Women and Chess, and Women and Men

At the Pitchfork music festival here in Chicago, KC (a female friend of minef) and I set up a chess board and played against the festival. That is, we invited passers-by to make the moves for white, and we would move for black. No passer-by was allowed to move more than once. Naturally, we kicked Pitchfork's butt. It was kind of what I suppose it would be like to play against the guy from Memento.

The interesting thing was the different responses of women and men when we tried to get people to make moves. I was standing up and inviting everyone who walked by to take a turn for black, and I suppose I preferentially solicited women, natch. There were a few people of both sexes who did know how to play chess, moved gladly, and lamented the previous moves of all their fellow players. But what was interesting was that among the rest, almost without exception, women would say, "Oh, I don't know how to play chess, I can't do it," whereas men would say, "I don't know how to play chess, but what the hell." The trend was unmistakeable and consistent, and both KC and I observed it.

I've heard this sort of behavior described as one of the reasons women, starting around puberty, tend to be less "successful" in math and science classes on average than men, but I've never seen it more clearly demonstrated. It kind of makes me want to do a real experiement. And in a question that is analogous to asking what a teacher should do in the classroom to encourage women with mathematical talent, I wonder if I could have changed my banter to attract women to play more readily.