Would it be possible to invent a new game by revising the rules of chess...

[Boojatta]

to ensure beyond a reasonable doubt that women who succeed at the new revised chess are not merely competing with men at the job of being men, but are succeeding by being better competitors in a game that has no gender bias?

[Xipe Totec]

1. Would the opening gambit be to topple the king and say: I'm sorry, dear?

[Boojatta]

2. There would be a large number of possible opening gambits.

Maintaining harmony on one's own side of the board might be an element in the game.

[Xipe Totec]

4. Sounds like the game of Strategema

From "Peak Performance", an episode in Start Trek the Next Generation:

The USS Enterprise-D is ordered by Star fleet Command to take part in a combat practice simulation in preparation for the Borg threat.

A Zakdorn strategist named Sirma Kolrami is sent to the Enterprise-D to serve as tactical consultant and overseer of the simulation. Kolrami's severe condescension toward the crew is only made stronger when he easily beats Riker and Lieutenant Commander Data at Strategema. Data becomes convinced he is malfunctioning, but his crew mates realize he is in fact experiencing a crisis of confidence, a very human response.


After the simulation, Data challenges Kolrami to a Strategema rematch. However, this time, he alters his strategy by playing to a draw instead of playing to win. Kolrami, frustrated at Data's apparent stalling, quits the game in disgust - to the delight of the Enterprise crew.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_Performance_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)

[Jack Rabbit]

3. Actually, I think chess as it is does that

The reasons that women have not been as successful as men at chess is a cultural bias in which chess is regarded as a "masculine" pastime and little girls were seldom encouraged to take up the game.

That goes a long ways in explaining how only one woman, Judit Polgar, has ever entered the ranks of elite grandmasters. As one might expect, that is a fairly recent phenomenon. Ms. Polgar became a grandmaster at 15 and was competing at the top by the time she was 18. She was born in 1976. She peaked in the official FIDE rankings at number 8 in 2003. She is currently rated 2711. Currenly number one in the world is world champion Viswanathan Anand of India at 2798.

The two young ladies most likely to rise to that level in the next few years are Koneru Humpy of India and Hou Yifan of China. Ms. Koneru, who also became a grandmaster at 15, is 21 and is rated 2622. Ms. Hou is 14 and rated 2557. She recently tied for third competing in the "Boys'" competition at the World Junior Championship in Gaziantep, Turkey. The event is typically won by a player between the ages of 18 and 20, as it was this year. With her strong finish at Gaziantep, Ms. Hou earned her second grandmaster norm and needs just one more to earn the title.

[Boojatta]

5. Consider the future in steps of 25 years.

Within how many steps would you guess that at least 25 of the 100 top rated chess players in the world will be women?

For example, if you say "three steps", then you guess that within the next 75 years, at least 25 of the 100 top rated chess players in the world will be women.

[Jack Rabbit]

6. We may still be a ways from that

I don't think there's any good way of predicting it. The theory from which I am working says that there is no inherent biologogical/physiological reason men are better than women at chess. The reason is cultural. Little boys are still encouraged to play with toy soldiers and little girls with dolls. You may differ, but I think a set of chessmen more closely resembles toy soldiers.

If you want more women to succeed at chess, encourage your daughters to play the game. That's all I can say.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

10. I'm afraid I think you're almost certainly wrong

I think the evidence that a large part of the reason that more men than women are good at chess is biological is pretty compelling. If you want evidence, either look at the scientific studies, or look at the websites for maths departments in the UK - they tend to have roughly 20-33% female undergrads, 10-20% female postgrads, and 5-15% at most female staff. And that's in spite of what gender-discrimination there is in recruitment being almost solely pro-female (most maths departments are desperate to recruit more women). Some of that is almost certainly cultural, but a lot of it is almost certainly biological.

[Jim__]

11. A 2006 study of gender disparities among chess grandmasters draws a different conclusion.

An abstract of the study:

ABSTRACT—Only 1% of the world's chess grandmasters are women. This underrepresentation is unlikely to be caused by discrimination, because chess ratings objectively reflect competitive results. Using data on the ratings of more than 250,000 tournament players over 13 years, we investigated several potential explanations for the male domination of elite chess. We found that (a) the ratings of men are higher on average than those of women, but no more variable; (b) matched boys and girls improve and drop out at equal rates, but boys begin chess competition in greater numbers and at higher performance levels than girls; and (c) in locales where at least 50% of the new young players are girls, their initial ratings are not lower than those of boys. We conclude that the greater number of men at the highest levels in chess can be explained by the greater number of boys who enter chess at the lowest levels.

And, from a blog that briefly discusses the study:

If you look at the participation rate of women and relate that to performance, you find that in cases where the participation rate of women and men is equal the disparity in ability vanishes. Basically, this means that in zip codes where there are equal numbers of men and women players there is no great disparity between male and female ability -- and certainly not a disparity in ability large enough to explain the difference in the numbers of grandmasters.

I haven't read the study, so I'm not sure exactly what else it says, but the stated conclusion doesn't appear to attribute the disparity to biological differences.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

12. I find that moderately plausible, but it's a different issue.

Whether gender disparity among grandmasters is a function of gender disparity in uptake is one issue (I'm perfectly willing to believe that it at least largely is - I'd be surprised if only 1% of the world's chess players were women, but I think that because of the way normal distributions work that might be a different claim), but that's not terribly relevant to the extent to which that disparity is biological or cultural.

[Nobody]

7. I don't understand the question

First off: "...to ensure beyond a reasonable doubt that women who succeed at the new revised chess are not merely competing with men at the job of being men, "

How is playing chess competing with men at the job of being men? If you start with a boy and a girl who have never played the game before, teach them how, and let them play, who is to say which kid will win the most times? Sure there are a lot of male grandmasters, could it be because of society's expectations? I don't buy that chess is a game of men doing the job of being men. I thought puberty took care of that, not playing chess.

"but are succeeding by being better competitors in a game that has no gender bias?" And other than socialization crap, how does chess have a gender bias? You're not playing a game that involves the ability to pee standing up.

I think that if more girls played chess and were encouraged to get good at it, we'll see more female grandmasters. Changing the game is not the answer. You can't do the equivalent of tying a child to a chair for all its life, deride it for being weak, and then untie the child, tell them to run a marathon and expect the kid to win. Only recently have women and girls even been allowed onto the playing field of every sport or in front of a chess board. We're not going to even the numbers of grandmasters overnight. Once we stop limiting children's potentials, we'll all be better off for it.

[Boojatta]

8. "Only recently have women and girls even been allowed...

... onto the playing field of every sport or in front of a chess board."

Can you recommend a history of American women in chess that is more reliable than the following?

(...) women chess players in the US have been found as early as the first decade of the nineteenth century. (Note that Benjamin Franklin's female opponents were European, so do not count.) According to The Book of The First American Chess Congress,(p. 346) one of these early women players was a Mrs. Gaines, the wife of the commandant of Fort Stoddard, where Aaron Burr was detained upon his arrest. (...) Four other women players are also known in that same decade of 1800-1810. They were all residents of Charleston, SC, where they had their own little playing circle.

From:
EARLY WOMEN IN AMERICAN CHESS
by Robert John McCrary
http://www.excaliburelectronics.com/history1198.html

[Boojatta]

9. People can create statistical spin and claim that "slow but steady progress is being made"

... even if there have been merely random fluctuations.

After a long period of exclusion, many Asian-Americans (women and men) have earned positions not only as students at Ivy league institutions, but also as professors at Ivy league institutions. Adherents of Lysenkoism may be puzzled by this, but is there truly anything surprising about it?

Now, if 25 years is one step, then how many steps of time can we expect to wait before 25 of the top 100 chess players in America are women?

[Taylor4change]

13. NURTURE

The reason more women aren't grandmasters is because we are socialized to be NICE and COOPERATIVE, rather than competitive, and we have OTHER PRIORITIES than winning a game on a board with a buncha little wooden guys, generally.
Has nothing to do with biology. Percentage of women in math courses means nothing - it's still socialization and priorities. How women do when IN the math course? That may have more bearing...