Gender differences in chess

Gender differences in chess

It was a very nice Christmas present: the Russian news portal ChessPro has started to publish a Women's Live Ratings, similar to the one we know for 2700+ players called Live Chess Ratings. There only one female player is ever present, so we cannot track the strongest women players in the world on a day-to-day tournament-by-tournament basis. Now we can and are deeply gratified to see that ChessPro is updating it regularly. The following live list was calculated immediately after the World Women’s World Team Championship at the end of December.

The above got us thinking: how many female players are there in the top levels of chess? In the top hundred the answer is one percent, and that 1% is named Judit Polgar. But how about the top thousand? Using the latest available FIDE rating list for all players we were able to extract exactly 22 female players, which works out to (whip out your calculators, boys and girls) 2.2%.

Which forced us to continue thinking: why is this so, why on earth are there not many more? Of course we have heard many theories – and have a rare one of our own. And then we ran across the scientific study below, which investigates the gender difference in mathematical skill. When you read our summary please replace every mathematical reference with chess – you will find that it is quite illuminating.

Debunking Myths about Gender and Mathematics Performance

For a long time we have known that there is a gap in performance between boys and girls in mathematics skills. In a new study, Debunking Myths about Gender and Mathematics Performance, Jonathan Kane, a professor of mathematical and computer science at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, and Janet Mertz, a professor of oncology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, examine this gender gap and test several popular explanations. Their cross-cultural analysis seems to rule out several causal candidates, including coeducational schools, low standards of living, and innate variability among boys.

The greater male variability hypothesis states that variability in intellectual abilities is intrinsically greater among males. If gender differences in means and variances are primarily a consequence of innate, biologically determined differences between the sexes, one would expect these differences to be similar among countries regardless of their culture and to remain fairly constant across time. Such a finding would suggest that little can be done to diminish these differences.

To this PZ Myers, a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris, remarks on his very interesting (and immanent recommendable) blog Pharyngula:

Back to the Debunking Myths study: "We have pretty clear data debunking the greater male variability hypothesis," Mertz says. The two researcher examined datasets 86 countries. If the greater male variability hypothesis, which posits that men have a greater range of intelligence than women, is true, then that variability would persist, consistently, across all 86 countries. Instead, "For any given country, you quite reproducibly measure the same variance ratio," Mertz says. But between countries the variance ratio changes. Persistent cultural factors, in other words, seem very important in setting variance ratios. "That was one thing that really shocked me," Mertz says.

Some scholars have speculated that coeducational schools put women at a disadvantage in learning math. But Mertz and Kane's research found that gender-segregated schools make no difference in improving math scores for girls or boys. By comparing test scores across cultures, they indict local social factors as the likely primary culprit. Gender gaps vary from place to place, showing that cultural factors swamp biological ones.

What, then, is the cause of the gender gap? Like the gap itself, the cause varies, the authors conclude. Mertz and Kane don't rule out the existence of very small biological difference. Women’s nature might include a tendency to prefer the more nurturing fields, such as nursing and teaching young children, to the more quantitative ones, such as mathematics, physics, and engineering. If so, it might not make sense to encourage and direct any but the unusual female toward studying and seeking employment in these latter fields. This viewpoint has led some folks to propose that it may be a waste of time and money to expend resources directed toward trying to increase participation of women in these mathematics-intensive fields.

The study suggests social factors are key, but figuring out which particular social factors make the most difference will require further study. "I think there's a whole societal issue to combat," says Deanna Haunsperger, chair of the department of mathematics at Carlton College in Northfield, Minnesota. "When girls are looking for a career, they're looking for a career where they can be helpful to society and make a difference. And there's just such a negative stereotype about math they don't see that as a viable option."

Data may show that girls can do math as well as boys, but the stereotype that girls aren't good at math persists and does persistent damage. Just being in a culture that believes boys are better suited to science and math than girls is enough to have a negative effect on women, as work by Joshua Aronson, associate professor of applied psychology at New York University, demonstrated. When Aronson administered a math test to "fabulously good" undergraduates in their third year of calculus – but prefaced it with a statement that the test had never shown a gender difference – women’s scores rocketed past men’s, suggesting that the women’s performance up to that point had been hampered by self-image and stereotype.

Because stereotypes tend to create self-fulfilling prophecies, it's reasonable to surmise that knocking down those stereotypes would improve girls' (and women's) performance. One way of doing that is to raise women's economic and social standing, letting girls see smart women in high places.

Dear readers, before you click open your emailer to give us your take on the subject we urge you to read the three articles mentioned above in full detail. There is much more than we have quoted in our summary.

• Debunking Myths about Gender and Mathematics Performance by Jonathan Kane and Janet Mertz;
• It Doesn't Add Up in Science Careers from the Journal Science;
• Greater biological variability cannot explain differences in opportunity by PZ Myers in Pharyngula