It would be nice if people actually returned to my original question.



What indeed? The women's event (The Sotetsu Cup I think it was called?) ran from 1989 to 1998
Pair Go has been running since 1991. Both are, of course, examples of positive discrimination.
Why did the Women's amateur event stop running, maybe because the sponsor withdrew? I don't know, and it was a question I asked earlier.

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North Lecale

I believe you can have extra events only where you already have enough female players to make special tournaments viable and competitive. Say on European level or in countries with enough players, e.g. won't work too well in Switzerland, might be a great idea in the Netherlands. Also, I doubt they are very efficient in increasing female participation in general, what matters there is general culture, atmosphere in the local club etc. and this is highly localized with some clubs having many female players, others none at all. This is almost impossible to address administratively and attempts to do so look pretty awkward, e.g. the Berlin Go Association once started a certification process for go meetings, which amongst other things addressed racism and drugs (which are both not wanted), all to let parents feel they can send their children there without qualms and which has the queer effect that you wonder what people think about "non-certified" meetings now.

It isn't encouraging whatsoever to award an extra prize to your female dan participant in a tournament when she doesn't even have to play other females on her level for that price. (This happened in Switzerland once with a youth prize, where the winner did horrible in the tournament but won the prize because of his initial MMS advantage to the next youth player, this was an extreme case but you got the idea.) I doubt that gifts camouflaged as prizes ever are a good idea, if you like to give gifts give them directly.

Positive discrimination does best where it exposes some female players to high level competition and training opportunities. E.g. I would find it a good idea to reserve one of eight spots in the final round of the german championship to the female player who does best in the preliminary, but of course as only half a dozen or so is eligible (they are 3-4 dan, while 4 dans are quite rare in the final) this should only be introduced if they actually like the idea. And of course the German Bundesliga gives plenty of serious games without any positive discrimination at all. (In fact there is one female only team.)

I do computer science. In 2010 about 18% of CS degrees in the united states went to women. I've heard arguments put forth that this discrepancy may be due to inherent differences in preference between men and women: women prefer the squishier sciences like biology (where >50% of degrees go to women now), they're turned away by the abstractness of computers science.

But if you look at the data, that doesn't seem possible at all. From 1970-1984, female degrees in CS skyrocketed from 14% up to 37% . But in the 80s that growth slowed, and finally started to reverse, falling almost 20% to where it is today over the last 25 years.

I don't think it's possible for something fundamental about women to have changed 25 years ago. It seems much more likely to me that the change was cultural. I won't speculate too much about what it was since I'm already off topic, but I think attitudes and messages can definitely encourage women to get into an area. Or discourage them, unfortunately.

Source: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/ ... 11_318.asp

But we're under so much selection pressure, emeraldemon. You can't expect sexual dimorphism to stick around for more than a half a generation at a time.

I am not going to participate in the actual discussion, but I have broken down Javaness' original post and attempted to guess the discussion he wanted to have and added some clarifying questions. Consider this a meta-discussion post.


Javaness wants to know how to increase the number of women playing igo.

Javaness' implicit assumption: It is unnatural for non-minorities in the general population to be minorities in the population of those who engage in (perhaps non-physical) particular recreational activities such as playing igo.

Question: What is your definition of positive discrimination? Perhaps not explicitly and precisely defining what you mean by positive discrimination has led to a number of replies that you believe to be irrelevant to your original question.

Question: Would you be okay with the follow definition of "positive discrimination for women in igo"?

Potential Definition (Positive discrimination for women in igo): Any program or policy granting benefits exclusively to women players with the goal of increasing their number?



Question: Does the morality and effectiveness of "positive discrimination" as you mean it belong in this thread or in a new one?

Question: Can the main question being asked by Javaness be restated as follows? "Ignoring personal value judgments about the right and wrong of positive discrimination, which of the many methods of positive discrimination would do the best job of increasing the number of women players when evaluated on the dimensions of quantity (how many women?), speed (how quickly?), and monetary costs (how much $$$s?)?"


Veterans tend to spend more money on the game than others. This tends to have a trickle-down benefit for all players. Young players are future consumers in the "igo economy". In the absence of young players, the "igo economy" may decide to produce less books, lectures, and other igo content by forecasting future profits. If the igo-playing population is projected to grow, all players reap the benefits in the form of increased content availability and lower prices.

Question: Would you like to argue that a similar halo effect will ensue if more women start playing igo? Or is that discussion deserving of a separate thread?


Perhaps "discrimination" is not the word you want to use? You may have invited unwanted controversy by using that term. After all, no one said that the money for these programs had to come from public funds or the coffers of the AGA/BGA/EGF. Private sponsors could be found.

Question: What about using the term "incentive programs" instead?


Javaness has given three examples of "positive discrimination" programs and asked which of the three would be most effective in increasing the number of women who play igo.

I think that the idea of making tournaments for women is probably ineffective.

Women don't have the same type of competitiveness men do. Men are more attracted to prove theirs kills than women.
Thats why pair-go does get women to play it, as opposed to regular only-women tournaments. Its not about go itself, but about bonding with someone else (your team-mate).

I think attracting women is a very healthy goal, because in the end it also attracts men. The first question to make here is what women like about go, or could like about go, that is not competitive.

Also, bear in mind that is not the same to attract someone that already knows go, to someone that doesnt. So pair go championship could attract an already beginner-past-beginner player, but not total newbies.
In general, all women i talked about go with, were interested in knowing at least what it is, specially because i would teach that to them, and i think they were looking for that, as opposed to "oh i want to be a great go player".

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Founder of Kaya.gs

Once I met a woman. A few years later I met another. Turns out they were exactly the same, fancy that!

Uberdude must be a hermit or a monk to meet only two women over a course of several years.

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http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

I think this may not be your best moment in phrasing things. But it is true that making Go not just an activity for men will raise its profile. In East Asia, go is not just for the sorts of nerds we associate it with here in the US, and it undoubtedly helps sustain it. Similarly, if go is perceived as not just for hyper-competitive nerdy male introverts, it will help it grow here.

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Occupy Babel!

Well, he did live in Cambridge.

Best wishes.

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No aji, keshi, kifu or kikashi has been harmed in the compiling of this post.
http://www.gogod.co.uk

This principle has been said more than once, so I'm not singling out the poster on this. But if we start with this idea, we will have succeeded in offending many women who enjoy competitive games/sports--that is, the women most likely to play. It is true that some studies indicate that women, on average are less inclined to engage in competition than men, and this seems to be a cross-cultural phenomenon. But there are plenty of competitive women out there, and they can't be bothered with such notions.

And people (male or female) who don't like competition, are just less likely to play go and more likely to lose interest quickly (perhaps setting aside AI researchers). Sure, we can have events that are more co-op friendly, but the core of go is people playing against each other.

So, while I'm not saying the general premise is wrong, it just isn't useful. In other words, efforts aimed at attracting women based on the assumption that they are less competitive are destined to be ineffective. It is more effective to "recruit" women who are inclined to play competitive games--they'll stick around.

PS: A few people have asserted that go isn't competitive, but they are either (1) silly or (2) don't really mean what they say.

EDIT: Typo fix.

It is also unclear whether what women who dislike competition oppose is competition per se (activities that involve winning and losing, cultivating skill at an activity while trying to do better than others) or aggressiveness, ugliness, the language of crushing people, bragging, self-aggrandizement, etc. I have met go players like that (though thankfully few) and they're not helping us with anything.

Consider any woman in a business context. Business is fundamentally about competition in the sense that to succeed in business you must provide a product more cheaply or with better quality than your competition. And your team within the business (if it's large enough) may need to compete with other teams for resources and influence.

What's interesting to me in this context is that one line of research suggests that teams including women do better, precisely because the women engage in less bad competitive behavior and therefore are better are motivating cooperative behavior among the people they're working with. But they're still engaging in competition at another level.

The other point is that once you've acknowledged a difference in even the aggressive, uncouth sort of competitive behavior, there's a question about why men and women act that way, and whether that's immutable. I suspect even less women showed the competitive traits necessary for business 70 years ago.

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Occupy Babel!

You should visit your mom more often than that. [rimshot] Thank you, remember to tip your servers. Sorry, I couldn't resist the softball.

I dont see why a minority should feel offended over favoring the majority. And there is as much competitive atmosphere as you wish for, there is no reason for them to feel singled out in any way. thats pretty much the only thing there is right now.
Appealing to competitive women is bound to fail on numbers. even in korea, with the inmense common-knowledge they have, they cant even fill up the female insei league. That is, you have a place where millions of women know about the game, had a chance to play it, and a very small fraction went through to try to become pro, so little that there is not even an entrance tournament.
And as i have said before, its very easy to appeal "any" girl into playing atari-go. People that like to play are more than those that want to compete. Its the difference between a game and a sport.

Who knows what other activities we can think that focus on other aspects rather than the sheer go skill. Could be anything. Could be teaching children, could be making commentaries, etc. Forging an awesome community has a lot of pull, even for people that just mildly enjoy the game.

Higher understanding of what attracts people to the game, be it men or women, is highly useful. More than useful, its #1 priority. Until we find a more effective method than saying "its a difficult 5000 year old chinese game" we are not going to have substantially different conversion rate or increase in activity.

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Founder of Kaya.gs