海角大神

In a commentary for a chess magazine, British chess Grandmaster聽Nigel Short appealed to neuroscience to support his聽claim that women鈥檚 brains are 鈥渉ard-wired鈥� in a way that predisposes females to have less innate chess aptitude than their male counterparts.

In聽essay titled 聽"!鈥澛爌ublished this week in Chess In News, Mr. Short writes that Dutch chess Grandmaster Johannes Hendrikus Donner, may have 鈥渉ad a point,鈥� when he wrote, 鈥淭he difference between the sexes is remarkable in chess, but not any more so, to my mind, than any other field of cultural activity. Women cannot play chess, but they cannot paint either, or write, or philosophise. In fact, women have never thought or made anything worth considering.鈥� 聽

鈥淎t university level, women are clearly now outperforming men in many disciplines. In my own family, my daughter was uniformly academically excellent, whereas my son (like his father before him) is both lazy and erratic,鈥� Short says. 鈥淏ut within the narrow confines of chess, the jury is still out. It is not enough to point to the recently-retired Judit Polgar as evidence that women are as good as men, as the brilliant Hungarian is clearly an outlier.鈥�

Short has first-hand experience on this point, having lost more than once to Ms. Polgar.聽

Polgar, a Grandmaster, is one of three Hungarian-born sisters known for their exceptional chess ability. Susan Polgar was the world's first female Grandmaster and a four-time World Champion. She now聽coaches the Webster University chess team which, last month, won an unprecedented fifth college聽聽chess championship.聽Sofia Polgar is an International Master, the rank just below Grandmaster.

Their father, L谩szl贸 Polg谩r, is notable for his insistence that "geniuses are made, not born," and he has set out to prove it by training his daughters to be champions.

Short writes, 鈥淢en and women鈥檚 brains are hard-wired very differently, so why should they function in the same way? I don鈥檛 have the slightest problem in acknowledging that my wife possesses a much higher degree of emotional intelligence than I do. Likewise, she doesn鈥檛 feel embarrassed in asking me to manoeuvre the car out of our narrow garage. One is not better than the other, we just have different skills. It would be wonderful to see more girls playing chess, and at a higher level, but rather than fretting about inequality, perhaps we should just gracefully accept it as a fact.鈥�

Are Short's claims backed by science? Not according to聽Northwestern University neuroscientist聽, who鈥檚 work focuses on how the brain differs between the sexes, says, 鈥淢y reaction to that as a scientist is that that kind of statement sounds like personal opinion and not one based on any known fact about the male brain versus the female brain.鈥�

鈥淲hen people, especially people in positions of societal authority, such as a chess master who has reached the top of their field 鈥� which gives them some credibility 鈥� make statements that play into stereotypes, it鈥檚 easy, though incorrect, to recognize a ring of truth in their statements,鈥� Dr. Woolley says. 鈥淲hen you add credibility, plus stereotype, it鈥檚 easy for people to accept their statements.鈥�

Short also told聽聽that women excel at verbal skills, but that the gap in chess was, "quite large and I believe that's down to sex differences."

鈥淭here are differences between the male brain and the female brain. We know some of them. There are probably many more that we don鈥檛 know yet. But I can鈥檛 see any direct connection between sex differences in the brain and the types of complex behaviors that that person was referring to, either chess or parking the car, or emotional intelligence,鈥� Woolley says. 鈥淭hose statements [made by Short] sound to me like stereotypes, cultural stereotypes, that now the neuroscience of sex differences in the brain is being hijacked to support.鈥�

Woolley concludes, 鈥淎s a neuroscientist who studies sex differences in the brain, I find no foundation in science to make those statements.鈥�

Twitter users have blitzed Short with posts over his comments.

Short also wrote that 鈥渄espite the enormous societal changes over 40 years, the gap between the leading males and females has remained fairly constant at nearly 250 Elo points 鈥� a yawning chasm in ability. That women seem stronger has more to do with universally higher standards, due to the ubiquity of computers, than any closing of the gender gap.鈥�

Paul F. Avarich, a behavioral neuroscientist at the Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Va., acknowledges that there exist clear differences between how men and women think, including how we process spatial relations between objects in our field of vision. "Does this mean that women are less likely to become chess grandmasters because of a gender difference?" he asks. "Or does it mean that women are less likely to become chess grandmasters because of a gender bias?"

"Gender-fair education focuses on the unique strengths of each gender," Dr. Avarich says. "Consequently, the number of women chess grandmasters is not limited by visuospatial differences.聽 Instead, it is limited by the lack of female-specific training programs."聽

According to聽听笔谤别蝉颈诲别苍迟听, the organization is working to provide such training programs and opportunities.

"Our [USCF鈥檚] mission is to empower people through chess one move at a time. USCF created the US Girls Jr. Championship, an invitational tournament and the US Women's Open in recent years joining the US Women's Championship and the National Girls Invitational Tournament (a tournament of State Champions),鈥� Ms. Haring writes in an email to 海角大神. 鈥淚 believe that parity will be achieved for women, when we go from 12% of the tournament playing population to 50%. It's a numbers game.鈥� 聽

Haring writes, 鈥淭he USA has nine women masters on our under 20 list: two under 13, two more under 16.聽 The future is bright for women's chess.鈥�