I think the article is specifically making a point about girls playing BOYS, though. It's not that girls are not competitive--it's that when they play boys, they get it into their heads that they are going to lose (because "boys are better at chess"). So they do, even when favored to win.
It's an interesting study. We are not into competitive chess, but there is a chess club at my children's school, and my 11 year old dd really likes to play chess, yet she dropped out of chess club. Most of the kids in the club were male, the teacher who led the club is male, and the thing that I noticed is there is a different dynamic in how the boys who are in the club act, how the teacher leads etc than the dynamic that is in place when my dd and her girlfriends are together. I think that ultimately, no matter how much fun the challenge of chess was for dd (and she's a fairly competitive personality) - that absence of the casual relaxed chit-chat fun that she enjoys when doing things with her girl friends simply bored her to tears and she quit.
It also brought back memories for me from middle school when I was very reluctant to answer a question for any of the other kids in math, and when I asked questions that I knew the answer to just so I could strike up a conversation with a boy. As an adult I *hate* that I acted that way and wish I'd just been *me*... but there's something about gender roles and math/chess/etc in our society, and I think girls in the early teens in particular are very susceptible to falling into those roles.
polarbear, who went on to become a scientist in spite of my early-teen self
