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The Women’s Chess System – Finally Time to Abolish It?
Is there someone out there defending the separate, parallel women's chess system after our at least half century experiment?? Is there someone claiming it has been successful? Is there someone arguing at least that it has been neutral and not harmful? If so, what is the basis of your position?
Bob A, TCN Editor
you are begging the question. All the justification that is necessary for women's tournaments to exist is that there are women who want to play in them. They do not need to be defended by claiming they do anything else other than provide opportunities to play chess.
Incidentally, by the same arguments, open events should also be cancelled. The number of open participants has declined substantially over the last 35 years despite all those efforts for chess championships, tournaments, etc. If your claim is that despite work put into tournaments, championships etc. does not result in stronger and more players, that is sufficient reason to talk of "abolishing" women's events, then you should also be talking about abolishing the national championship and the CFC altogether.
And for those who claim that a good reason for abandoning the women's Olympiad team is that they are not strong enough, consistency demands that those people also demand that we not send the National team as it is not strong enough either to be a plausible contender.
.... as long as FIDE supports separate systems, the weak national federations such as the CFC will continue to follow the herd. No matter how silly and corrupted FIDE might appear, most chess politicians are too unprincipled (please note how diplomatic I can be :)) to voice serious dissent. FIDE has a Word women championship so we need to have such national championships, even though we have probably less than a dozen active women players in Canada (girls don't count :)).
Hi Jean:
You have one CFC Governor who has now challenged the sacred cow!
Could Canada lead the way in reforming Women's Chess in the world?? Could Canada eliminate the women's chess system in Canada, and boycott all FIDE separate women/girls tournaments?
Would Canada encourage other national federations to do likewise, until we get enough national federations to come on board, that they can demand the parallel FIDE reform?
Where do other CFC governors stand on this issue?? Is there any momentum for change at the next 2103 Winter CFC Governors' On-line Meeting, if a motion was brought?
Bob A ( CFC GTCL/Ont. Governor )
Last edited by Bob Armstrong; Wednesday, 7 November, 2012, 07:29 PM.
The youth vs older part leads me to interpret it as meaning no junior events. Once you are opposed to and want to do away with all gender segregated events then I don't see how you justify not doing away with age segregation as well. Why is age deserving of special events while gender is not?
Age is a temporary state and youth a decease that time cures easily. Youth events serves as milestones and preparation for adulthood in chess. But women events serve no such purpose. Women will remain women. Women's events just carry the idea that for some reason, women in chess are inferior to men, but nonetheless worthy of some special treatment as if permanently handicapped.
Not sure what your point is Bob. There are basically no female only tournaments in Canada apart from a few cycc sections, the Canadian women's closed and maybe one or two provincial equivalents.
To me, that looks like a lot of "women only" events. How many "men only" events do we have ?
But as long as FIDE supports separate systems, the weak national federations such as the CFC will continue to follow the herd. No matter how silly and corrupted FIDE might appear, most chess politicians are too unprincipled (please note how diplomatic I can be :)) to voice serious dissent. FIDE has a Word women championship so we need to have such national championships, even though we have probably less than a dozen active women players in Canada (girls don't count :)).
The Women’s Chess System – Finally Time to Abolish It?
After almost one-half a century, I think it is time to take the pulse of the issue again. Are we now at the point where this system is no longer necessary, and women can take their place in the open system? Has it served its purpose, and put itself out of a job?
Is it in fact now a “ hindrance ” to the chess development of girls/women? A recent ChessBase article noted: “ Why is there just one woman in the top 100 players on the FIDE rating list, and why are just 2.2 percent of the top 1000 players female? ” This is the result of the separate system after over ½ century of experimentation? One has to conclude it is not working, no? Women are not being helped by this system. In fact, one might wonder whether the separate women’s system may be the CAUSE of these dismal stats ?
Is there someone out there defending the separate, parallel women's chess system after our at least half century experiment?? Is there someone claiming it has been successful? Is there someone arguing at least that it has been neutral and not harmful? If so, what is the basis of your position?
Yuanling Yuan - Role Model in the Mould of Judit Polgar
WIM Yuanling Yuan joined the Scarborough Chess Club, and there were a number of masters higher rated. She lost numbers of games in the open swiss tournament on Thursday evenings - in fact, she was probably doing worse at SCC than she was in the many weekend tournaments she was playing in.
Yet, slugging it out in the open section led to her then becoming the SCC Champion in a subsequent year. She was playing good opposition regularly at the club ( and in weekend tournaments ), and she, not surprisingly, improved!! She was not wasting time playing much lower-rated players in women's sections, to win a prize, at the expense of better opposition.
I saw them countless times in Opens in their rating sections :D
Yet the fact remains that more than 1/2 their tournaments are girls only. Look at Yuanling Yuan's chess resume and I think you'll only find one girls tournament after the age of 10 (other than the 2 Olympiads of course).
To cite but one example to support your sentiments, Bindi, the Giblon sisters have won countless Girls Championships yet linger as Class B and C players (1662 and 1462 respectively). There's no doubt in my mind that they would be far stronger players today if they had eschewed the girls tournaments and played instead in the open sections.
I saw them countless times in Opens in their rating sections :D
Re: The Women’s Chess System – Finally Time to Abolish It?
Hi Egis:
Currently happening is the Toronto Women's Championship, sponsored by the GTCL.
Any strong women players from Toronto have boycotted it. Look at the ratings of the only 6 contenders ( couldn't even get an 8-woman round robin, as originally planned ): http://annexchessclub.com/2012/10/2012-toronto-womens/
One has to wonder the purpose of this Tournament, and how it advances the progress of women's chess in Canada.
I am pleased to see those contending for the title, but as an overall system, the separate, parallel women's system seems to have failed women, if not possibly even hurt their advancement over the last half century.
When girls play women only tournaments their ambition is so limited and most of them are satisfied with just getting first or 2nd in those sections. If they actually played open tournaments, they would have to aim for so much higher. I believe in the idea that to get anywhere in life and/or chess, you have to aim for a slightly higher realistic goal in the short-term and aim for something ambitious in the long-term. If we have girls aiming to just be 2100 long-term to play on the Olympiad team, most of them are going to fade out long before they get to that level.
To cite but one example to support your sentiments, Bindi, the Giblon sisters have won countless Girls Championships yet linger as Class B and C players (1662 and 1462 respectively). There's no doubt in my mind that they would be far stronger players today if they had eschewed the girls tournaments and played instead in the open sections.
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