Nowadays any suggestion that men might be doing anything better than women is likely to bring a storm of abuse raging down on the offender.
And so when Nigel Short, one of Britain’s greatest ever chess players, suggested men were “hard-wired” to be better at chess than women it was easy to guess what would happen next.
The 49-year-old was lambasted for his response when asked why he thought there were so few women competing in chess.
He said: “Why should they function in the same way? I don’t have the slightest problem in acknowledging that my wife possesses a much higher degree of emotional intelligence than I do.
“Likewise, she doesn’t feel embarrassed in asking me to manoeuvre the car out of our narrow garage. One is not better than the other, we just have different skills.
“It would be wonderful to see more girls playing chess, and at a higher level, but rather than fretting about inequality, perhaps we should just gracefully accept it as a fact.”
And Amanda Ross, who runs the Casual Chess club in London, told the Daily Telegraph: it was “incredibly damaging when someone so respected basically endorses sexism.”
She also pointed out that former women’s world champion, Judit Polgar, had beaten Mr Short before. And in The Independent leading British player Sabrina Chevannes said women were regularly subjected to sexist remarks at tournaments, prompting some to quit.
“Chess definitely has a problem with sexism, I have faced it all my career,” she said. “I’ve been asked if I want to play in the junior section; I’ve even had men refuse to believe I’m there to play.”
I have been playing chess competitively for 40 years and I’ve never seen women treated in a sexist manner, most of the time we just don’t see them at all.
The number of women playing in the Yorkshire, Huddersfield and Calderdale leagues currently hovers around zero.
I don’t know why they aren’t interested but just assume they have much better things to do.
