What's fascinating to me is that the article makes no mention of female performance in chess whatsoever, which has historically been underwhelming compared to men, seeing how the strongest female player ever never made it into even top-4 of the Candidates tournament, let alone played for the Championship.
Since height and athletic ability plays almost no role in chess, can you perhaps explain why women have underperformed?
Also, I have no idea why WGM (Woman Grandmaster) title is even a thing, since I cannot possibly think of a more discriminatory "consolation prize" type of title in a field where men don't have an inherent physical advantage. Curious to hear what is your take on this as well.
I wouldn't say they have "underperformed", the best women chess players would absolutely wipe the floor with me and other casual players. However, historically women don't reach quite the same top level as men in some mathematical tasks, even though their median performance is on par or even better sometimes. You can visualise it as two normal distributions with the same mode, but one is slightly wider.
For now the WGM title exists, because if it didn't, there would be no women Grandmasters. While you see it as a consolation prise, I see it as an encouraging step to build a tradition of unisex chess participation so that one day we can have truly equal tournaments.
Since height and athletic ability plays almost no role in chess, can you perhaps explain why women have underperformed?
Also, I have no idea why WGM (Woman Grandmaster) title is even a thing, since I cannot possibly think of a more discriminatory "consolation prize" type of title in a field where men don't have an inherent physical advantage. Curious to hear what is your take on this as well.