The thread about various identity-based employee groups reminds of this question I have wondered about for a while. Bridge tournaments usually open (to either sex), but there are special tournaments open only to women. What is the reason for that? I know that in the past women were thought to unequal to men intellectually, but I hardly think there are many who hold that view today.
I think there is a similar dichotomy in chess.
I presume the reason is that the set of people who sustain laser-like focus on an activity/skill for years are overwhelmingly men. Hence, the top people in an activity tend to be men.
I guess the organizers want some bridge tournament to result in a woman winning.
No. Unless there is some law stating that men can’t have “men only” tournaments.
I’ve also seen “mixed pair” tournaments in bridge (where each pair must be a man and a woman), and tournaments for those over a particular age (e.g., 70 years). I really don’t think that those would be unlawful discrimination either.
Darts, too. There are separate events run by the various sanctioning bodies for men and women.
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Are there many women who compete in the regular tournaments for bridge, chess, or darts? If there are very few, I could see the women’s only tournament as a way to try to get women interested and involved, so that maybe a few years down the road there are more women in the regular tournament.
I didn’t see the question asking about whether it is legal. Something can be discriminatory and legal. It is obviously discriminatory in the most basic sense of having qualifications. It is also not discriminatory in the illegal sense.
I read the question as “it is immorally/unethically discriminatory?” Which is a different question. My opinion depends on the size and prizes for the tournaments. If they were bigger and more lucrative/prestigious than the open tournaments, with no “male only” equivalents, then I would not hold a high opinion of them because they would negatively affect the top male players.
I’ve never understood why they would have women’s bridge tournaments. The only thing I can think of is that maybe at one time women were shut out from tournaments (though not from social bridge), and that this was a way for them to compete in an equal (though separate) way.
For anything that can hold only a limited amount of people, there has to be a way to discriminate who gets in and who does not. Some events say “this is for women only” other say “this is for people who have previously won awards only”, others say “this is for people over the age of 50 only”. They’re all valid ways to choose a pool of people and none are discriminatory in a negative way.
There can be some argument about if there is only one tournament for anything ever and they say “men only”, if that would be discriminatory in a negative way. The counter-argument is of course, “nothing is stopping women from making their own tournament of the same type!”. This ignores everything such as previous sexism deterring participation, lesser funding, a lack of being taken seriously and losing opportunities, etc. The mountain to climb is higher. But that still doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t be allowed to make “men only” tournaments if they want to. Just to recognize that it’s good to reconsider now and then if you’re really doing what’s good for the sport.
So personally, for me, it comes down to a case of, “who has traditionally dominated in this area.” If there then comes a tournament that specifies it’s for people who have not traditionally dominated or been interested in the activity, I only see it as a positive thing. It’s creating a space in which more interest and more activity can thrive by “lowering the bar” so to speak, creating a more equal playing field down the line and increasing participation overall.
Finally, there is the case to consider of people simply acting inappropriately. Creating tournaments that divide participants along gender lines limits things such as harassment, if that’s been an issue before.
It never occurred to me it might be illegal. I was just asking if it discriminatory. There have been top women players pretty much since contract bridge started. In the 1940s and 50s, one of the top teams and certainly the best known was Charles Goren and Helen Sobel and they were not excluded from any tournament. I don’t know what percentage of the top players today are women, but there are a lot of them. I don’t know that any of the top chess players are women though.
And the answer is : yes, certainly. It’s discriminatory pretty much by definition.
Note that this pattern is followed for just about every sport or game in which humans compete: there’s an “open” competition in which both men and women may enter (though which women rarely enter because they rarely can compete equally), and one restricted only to women (because if men were allowed they’d dominate).
Is there any example of a competition form which women are excluded because they’d exceed what men could achieve?
But most competitions involve physical strength, while there is no obvious reason that women cannot compete on equal grounds in bridge and, in fact, they do. So why are there women’s competitions at all?
Long ago, I played in many ACBL tournaments. They had Women’s Pairs, Mixed Pairs, and Men’s Pairs. Is this no longer the case?
I always assumed that this was a device to have more championship events! KO Teams, Swiss Teams, Open Pairs, Life Masters Pairs, Board-a-match, Mens, Womens, Mixed — 8 different teams or pairs could say they won a Regional championship!
Isn’t this actually: no men allowed, one man allowed, two men allowed? Or was it the case that “Men’s Pairs” prohibited women?
It’s the same situation as chess, Hari - women bridge players aren’t as good generally speaking. Bridge ability is harder to quantify than chess, being a partnership game, plus the expert game is structured around a sponsorship system which introduces a bit of a weird dynamic. But the elite players are still mainly male.
It’s down to what MichaelEMouse says above - young women are less likely than young men in putting the 10,000 hours in to master a sport / game, so the talent pools are much smaller. Why they’re less likely to do this has been discussed here in past threads quite a bit IIRC.
There’s not a huge amount in it for bridge, though - it’s not like darts or snooker where there are no elite women players at all. There’s a few world class women bridge players who mix it at the top - Sabine Auken is probably the best known atm, her team won the Vanderbilt a few years back.
But if those three tournament types are the only ones being held, then clearly a young man is discriminated against, as he’ll have no tournament he can enter. Though the argument might still hold if there are enough tournaments to cover all of the bases.
Do you have some reason to think this was the case? My Googling did produce
[QUOTE=American Contract Bridge League, description of National Championship Events]
Senior Mixed Pairs: This four-session (two qualifying and two final) NABC+ event was first contested in 2011. Provided the pair consists of one male and one female, this event is open to all ACBL members who are at least 55 years of age.
[/QUOTE]
Are Women-Only baby showers discriminatory?
The short answer is, yes, of COURSE it’s discriminatory.
But there aren’t enough men who give a damn to challenge the discrimination, so it will go on.
I believe his/her point was not that men’s pairs meant they both had to be men. But rather that for “men’s pairs” the genders were unspecified and as a result of the scarcity of high-end women’s players every team ended up with two men.
IOW “men’s pairs” don’t exist as an actual defined competitive class; it’s simply the universal outcome of any pairing where the rules don’t limit the gender makeup.
I know squat about competitive bridge, so I have no idea if Xema’s contention is valid. But I’m pretty sure I understand what it was.