> Most of what we believe separates men from women is learned behavior.

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.

Ultimately we are all products of evolution. While some aspects of our nature are instinctive (no external sensorial input is needed to exhibit certain hebaviour), others we learn from observing the surrounding (external sensorial input). If you say all behavior is ultimatelly biological, well, of course you are right, but you are not considering what could have been observed learned behavior on the way.

The point of segregating physical sports is to give women (people who went through female puberty) a fighting chance.

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.

But chess is not a sport. Think about it, how many calories do I burn sitting in a chair and moving my hands occasionally?!

And no, the brain consumes mostly sugars.

Interestingly, grandmasters burn ridiculous energy during tournaments.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/22/chess-grandmasters-lose-weig...

Hm, interesting. But doing sports do all kind of things to muscles. And physiology wise men have more muscles. But intelligence is the same for men and women.

EDIT: They don't cite any papers though

That still counts in practice. We can't immediately rewind time and redo things, even if we wanted to.