Now wait a minute. I can see why there are issues with males transitioning to female participating in female sports because a man is clearly advantaged over a female but in mental activities what does it matter?

[–] Chriskmee@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

From what I've been able to gather, when gender is anonymous like in online chess men and women seem to compete pretty comparably, but in real life women appear to compete worse against men than other women. Maybe they feel intimidated, idk, but that's what the data seems to show.

[–] mar_k@hexbear.net 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah I feel like it's mostly a cultural thing. In the past, women were discouraged (and at a certain point not allowed) from playing chess, so it's always been a male dominated hobby

In general, women tend to be reluctant to get into male dominated interests and occupations when there isn't a welcoming, large enough space for them (e.g. depending on gender roles and expectations, some countries have mostly male doctors, some have an equal amount of male/female doctors, and some have mostly female doctors). So there isn't exactly a large enough pool of women who care enough to really get into chess and make achievements in it. it's also just, kind of a boring hobby to get into imo