Tuesday
Aug032021
Hou Yifan, Women's Chess, and Gender Equality?
Tuesday, August 3, 2021 at 2:31AM
This New Yorker piece is in part a profile of the second strongest female player in chess history, Hou Yifan, and in part a discussion of the ever-popular question, "What explains the disparity between men and women in chess?" Have a look at the various evidence-free assertions offered in the article, and then feel free to weigh in here. Supported claims would be nice, regardless of which side of the argument you prefer.
tagged Hou Yifan
Reader Comments (2)
"What explains the disparity between men and women in chess?"
I prefer evidence plus methodology and the first thing I notice is that the question is poorly formulated.
Evidence: Hou Yifan beats the crap out of millions of male chessplayers.
Methodology: only looking at the best players of both genders is confusing the extreme and the normal.
https://www.livius.org/articles/theory/everest-fallacy/
First, as Short notes, there does seem to be a difference between the brains of males versus females (see https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2017spring/how-mens-and-womens-brains-are-different.html).
The problem arises in trying to tie this difference to any given intellectual endeavor. It seems clear that women and men are capable of any intellectual endeavor they set their very slightly different minds to. Consider that in the not so distant past, women were thought to be incapable of becoming doctors, scientists, engineers, mathematicians, politicians, etc. This has been proven false, for, while fewer females tend to engage in those occupations (for what are undoubtedly reasons or culture and opportunity), the numbers are equalizing as women move into these fields in greater numbers.
Exhibit A has to be the Polgar sisters. That one father could make the decision that his three daughters will all become very good chess players and then carry it out shows that any girl/woman, given the opportunity, can excel at chess. If women were truly wired to be worse at chess, then it would be highly unlikely that three girls in one family would all be capable of chess excellence.
I think Kasparov surely has it right: “you can have a similar conversation about why there aren’t more Grandmasters from different parts of the world, or of different races or cultures. Talent is equally distributed, but opportunity is not.”