Talking of the lack of women excelling in science/maths, I'd actually say women have done better in that than in chess. Marie Curie, Emmy Noether, Ada Lovelace, Roasalind Franklin come to mind. And they faced rather higher social obstacles than women do now in chess, where Judit Polgar is the only example of a top women (and I'd say even her position in chess is way lower than Noether's in science).

Off topic, but I've always thought Emmy Noether would be an amazing choice for a biopic. Got a phd at a time when women had to get explicit permission from each professor to even attend lectures, her work was recognized by some of the biggest mathematicians of the day, taught without pay for years, and then when she finally got a professorship she got fired by the Nazis for being Jewish and had to escape to the US... maybe I am too much of a math nerd but I would see that movie.

This is actually very interesting and it seems a shame it can't be discussed without a knee-jerk backlash. I didn't know men and women had such different brain structures, or that men tend to diverge more from the norm, but I feel a strong urge to know more. I'm off to Google some neuroscience I won't understand.

I think it is common sense that evolution must have taken this course. My wife and I, for example, think very differently on many things. (Fortunately we think alike on even more things.) That does not mean one is better than the other, just that we each have different strengths and weaknesses.

I can understand that men may have evolved with a different spatial perspective than women, but that does not make them more intelligent. It merely means that they can apply the strengths they have to different things. How this all applies to chess and go I am not sure. I personally think that it is probably more of a cultural bias which results in fewer top female players.

I think part of the problem of discussing this is we're splitting hairs about differences in the top players but people interpret it as referring to the player base as a whole. Even the question "can women play chess as well as men?" is problematic as it can be interpreted more broadly than just referring to the very top level of play.

I didn't interpret this as being just about the top players but rather a trend that runs throughout the entire chess community and manifests itself most clearly at the very top where there is a distinct lack of women. Of course the greater trends are irrelevant from a personal perspective as each individual could fall anywhere on the scale.

The data in the article linked was on female players with over 350 FIDE rated games played. The effect may or may not exist in more casual players. I suspect it does, but I'm not sure offhand.

[..] I didn't know men and women had such different brain structures [..]

Men and women do not have different brains, claims neuroscientist
Neuroscientist Prof Gina Rippon claims male and female brains only differ because of the relentless ‘drip, drip, drip’ of gender stereotyping

Me neither. And it seems they haven’t.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science ... ntist.html

She believes differences in male and female brains are due to similar cultural stimuli. A women’s brain may therefore become ‘wired’ for multi-tasking simply because society expects that of her and so she uses that part of her brain more often. The brain adapts in the same way as a muscle gets larger with extra use.

Me neither. And it seems they haven’t.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science ... ntist.html

..........
Problem is that Hollywood would want to have the character played by a glamorous blonde actress who probably wouldn't even be able to "add a C". .......

John, what title(s) did Kita Fumiko win? There isn't much on her SL page.

There are of course female pros who have won titles against men in go: Kita Fumiko and Rui Naiwei. So women can "compete" as well, and in that sense better than maybe over 95% of male pros.