I woke up this morning...
... with a memory of myself in middle school, and wanted to write it down.
This was somewhat inspired by a tweet by an internet-famous chess master, who asked why there is such low female participation in chess. Chess, like tech, is a very male dominated field.
In your opinion why are chess players overwhelmingly male, and how can we encourage female participation in the game? #chess
ā John Bartholomew (@fins0905)
This is a touchy topic, with many people having their own opinions and theories on it. Iām not here to convince anybody of anything, nor am I interested in getting into arguments with people on the Internet.
But, I do want to share a personal anecdote.
When I was in elementary school, I loved school. I loved every part of it: the actual classroom learning, and all the cool new friends I made (I had just moved to Canada at the time). You wouldnāt believe it if you know me now, but I was this fearless little outgoing (lulz yeah, right??) kid who mostly didnāt care what others thought.
When youāre a kid like that and you love something so much, you naturally do well in it. So, I did well in school. Which of course, made me love school more.
Things changed around grade 6 though.
Itās crazy how so many years later, you can still look back and point to a particular incident in your life that shaped your personality today. That moment for me was in grade 6. That was when I first learned that people can be genuinely mean, and that they can talk behind your back about you to your friends, and that not everyone will always like you :(
I started to really care about what my peers thought. I was no longer confident in my ālikeabilityā. I became much more shy (and still am today) because I was worried what I say/do will make people not like me.
This all gets interesting when you also do well academically. It was in my head (from reading books and watching TV) that doing well in school doesnāt win you any popularity points with the cool kids.
I distinctly remember in grade 8 graduation, feeling embarrassed about having my name repeated multiple times for the academic awards I was getting. I wanted to run off the stage, and wished they had just given it to me privately. When I was nominated to be valedictorian, I outright declined it because (1) I was way too shy to speak in front of people, and (2) I thought it made me look uncool.
And the kicker? I thought these things even when I had a circle of good friends, who I knew wouldnāt think poorly of me for being āsmartā. I made certain decisions in school because the other irrelevant people, the ācool kidsā, the people Iām not even friends with, the people I really shouldnāt care about... would somehow judge me for what I do.
Looking back now, this all sounds so absurd. It sounds crazy to me too, but I actually thought these things!
So back to the tweet -- why is there such low female participation in tech/chess/some-other-male-dominated-field, you ask?
I might be making this up, but gender ratio is probably fine at young age groups (assuming you expose the same thing equally to both genders). Children donāt care what others think. Theyāll do things that are fun to them.
But then this annoying thing called puberty hits and suddenly, everyone feels vulnerable. Thereāre a lot of social pressures to do things a certain way to feel included. This vulnerable age is where, I posit, a lot of girls drop off from tech/chess.
Of course, I'm not claiming that this is the only explanation for the gender ratio in these fields. If you're passionate about this, you should talk to more women and hear their stories. Like, sit down and genuinely listen.
Based on personal experience though, it certainly wouldn't hurt if there are more positive female role models to make chess cool, fun and interesting, so that it isn't perceived as a hit to one's social status if girls showed any interest in it :)
