Women are competitive in long distance swimming. The record time for crossing the English Channel is 7 h 17m, held by a man, but the women’s record is 7 h 40m, which was set 16 years earlier, so it may have actually been the overall record for a time.
In the road racing Marathon, the women are currently within 15 minutes from the mens’ world record. The women’s record of just over 2 h 15 m, would have been the world’s record 50 years ago. No women will ever win a top marathon, but the gap could narrow, since, if women improve 10% and men improve by the same percentage, the women will increase by a minute faster overall. We could see a day where the men’s record is 1:55, and the top women at 2:05… but that’s still 2 miles behind at the finish line… hardly “competitive.”
The former. There are plenty of women in competitive chess these days, but nearly all of them are playing other women - there are next to none that can mix it with men, and far and away the strongest was and IIRC still is Judit Polgar, who at her best was among the ten or twenty strongest in the world regardless of sex. The rest are a long way behind. Polgar herself is no longer at her peak, although her peak was darned good - as in, good enough to take the odd game off a World Champion, although not quite sustaining it for long enough to be a title contender herself.
Note that the “Grandmaster” title awarded for sustained success in top-flight chess is now within reach of about thirty women in the world (which is phenomenally good compared to the rest of us) - but well over 1400 men. The “Woman Grandmaster” title is a separate ranking, which is not only a lower level than “Grandmaster” but lower than the next rung down as well. Also note that GM is awarded for winning women’s and juniors’ world titles - so a woman or junior could earn the title that way without ever making the grade the normal way in competition with existing GMs.
At the amateur level, there are very few “Women’s” events in chess. Only in world events, and national championships. The aim is to give women more visibility to encourage more participation by women, and give role models to girls.
And, as mentioned, Judit Polgar did reach #8 in the world, about 10 years ago, and she regularly played in the top round-robin events, where she held her own (50-50). And she has served as a role-model for many younger girls. While still a rarity, there are girls atop the rankings of some state scholastic categories (top player under 10 years of age, for example), so I’d say the equality of gender, in chess, applies more to the quantity of female players to their male counterparts, which still is probably 10-1, in favor of the guys.
One advantage that women may have over men, at the top level, is that women age slower than men, at least in terms of life-expectancies. Chess is a combination of youthful endurance as well as experience – the problem with men, is that they generally peak in their mid to late 30’s as competitors, even though their chess knowledge continues to grow. Women may be able to extend that into their 40s. I would not be stunned to see a woman playing for a world championship in the next generation of chess players. Which would have been unthinkable a generation ago.
Beyond my ability to say. You could say that it is not seen as a traditionally female pursuit, or that women aren’t encouraged to take it up, or there are a lack of female role models… but that wouldn’t account for, to take an example, how cooking is a traditionally female pursuit, but a lot of the top-flight chefs are men.
shrug If there’s anything to the popular view that women are better than men at multitasking, perhaps this is a counterpoint: chess at the top level requires intense unitasking.
Judit Polgar, was the youngest ever to earn the Grandmaster title (at the time, 1991) breaking the 30 year old record held by Bobby Fischer. For a period of 10 years or so, she held her own in the top Round Robin tournaments like Linares, Wijk an Zee and Dortmund. That would be akin to Serena Williams routinely getting to the quarter finals of the Men’s draw at Wimbledon or the US Open.
Presently women comprise 2.3% of the Worlds Top 1000 players. That doesn’t sound so great, but it’s estimated that women’s participation in world wide organized chess is somewhere around 5%, so the biggest problem seems to be quantity more than quality.
Polgar was blessed to have instruction at an early age – she was home-schooled, and home-trained by her father, Lazlo. She also had two older sisters who both became top women’s players. But up until recently, young girls were not targeted as worthy of early training, and to be a top chess player, today, you have to studying seriously by the time you’re of elementary school age. Today, partly due to Polgar’s precedent-setting example, young girls are being targeted for early training – especially in India and China, two of the world’s emerging chess powers.
One thing I would note that another way Equestrian is a unique sport, aside from being co-ed is that the Olympic level is NOT the highest level of competition in the sport. so what you’re saying is true, but it’s also oddly misleading. When it comes to the most difficult competitions in the world, men and women have close to equal success.
The Olympic Eventing is effectively a CCI*** (“three-star”) while the highest level of difficulty is CCI**** (“four-star”). There are six CCI**** (four star) stand-alone events every year (located in the US, UK, Australia, Germany, and France). The Olympic difficulty was reduced because not enough countries could field a four-star team, and the sport was in danger of getting dropped from the Olympic roster because a competition where only the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, and France can be expected to safely field a 4-person team doesn’t fulfill the Olympic mission.
Since the standard got lowered, winning the Olympic gold is therefore a lesser accomplishment than winning a 4-star event. As noted, women have consistently won Badminton (a four-star) over the years, though men have more wins. Rolex-Kentucky was first run as a four-star in 1998. Since that time, men have won it 13 times and women have won it 12 times (the 2014 event will occur in April).
The top table tennis players are incredibly quick and strong for their size. The athleticism required for competitive table tennis at a professional level is quite similar to being a professional martial arts combatant – so yes, speed and strength still matter.
The top women are very very good. Good enough to beat 99% of amateur men. So the disparity is not as great as basketball, soccer, or even tennis. But the top men would absolutely destroy the top women… I mean, it would be exceedingly rare for the woman to even score a single point.
That being said, it is noteworthy that at all but the highest levels, men and women usually compete in the same tournaments. Some events have a separate “women’s” tournament but in the main event, both men and women are expected to compete.
As I alluded to in my previous post, the best way to become a world class chess player is to identify the top prospects when they’re very young (5-10 years old), and then get them a lot of training. Traditionally the cost of the training (all or part) is subsidized by local and national chess organizations, but, up until recently they were targeting young boys and not young girls. Judit Polgar’s ascendance changed that to a degree. Within 10 years, I’d expect that China and India will have at least a dozen women players within the top 1,000, and that with the rest of the world combined that women will comprise well over 5% of the top 1,000.
Judit Polgar is indeed a woman, and she proved that a woman could compete evenly at the very highest level (top 10). All that remains to be done is to break down social and cultural biases against their gender.
Um, maybe I’m in the minority here, but I don’t consider chess to be a sport. It’s certainly a competition and a very LONG match requires endurance, but to me it’s not really a sport.
I’m really not all that familiar with equestrian sports other than horse racing. Given the weight requirements to be a jockey, one would think it would naturally suit women, but that’s not so. While there are female jockeys who race against men, it’s pretty accepted that male jockeys are better overall, and certainly the top jockeys are overwhelmingly male. It takes quite a bit of strength to ride and handle a thoroughbred.
Chess and Bridge are both recognized by the Intl Olympic Committee as “mind sports,” and, a dozen years ago, both were up for consideration as Olympic events. Oddly enough, Bridge was denied because too many of the players kept on failing required drug tests during world events, and the top chess pros rebelled against any drug tests, thus ending Chess’ candidacy for the Olympic games. (I think high doses of caffeine can cause you to fail a drug test.)
Chess has usually been regarded as “sport,” particularly in the old Soviet Union, which, at the time, had half of the World’s competitive players. It is most certainly not an athletic sport, although conditioning helps a lot, and high-blood pressure causes a lot of top players to lose strength as they near 40.
So chess is a “mind sport” per the IOC, but we tend to think only of “athletic sports” as sports, per se.
Negative. The way the sport is structured, the men would dominate based on degree of difficulty (which is multiplier of your judged score).
If you make them all do the same dives, then it would be closer, but still male dominated I suspect. They jump higher which makes most dives easier.
As far as flexibility, at the top end of the sport, the women may be more flexible, but it’s irrelevant as everyone is flexible enough to perform every dive competently. I’d say men and women are equally talented at ripping, aka leaving no splash.
There are a few woman record holders, but the vast majority of the record holders are men. Women are competitive, but the difference in the popular routes (such as the English Channel) is there. There are some swims that have only been done once (such as the Bering Straight and Lake Titicaca) by Lynne Cox who is a legend in the sport, or Diana Nyad’s recent Cuba to FL swim and women obviously hold the records for those.
Jose Capablanca proved that it was possible to learn the game by watching your father play, notice his mistakes, challenge him, beat him, and without significant interference become the world’s strongest player within a couple of decades, but I doubt that he set any trend. What one astoundingly gifted natural genius can achieve, it does not follow that anyone else can.
The rest of the female chess world has had plenty of time to follow in Polgar’s footsteps, it’s getting on for a decade since she was at her peak and she has been on the chess scene for about 25 years; but she is still the only woman ever to feature in the top 100 in an era when there are orders of magnitude more GMs than there used to be, and I think it’s unproven that this is down to social and cultural biases.
While a very few are born great, most chess players need early training. Even Bobby Fischer was not a child prodigy (like Reshevsky, for example) but benefited by tutelage before he reached the age of 10. And he went from being a very good boy player to world championship candidate at the age of 15.
I disagree that women have had enough time (since Polgar’s precedent) to close the gap. Ten years ago, there were less than 15 women in the top 1000. And you should understand that many of the men in the top1000 are older players who are gradually declining from their peak, play less often, and are basically no longer as strong as their ratings would indicate. Whereas most of the strongest women are still under the age of 40. (In fact I count just 1 of the top 30 women over the age of 40 - Pia Cramling) Women have been getting stronger at the top level for level at a rate that has doubled every decade. I assume that’s because more women are playing and studying more chess and not because there’s been some change in women’s innate ability to understand the game.
btw, the number of GMs has nothing to do with the top 1000, which is based on the FIDE ratings. There are GMs not in the top 1000, and non-GMs in the top 1000. The GM title is based on achieving norms or standards in tournaments that meet specific requirements.