Gender Discrimination in Go

   

Table of contents

http://i2.sinaimg.cn/ty/go/2011-08-30/U2481P6T12D5724981F44DT20110830104703.jpg Joanne Missingham with her "Protest Sex Discrimation" fan

Observations that give rise to the question of "Is there gender discrimination in Go?"

  1. Women constitute about 50% of the population.
  2. Women are a much smaller portion of professional go players compared to the general population.
  3. In some countries, there are championships open to women only. Men are excluded.
  4. Some tournament systems are designed to have a greater female percentage than is expected from strength distribution. (See also: [ext] Affirmative Action in East Asia)
  5. In a single instance, the 2nd Qiandeng Cup played in August 2011, female professionals did not receive game fees while male professionals did. As a result, Joanne Missingham wrote the fan pictured above (see article). No other instances of overt discrimination against women has been found to date (6 September 2011). See section entitled General Population below for non-overt discrimination.

Assumptions

  1. It is assumed that a desirable outcome would be for the proportion of female professional go players to be closely approximate the proportion of women in the general population.

Limitations

  1. It would be preferable to have data for the entire go playing population. However such data are difficult to obtain. Only a self selected portion of general go playing population chooses to join clubs or national associations. Among the data sets that are readiably available are: professional results, European Go Database and AGA Go Database.
  2. [ext] Statistical correlation is not causality, we must distinguish between attributable to and attributed to or caused by.
  3. Statistics obtained from a self selected population may not reflect the statistics of the general population.

Question

  1. Is the relative absence of women in the population of professional go players is the result of discrimination?
  2. What is the reason for the relative scarcity of women in professional go compared the percentage of women in the general population?

General Population

It is worth pointing out that female players are subject to certain, social factors that may create a climate of discrimination against women in the game. These social factors include:

  • first item to be added
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  • ...

Pair Go, begun in 1990 with its own world championship tournament, is an example of a deliberate, sustained, and well funded effort to reach out to women players.

National Associations

Among the national associations, there is no indication of gender based discrimination against women in the American Go Association.

Professional

In professional tournaments and title matches, there is no indication of gender based discrimination against women. Women are free to enter all professional tournaments under the same qualifying conditions as men. There are tournaments reserved for women only. Men are excluded from these tournaments. These tournaments constitute discrimination in favor of women by guaranteeing the set of women professional players a minimum number of title and the monetary rewards associated with those title. We have not been able to reach a consensus conclusion why the percentage of go professionals or open title holders that are women is significantly less than the percentage of women in the general population.

It is worth pointing out that professional female players are arguably institutionally designated as weaker by the qualification system and are definitely subject to the same social factors that may create a climate of discrimination against women in the game. (See list of factors in General Population section above.)

Research Article that bear on the question or related questions

Teaching

There was an incident on KGS a few years back that makes an interesting case study. Player A was male, but was masquerading as Player C, who was female and fictional. However strong player B gave player A discounted lessons, on the basis that he thought that they were a female (C). When he found out that C was A he was furious. :)

See Also:


This is a copy of the living page "Gender Discrimination in Go" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2012 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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