Men's and women's chess should not be seperated

Dear fellow chess athlete's.

I was inspired to make this post after I attended a chess tournament recently and I performed quite well but I didn't win it or anything. It was a point based tournament (a loss is 0pts, a draw is 0.5pts, a win is 1 point) and at the end I conversed with my female counterpart about our performance. I was shocked when she revealed that she won 1st place in her category which is the same age group as I am in, but she had a full point less than me.

I will use the following points to show why Men and women's chess should be amalgamated.

In the past, the arguement has been made that women do not have the same opportunities as Men to advance in the game because of cultural norms, the setting of the chess gatherings etc. Ever since the rise of technology this cannot be the case anymore! To believe such in our modern age would be insinuating that women are incapable of taking advantage of the various tools that have become available in this era, thus making you misogynistic. In fact many studies have been published which prove that women are able to solve problems and patterns better than Men!

The division of women's chess competition to those of Men's infers that these women will not be able to compete with Men and get the same opportunities as Men to get the same prizefunds that these Male chess athlete's do. A blatant example of this is the World Chess Championship where the winner of the Male section the Men's World Championship, Ding Liren, earned an egregious, awe inspiring 1.2 million euros, while the winner of the women's section, Ju Wenju, earned only 300 thousand. Even the runner-up in the Men's World Chess Championship, an Nepomniachtchi, earned 3 times the money Ju Wenju made. This is completely outrageous and a clear form of discrimination exemplifying the Gender Pay Gap that still plagues the workplace till this day.

Another reason why I believe that Men and women's chess should be amalgamated is that as women won't be able to play with men on a competitive level, they will be less incentivised to study chess at the same level their Male counterpart's do, an example that is as clear as day is when you see a comparison of top 10 ranked Male players compared to the top ranked female players - there a concurrent 200 elo point rating difference between them.

In conclusion, I believe that Men's and women's chess should be amalgamated completely, things like Men's only events should be removed and replaced with events where women and Men can play together competitively, gender exclusive trophies should be removed, and every chess athlete should be able to receive the same amount of prize money as one another.

Tóg go bog é

There is no arguement to support the segregation of chess tournaments based on gender

Are you 100% sure that you understand why women have their own categories?

And if you spend a few seconds thinking about it, you'll probably understand why.

Women are allowed to play with men if they want. The women’s section is there to encourage more women to play.

According to Judit Polgar segregated tournaments are exactly the reason that is keeping women second class chess players. If women grandmasters would set the example and refuse to play in women only tournaments where many players aren't even rated above 2000 instead of playing against the men and learning from their mistakes they will never reach their potential while complaining about prize funds.

Elaborate?

That is simply incorrect, you would find that if you did a simple bing search.

You tell me

This guy just makes a "reboot" of old troll threads that were already discussed to death. What next? Something about Andrew Tate maybe?

What are you talking about

I am sure that you don't fully understand the reasons that there a female categories in Chess.

One extra thing to consider. Threads like this a very common. They're always created by males. Why do you think that is?

Is Judit Polgar sexist? To this day she will not allow her students to play in segregated tournaments. To say women need a special category is blatently saying they are not capable of competing one on one against male players. Sexist is how one looks at it.

It's not - anyone can play open tournaments, attain the non-W FIDE titles, even reach Candidates and challenge the World Champion if they win.

Judit Polgar did reach the Candidates and no one told her "no you are not allowed" because she is a woman.

They ban men from playing in the women's section where literally hundreds of men could easily win money if they were allowed to play in them. It isn't discrimination against women in chess - just the opposite. I don't know anyone who will publicly state that they believe women can't compete at the elite levels of chess because they would be a victim of the cancel culture. If women want to have special titles that's fine but Judit Polgar is an example of a woman who proved it is possible for them to play in the top ten and she said that would not have happened if she had spent her career winning "women's titles."

open chess touraments exists.

also the stats show the men tend to just be better, whether you like it or not.

I think chess should remain separated, but have the option to play with both genders.

FIDE is a world-wide organization, so their rules have to apply everywhere. There are many nations where men and women are forbidden by law from mixing in public--including chess tournaments. So in those places there can only be separate tournaments. So FIDE has separate gender categories. In fact, it was FIDE that started the women's world championship (1920s).

There are also historical reasons--for many, many years women were forbidden or discouraged from playing in men's tournaments. Even when conditions became freer most top tournaments were invitation-only, and no women got invited. It's hard to get highly rated if you can't play against highly-rated players.

For example, Nona Gaprindashvili, longtime women's world champion, got a special dispensation to become the first woman to earn the "normal" GM title. Her performance and rating easily qualified, but she could only get into sufficiently strong tournaments totaling 23 games (24 was required) within the required time frame. Even after she was a GM she rarely got invited to prestigious competitions, so she had to continue to play mostly in women's events in order to make a living.

Because women were discriminated against in chess for so long, very few women were attracted to the game. One of the reasons for separate women's sections and prizes is to attract more female players--similar to the way FIDE gives out titles to "lesser" players in parts of the world where chess is practically unknown to grow the game there.

That conditions have improved greatly in the last 25 years is commendable, but those of us in freer parts of the world can't take our experience as the common global standard. FIDE periodically readjusts FM, IM, GM, WFM, WIM, and WGM standards and the requirements are slowly becoming closer. Someday they'll be equal, but at present women face more obstacles and have less opportunities in chess in many places.