was asked about what she was wearing. She said that she’d been asked about her clothes and being pretty rather than chess in supposedly-serious interviews since she was 14.
Because of all of this and to encourage more women to play the game there are women-only tournaments and women-only titles, so that those who might otherwise be put off have people to look up to and places they can play competitively without having to worry about their safety or not feeling welcome.
This is a slow process, and there is still a massive gender imbalance in the sport. Just that gap alone would mean that almost all – if not all – top currently-active players are men, which means that that’s who you’ll see competing at the top-level tournaments, which are the ones that get mainstream coverage.
Had things been slightly different, then perhaps we could have seen Hou Yifan competing in the current Candidates tournament for the opportunity to become World Champion. However, she’s retired from professional chess, and because the pool is much smaller and resources are much more scarce, it’s going to be a while before we see another female player as strong as her or with the potential she had.
*As an example, IM Anna Rudolf was once accused of cheating in a tournament because the other players didn’t believe that a woman could play as well as she was. This put added stress on her, and threw off her game. She hasn’t said so explicitly, but since she was competing for a GM norm at the time, it’s implied that if it weren’t for this incident and the way it affected her in the moment and subsequently, she may have become a GM.
Honest question, how often are guys presented with opportunities to join a competitive group that historically and numerically has demonstrated an overwhelming preference for women? Even in professional fields generally associated with women, men tend to be disproportionately promoted into leadership roles.
When you have hobbyist groups in competition that are overwhelmingly male dominated, they tend to be rather unfriendly towards female inclusion.
“The top 50 list I provided consists of male players because historically, the highest-rated chess players have been male. However, there are many talented female chess players who compete at a high level in separate tournaments and competitions. While it’s not uncommon for female players to participate in open tournaments alongside male players, there are also women-only tournaments and championships where female players can excel and achieve recognition. So, it’s not that females don’t make it into the top 50 due to lack of competition; rather, it reflects the historical dominance of male players at the highest echelons of the game.”
GPT-3.5
It’s either cuz women are worse in skill (as always) or cuz not enough women play chess. Prob both tho. Women are programmed by nature being worse than men at anything expect for nursing etc where empathy comes into play. Sure there are some exceptionally smart women but on average there are still way more men who are smart.
Why don’t women compete with men in Olympic shooting? Because they are better and the men wouldn’t win. I suspect something similar applies in chess
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