Joanna
Michael Pollak wrote:
>
> On Thu, 4 May 2006, ravi said:
>
>> It doesn't seem to add much to reiterate that women's presence in
>> chess has been minimal, historically. Why that is so, is an
>> interesting question, for which we have some answers. That Judit
>> Polgar can hold her own against top ranked men demonstrates that at
>> least today, there is no inherent [ability based] reason for this
>> under-representation. I think the parsimonious explanation suffices.
>
>
> There are actually two pretty clear sociological reasons why women
> have done so badly in chess which the career of the Polgars did a lot
> to expose. One is that top flight chess players are, on average, the
> most antediluvianally sexist bastards you've ever seen. Marines are
> better. This was something I never expected, and I have no idea where
> it comes from, but it's undeniable. It's seems so counterintuitive. I
> mean, what less manly sport is there ....Oh. Maybe that's where it
> comes from :o)
>
> Just as one example among many: I went to a tournament 20 years at the
> then Penta Hotel in New York when Judit was 10, Sophia was 12 and
> Zsuzsa was 18. Hungarian was almost the lingua franca at that
> tournament, and I was with a Hungarian friend who knew all the players
> because he'd gone to school with Gyula Sax, so we got to chat with
> him, Portisch, the Polgars, etc. In the middle of the floor, roped
> off, were the GM games. It was early in the tournament, so people
> losing or winning was uneventful. But then slowly word got out that
> Zsuzsa was beating Nick DeFirmian and the GMs starting gathering like
> vultures along the edge of the cordon. They weren't talking, but you
> could hear them smiling and silently giggling and mocking. Finally
> DeFirmian jumped up yelling out loud and ran out the room. He just
> couldn't take it anymore. Being beaten by any man in the world, even
> one 500 points below him, wouldn't have caused this. It was literally
> unbearable for him.
>
> So that's the first point: this is a very hostile work environment.
> It is no mystery why historically there weren't many women attracted
> to it. You'd have to have been nuts.
>
> But then we come to the second part, which flows from the first but is
> much more causally important: once you reach the GM level, the only
> way to get higher, to get into the ring of inner contenders -- and
> this was esp. true back in the 80s when the Polgars were coming on the
> scene, and chess computers were still in their infancy -- is to
> analyze with other top GMs. No book can teach you anything at that
> point. It's going over the games afterwards with the other top GMs and
> and discussing and arguing that teaches you things you don't know.
>
> And that's a very exclusive club. And women were simply not let in
> it. And it was very clear when Zsuzsa was 18 that she was being frozen
> out. It was clear to Sax, who was one of Hungary's top 5 players. He
> said he sometimes analyzed with her and got flack for it. But there
> was no way she was admitted to the regular sesssions that went on
> informally every week after every tourament. She was basically being
> frozen out of upper GM school. She was hitting the ceiling at the
> moment when she should be making her greatest leap. You could just
> see her shoulders sagging under it.
>
> Judit was always made of tougher stuff. When she was 10 she kept a
> little toy lion next to the table. And she always went for the
> advantage. When her opponent, who had white, didn't show up by the
> 7:30pm start time, she said to her mother they should start his
> clock. Which you have the right to do, but which is really very
> prickish and rarely done. And her mother, a very gracious woman, said
> the obvious, which Judit knew, but then she whined self-righteously,
> But what about my bedtime?! And this was against a guy with a lower
> rating.
>
> And not only was Judit tougher, but the world changed appreciably as
> she got older. The world already changed at the lower ranks to let
> Zsuzsa into boys' tournaments -- that took a revolution in itself in
> Hungary. It took legal pleadings. And then Judit was the first woman
> in history to be treated as a man at the upper level after playing the
> same route as boy when she was young.
>
> So IMHO, the problem here is solved so thoroughly at the intake level
> that there's no reason to even entertain other hypotheses until we get
> new data. These three women were basically the first in history to get
> the training and competition that men got. And Judit really was the
> first in history to be allowed into the inner sanctum. And based on
> that incredibly tiny sample, for one of them to be a world contender
> -- higher than most of the guys whose games you follow in the paper --
> is statistically incredible. And there's nothing in their past to
> suggest any genetic reason for this. Dad's a kind hearted patzer. He
> simply fought for them to have the rights of men. And it was a long
> fight, and he eventually won.
>
> So to the extent that the Polgars can be used as evidence, they
> suggest to me that in an alternative universe where 10s of thousands
> of women had been treated equally, there'd be a lot of them in the top
> ranks.
>
> And when top chess players give you their considered opinion that
> women don't have what it takes, remember -- these aren't social
> scientists giving you their considered opinion after years of
> consideration. These are men with the maturity of six year boys -- and
> just as reliable when it comes to opinions on which gender is best.
>
> Michael
>
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