I've played chess since I was young, have taught many people to play chess, have played in company tournaments, play whoever I can when I travel, and there's just no question that the vast, overwhelming majority of women don't enjoy playing chess.
I can't even speak to a possible difference in gender capability because I've never known a single woman who enjoyed it enough to do anything more than learn how the pieces move.
Is there any evidence to think that? Are there games similar to chess that are dominated by women at the top levels? Is there some reason to think that chess-ability genes are evenly distributed by gender?
My own intuition is that, just like there are more men above 130 IQ and below 70, there are probably more great male chess players than female. This is just the idea of greater male variability which is found across a number of different measures - everything from variation in height to things like polydactyly being more common in men.
In Sweden, a mere 3% of adult chess club players are women. Women and men then evidently feel quite differently about playing chess (I don't have an explanation.)
Although gender is a political correctness nuclear landmine, imagine if chess had aptitude diversity rules. "No, you can't castle if your Elo is 800+."
My impression is contract bridge has somewhat gender parity in terms of who plays it. [0] The ranking of contract bridge players doesn't appear to measure current quantitative strength, which seems to encourage volume of play rather than skill.
> The title of Grandmaster, along with the lesser FIDE titles of International Master (IM), FIDE Master (FM), and Candidate Master (CM), is open to all players regardless of gender. The great majority of grandmasters are men, but 40 women have been awarded the GM title as of 2022, out of a total of about 2000 grandmasters. Since about the year 2000, most of the top 10 women have held the GM title. There is also a Woman Grandmaster title with lower requirements awarded only to women.
