Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Stereotype threat: girls and chess

For anyone interested in the way that marketing perpetuates stereotypical gender roles and limits our daughters:
http://www.packaginggirlhood.com/

http://m.motherjones.com/media/2014/02/heres-why-women-suck-nearly-every-job-world

Further reading on this topic (not specific to chess)

From the article:


Did the girls who are unfamiliar with this "stereotype" (what I would call a fact) do better against boys than those who were unfamiliar? In other words, does this study asserting that girls underperform because of stereotype threat have a control group? It appears not to, which would make it dubious.

Some of the early work on "stereotype threat" said it was triggered when people from group X were told that members of group X were worse than average at some activity (such as doing math) before engaging in that activity. I've been to a lot of chess tournaments, and sex differences in chess ability are not being discussed before the games begin. This is another reason to doubt the "stereotype threat" explanation for sex differences in chess.

I disagree. A stereotype need not be explicitly discussed to affect behaviour. Simply observing a biased sample from the population that is touted as representative alters people's heuristics and behaviours.

There's an endogeneity problem with your idea. Is chess performance the input or output to observing prevailing social norms? Observing just chess outcomes can't tell us the answer, so to conclude a priori that outcomes are highly correlated with ability for both genders is just supposition.

I would caution that we're not truly observing chess ability but, rather, chess outcomes. Ability might factor into observed outcomes but, as with gifted underachievement, the choice of extent of expression of ability is under the individual's control. There is enough evidence that some high IQ girls mask academic ability (that is, play "dumb") to adhere to gender stereotypes and fit in a coed classroom. With the bias toward female teachers, it wouldn't be hard to argue that most clasrooms are biased in favour of female socialization. If chess clubs are disproportionately male dominated, one would expect high-ability girls to self-select away from performing at full ability in even greater proportions than we observe in traditional classrooms because the social gradient is even steeper.

Many chess tournaments have overall prizes and prizes for women, for example the Gibraltar Masters http://en.chessbase.com/post/closing-gala-in-gibraltar . There is a women's world championship title with a substantial prize, and there are national women's championships as well. At the chess olympics, called "olympiads", there are overall teams and women's teams. There isn't a lot of money in chess, but a woman does not have to be as good as a man to be invited to tournaments and to win prizes. Therefore a belief that the distribution of talent in chess is not the same for males and females (although the distributions definitely overlap) need not discourage a girl from playing seriously. Female tennis players don't give up even though they know the best male players would defeat the best female ones.

That's all and well for the women who self-select to perform at ability, but I would argue it's irrelevant to 5 year old girls looking for a fun outlet for their sharp minds. If the proximal rewards for chess are minimal--a boys' club, teaching skewed to the male mind--girls won't persist in chess, no matter how lucrative professional purses might be. It's the same argument as we see for STEM underrepresentation among females.

To me, that there are separate competitons for women suggests attempts are being made to correct for historical underrepresentation of females in chess and change social expectations in the game and elicit higher female participation rates among junior female chess players.

What does the Markov transition matrix look like between beginner and advanced players of similar ability (not outcome) across genders and ages, though? Are females converting from junior to senior levels at similar or higher rates than males, but with a smaller starting population? Or, is there good gender balance at low levels with an age-linked inflection point where gender balance is skewed for similar ability players? The answers to these questions matter because the get at the underlying causes of the imbalance.

I don't think women's vs men's tennis is an appropriate analogy. There is a very real physical difference re: strength, reach, and speed for men in population averages that drives different outcomes. I'd say a more analogous case is underrepresentation of females in C-suite offices which, like female underrepresentation in chess, is driven by myriad factors beyond raw ability.

Gee I wonder why girls might under perform if the world of chess is populated by those who believe there is any justification for having men and women compete separately. I strongly reject the idea that boys are inherently better at chess than girls. I cannot even believe any credence is given to that position in 2014.

+1

Bostonian, did you read the full study? Your objections don't make very much sense in light of their methods. Their point wasn't, "Girls are bad at chess; it must be because of stereotype threat." Their point was, "Girls at certain ages and in certain situations lose to boys at higher than expected rates, statistically--perhaps due to stereotype threat." As I noted earlier, the oldest girls appeared to be somewhat immune to ST, which is interesting. The girls who were most susceptible were younger and were playing older, more highly rated boys (a situation that could be especially intimidating).

Also, if girls are naturally worse at chess and that's why they don't play as much or win as much, I wonder how you explain the fact that there are many more girls playing chess in the younger grades than later on? Do girls get more and more "chess stupid" as they age?

What about your daughter, who plays chess, correct? (And is pretty good at it, IIRC.) It would be hard to know that your dad expects less of you due to your chromosomes.

I suppose if you want to be competitive at chess, you'd have to have the talent and the motivation to win and the ability to perform even when feeling intimidated, etc. Girls who are talented at chess may not have those other factors. No big deal, IMO. Who's to say that getting along with peers isn't more important than kicking butt at chess?