WOMEN of CHESS
Gender and Chess - The Ever-Changing, Never-Ending Question...

 

From the Foreward of "Women in Chess, Players of the Modern Age"

by John Graham, McFarland & Company, Inc. (1987)

by George Koltanowski

"I disagree with women (and men) players who say, "The fact is that women are definitely not as good at chess as men." Fiddlesticks! Any past belief a woman may have had that she cannot be a top-ranked chess player is null and void today. Each year that I have directed the U.S. Open, more and more women participated. Their interest in chess is growing, as is the women's movement in general, which has created an independent spirit ­ well suited for the game of chess, which is an independent game.

"When you play, it is your game. To be a good chess player, man or woman, you need, among other things, a good memory, and men and women have that equally. (My wife Leah has a better memory that I have, in fact.) Also needed are combinational ideas - and men and women are equally noted for their wiles and strategies; will power we all have that; egotistical traits - why not? Male players have it in abundance; and patience.

"When you read Women in Chess you will see that the world has had, and still has, outstanding women chess masters. Now they are taking high places in international grandmaster tournaments - and rightly so! If more attention was given to promoting chess among women, I would not be surprised if before long we have a woman as world champion. This attention to promotion will have to include offering the same monetary awards as are offered to male players at major tournaments."

Foreward Again! Basic Perspectives on The Ever-Changing, Never-Ending Question...

by Don McLean

While there is no question in the minds of some experts that women are every bit as good at chess as their male counterparts, a number of deeply inbred cultural issues walk hand in hand with biological factors to make the battle for equal footing prohibitively weighted against the so called "fairer sex". This is a battle that is being waged not only in chess but also in other sporting events. as well as in the boardrooms of many nations. When it is not being fought in these sectors, it is often dramatized amid the hum-drum of everyday domestic affairs.

Gender role distinctions do have important biological beginnings. Of that there seems little doubt. However, there is a fluidity to gender that flows along a continuum, to the extent that firm pronouncements regarding the absolute segregation of the species along gender lines does little justice to the relativism we find in social realities the world over.

To an important extent, the dividing lines separating male from female are artifically enhanced though ideological means. The stereotypical picture of the resourceful male versus the helpless damsel is a cultural construct that runs headlong into a stream of glaring exceptions. Acceptance of this mantra merely reinforces the mirror-like reality of sex-role stereotyping and in either the long or the short run, only those who are capable of perceiving the matter in its fullest scope develop the intellectual and emotional equipment required to escape the "either - or" of value laden judgements and the folly that comes about through taking too narrow a view of the overall issue.

Historically, women are an oppressed "equality" whose oppression takes on even greater poigniancy when minority positions such as race or religion become factored into the picture. Even within the history of boardgames, there is ample evidence that men exhibited an overbearing influence. For example, among some African tribal establishments, women were not only forbidden to play mancala, they were also prohibited from watching the game being played by men. In the context which shows that mancala was a royal game with complex mathematical overtones - (an essential form of tutelary exercise required to nurture cognitive appreciation for numerical values and combinatory possibilties) - we see cases where women were shut out from that educational experience and relegated to the status of chattle according to custom and religious taboo. Not only was it the will of the king, but it appears to have been also the will of the gods that made for this unequal partnership. Not surprisingly, the gods who willed this outcome were also masculine in form. Thus, in keeping with the habits of old style tribal "kleptocracy", the slippery slope of gender bias acquired an unquestionable legitimacy in some societies, certain African tribes counting for but a fraction among the many who have been persuaded towards the adoption of this orientation.

Not all cultures or societies acquiesed to ritual male dominance however, and we can see from examples of art and artifact that the early Egyptians were among the more tolerant of ancient peoples. Nefertari and Nefertiti are shown playing games of senet with their consorts. Moreover, despite the pharaonic disposition towards Re, Osiris and Horus, in Egypt, the universal importance of female divinties such as Nut, Hathor, Sekhmet and Isis was no less profound than the religious roles attributed to other neighbouring worshipers of Demeter, Inanna and Ishtar. In a strictly social context, the women of Egypt enjoyed a long-abiding equality with men that distingushed Egypt among several surrounding cultures. Even as the gradual demise of goddess worship inflicted its woes upon many surrounding nations, that lament was not heard in Egypt until much later.

With increasing tokenization of female authority, it would appear as though the conspicuously rising tide of Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian, Greek and Roman militancy forced abandonment of balanced votive and social positions. From the late third millennium onward, as various states nurtured their respective warrior castes and initially undertook to assemble large standing armies, they appear to have done so at the expense of the goddess archetype. With the advent of geosensitive militaristic biases, slowly but surely, all remembrance of the egalitarian basis of matriarchy slipped into decline not only in Egypt, but throughout many parts of the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia. Thus, the fundamentals of male dominant kleptocracies gave way to the sophistication of imperial courts, nationalistically oriented religious worship and hegemonies that profited from the indivisible theocratic structures of our earliest historical times. Through subsequently published documents and reconstructed votive alters, an accompanying recidivism has made it appear as though nothing else previously existed. This trend did not take place overnight and was perhaps under way prior to the advent of written language.

Nonetheless, goddess worship remained a powerful force despite the later patristic institutions of Mithras, Ahrua Mazda and the Sol Invictus. Confronted by religious authorities who also maintained despotic control over associated political systems, her influence waned throughout the western world even as moral and religious denigration of the feminine grew more prevalent. As a result, today we stumble over sanitized and decapitated renditions female power that tend to introject elements of mediocrity and passivity in the places where acuity and daring once were the rule. Latter day traditions of the three great monotheisms and the nation states which have derived much of their strength though the conservation of long-standing patriarchal fictions make a balanced view of the past all the more difficult to reclaim and yet, the movement to reclaim a portion of female dignity is very much afoot in this 21st Century. Examples abound not only in the so-called "feminist" movement, but also in the works of open-minded scholars delving into many branches of research, the history of board games being but one of several interdependent initiatives that, increasingly, show how a woman's touch had more to do with the advancement of early civiliizations than some would care to admit. Indeed, were it not that the goddess chose to play her many games of culture creation in full view of societies at large while sharing her secrets with men of all moral backgrounds, there would be naught but the most slender and beastial of canons with which a king might measure his authority. Without her weave, the emperor would have no clothes and the little boy would posess but half of his mature inner vision.

a bientot

Donald A. McLean