this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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Some people are questioning why there are gender-specific categories in chess.
That's a good question and my understanding is that there is only a female category and then the general one where both men and women can participate. The female one seems to have been created to encourage the participation of women due to the general one being monopolized by men.
You may agree or not with that reasoning and I am not trying to take any stance on it, just trying to answer the questions on why they created a gender-specific category in the first place.
I am not really into chess competitions and my understanding of this point is based on explanations I saw from others elsewhere, so I may be wrong.
Yeah, these categories are not a reflection of physical (or in this case mental abilities) but to give women a chance to shine in a mostly male dominated field. The problem is that when one side has bias in it's favor, or is simply more prevalent in the competition, they get way over-represented and it discourages people from the other side(s) to join in since it seem futile.
I think maybe a good way to get rid of this problem is for competition to feature more categories. In chess, for example, you could have categories and tournaments like youngest, newest to the game, underdogs, etc. which are more likely to feature a variety of players.
I appreciate you.
Thank you very much. This information certainly helps clarify the situation.