Women's chess tournaments are to encourage more women to get into chess.
I can't even speak to a possible difference in gender capability because I've never known a single woman who enjoyed it enough to do anything more than learn how the pieces move.
My impression is contract bridge has somewhat gender parity in terms of who plays it. [0] The ranking of contract bridge players doesn't appear to measure current quantitative strength, which seems to encourage volume of play rather than skill.
My own intuition is that, just like there are more men above 130 IQ and below 70, there are probably more great male chess players than female. This is just the idea of greater male variability which is found across a number of different measures - everything from variation in height to things like polydactyly being more common in men.
Seems like yes.. but also no.
I haven't seen convincing evidence to support this.
There's the possibility that the differences we see in the higher echelons of chess arise from biological differences between men and women. But that possibility is not being explored for political/social reasons.
There’s a famous experiment by the Williams sisters, two of the best female tennis players ever, who got demolished by a guy ranked 203rd in the world. There is no way for a woman to make up the testosterone difference in sports where physical prowess matters.
https://www.sportskeeda.com/tennis/news-the-williams-sisters...
No that doesn’t mean every man is fitter than every woman. It matters in top ranks of a sport.
And no, the brain consumes mostly sugars.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/22/chess-grandmasters-lose-weig...
EDIT: They don't cite any papers though
You can go create a chess tournament for short people, or vegetarians, or people who have lived in at least three countries, and nobody will stop you. Nor will your decision be contrary to “the idea” of a more equal society.
https://www.facebook.com/people/Vegetarian-Chess-Championshi...
Not that they don't exist, but I couldn't find the others.
It is only people pushing something about "equality" that rejects that men and women are different that take issue with this idea.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-sex_education#cite_note... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-sex_education#cite_note... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-sex_education#cite_note... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-sex_education#cite_note...
The majority of chess tournaments are open to all participants regardless of gender. Very few, if any, international tournaments are restricted to men, but a few are restricted to women, most prominently the Women's World Chess Championship and the Women's Chess Olympiad.
And we do absolutely have special prizes by gender for other intellectual professions like actors, female leaders/entrepreneurs, female writers, female alpinist (“first female to climb X or Y”). As if it’s something unreachable.
Like most other sports, the "male" league is actually open to everyone, women just aren't competitive.
Even being behaviorism real-life experiments.
A single experiment getting to 8th ranked player is a major win for his theory. Tens of thousands of players try to get there and fail.
Anyway, I really don't care about chess, so make of it whatever you want.
> A single experiment getting to 8th ranked player is a major win for his theory
That's not how it works.
Some people believe that men and women are statistically identical if not physically then at least mentally. But there are differences seen and unseen.
we don't separate by gender other intellectual pursuits, e.g. best author, best director, jeopardy winner, etc.