Female chess players outperform expectations when playing men

"Stereotype threat" has been offered as a potential explanation of differential performance between men and women in some cognitive domains. Questions remain about the reliability and generality of the phenomenon. Previous studies have found that stereotype threat is activated in female chess players when they are matched against male players. I use data from over 5.5 million games of international tournament chess and find no evidence of a stereotype threat effect. In fact women players outperform expectations when playing men. Further analysis shows no influence of degree of challenge, nor of player age, nor of prevalence of female role models in national chess leagues on differences in performance when women play men versus when they play women. Though this analysis contradicts one specific mechanism of influence of gender stereotypes, the persistent differences between male and female players suggest that systematic factors do exist and remain to be uncovered

Gender, competition and performance: Evidence from real tournaments

There is a growing literature looking at how men and women respond differently to competition. We contribute to this literature by studying gender differences in performance in a high-stakes and male dominated competitive environment, expert chess tournaments. Our findings show that women underperform compared to men of the same ability and that the gender composition of games drives this effect. Using within player variation in the conditionally random gender of their opponent, we find that women earn significantly worse outcomes against male opponents. We examine the mechanisms through which this effect operates by using a unique measure of within game quality of play. We find that the gender composition effect is driven by women playing worse against men, rather than by men playing better against women. The gender of the opponent does not affect a male player’s quality of play. We also find that men persist longer against women before resigning. These results suggest that the gender composition of competitions affects the behavior of both men and women in ways that are detrimental to the performance of women. Lastly, we study the effect of competitive pressure and find that players’ quality of play deteriorates when stakes increase, though we find no differential effect over the gender composition of games

Inclusive Design Studios: Rethinking the Instructor’s Role

The culture of the architectural design studio continues, in large part, to be based on centuries old traditions. Research on teaching, learning and bias suggest, however, that a rethinking of these traditions is long overdue if we aim to create inclusive learning environments and diversify our profession. Drawing on recent research on the cultivation of expertise, student motivation and stereotype threat, this essay considers how we might rethink design studio instruction. Studies on the development of expertise suggest a critical re-imagining of the instructor’s role in design studios. Research on student motivation suggests that many of the traditional practices of architectural education inevitably leave students unmotivated and need to be reconsidered. Finally, research on the ways in which stereotypes impact academic performance illuminate some of the roadblocks to diversifying our classrooms and profession. This essay shares evidence-based strategies to address these roadblocks and traditions to develop a more inclusive and effective design studio culture.&nbsp

Beth Harmon’s Literacy As Power and Its Impact On Gender Roles In Walter Tevis’ The Queen’s Gambit

Literacy practices are often represented in various media through literary works such as novels, films, and others. Literary works are the result of literacy practices, and the values of literacy practices are sometimes incorporated into literary works through the characters in them. However, readers often ignore the value of literacy in literary works. Literacy is more than just the cognitive ability to read and write; it also refers to what people do with literacy. Literacy can be represented in several forms and used for different purposes, one of which is power. The literacies in The Queen's Gambit novel represent power in the eyes of Beth Harmon. The power of literacy gained by Beth is represented by improving social class and increasing popularity, which later impacted her gender roles. The purpose of this study is to display literacy representation as power and its impact on gender roles in Beth Harmon, the main character in The Queen's Gambit novel. The method used is textual analysis, the main source of which is the novel The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis, using the framework of New Literacy Studies (NLS) as a social practice of literacy perspective using the theory of Williams and Zenger (2007) from their book "Popular Culture and Representation Literacy". The results of the study show that literacy can be powerful and impact Beth Harmon's gender roles. Keywords: representation, literacy, power, gender role

Patent Law, Copyright Law, and the Girl Germs Effect

[Excerpt] Inventors pursue patents and authors receive copyrights. No special education is required for either endeavor, and nothing precludes a person from being both an author and an inventor. Inventors working on patentable industrial projects geared toward commercial exploitation tend to be scientists or engineers. Authors, with the exception of those writing computer code, tend to be educated or trained in the creative arts, such as visual art, performance art, music, dance, acting, creative writing, film making, and architectural drawing. There is a well-warranted societal supposition that most of the inventors of patentable inventions are male. Assumptions about the genders of the authors of remunerative commercially exploited copyrights may be less rigid. Women authors are more broadly visible than women inventors across most of the typical categories of copyrightable works. Yet, whether one considers patentable inventions or copyrightable works, the vast majority of the very profitable ones are both originated and controlled by men. This causes a host of negative consequences for women. They start and run businesses at much lower rates than men and rarely reach elite leadership levels in the corporate world or within high-profile artistic or cultural communities. They are perceived as less competent, less dedicated, and less hard working, and suffer from a lack of female mentors and female colleagues. Women are lied to during financial negotiations more than men and earn less than men in equivalent positions. Women control only a tiny portion of the world’s wealth. Though female students outperform male students in almost every context and at almost every level of education, and even seek postdegree job-related training in greater numbers than men, this has not helped women to produce and control patentable inventions or to author and own valuable copyrighted works in numbers comparable to men

What is a True Gamer? The Male Gamer Stereotype and the Marginalization of Women in Video Game Culture

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer Verlag via the DOI in this record.Women and men play video games in approximately equal numbers. Despite this similarity, video gaming is still strongly associated with men. A common justification for this stereotype is that, although women might play games, they should not be considered “true” or “hard-core” gamers because they play more casually and less skillfully compared to their male counterparts. In this contribution, we review the existing literature on gender and gaming to investigate the male gamer stereotype in terms of its accuracy, persistence, effects, and future perspective. We conclude that the stereotype varies in accuracy depending on the definition of “gamer.” We further argue that the persistence of this stereotype can be explained by the fact that almost all professional and highly visible figures in gaming culture are male. On the other hand, female players who achieve a moderate level of competence are rendered invisible or are actively marginalized. We argue that the effects of the male gamer stereotype can be harmful to women, precluding them from the positive outcomes of video game play such as enhanced access to fields of science, technology, and engineering

Do casual gaming environments evoke stereotype threat? Examining the effects of explicit priming and avatar gender.

Despite relatively equal participation rates between females and males in casual gaming, females often report stigmatisation and prejudice towards their gaming competency within this sub-domain. Applying the theoretical framework of “stereotype threat”, this research examined the influence of explicit stereotype priming on females' casual gameplay performance and related attitudes. It also investigated whether the gender of the game avatar heightens susceptibility to stereotype threat. One hundred and twenty females were allocated randomly to one of four experimental conditions in a 2 (Condition: Stereotype threat, Control) x 2 (Avatar gender: Feminine, Masculine) between-subjects design. They completed a short gaming task and measures of social identity, competence beliefs, gameplay self-efficacy and self-esteem. Findings indicate that priming explicitly a negative gender-related stereotype did not appear to have a significant detrimental impact on gameplay performance or gameplay-related attitudes. Additionally, gameplay performance was not affected significantly by manipulating the gender of the gaming avatar. These findings suggest that, although females appear to be knowledgeable about negative gender-gaming stereotypes, these might not impact performance. Moreover, females tend not to endorse these beliefs as a true reflection of their gaming ability, representing a positive finding in view of the prevailing negative attitudes they face in gaming domains

Gender differences and stereotypes in the beauty contest

Recent literature has emphasized that individuals display different depths of reasoning when playing games. In this paper, we explore gender differences in strategic sophistication and study whether these differences are endogenous. We report results from two different experiments employing the beauty contest. In the first, large study, we show that females react very strongly to incentives to the extent that gender differences disappear when a monetary prize is awarded. In the second study, we use a within subject design to analyze how depth of reasoning varies with gender priming and the gender composition of the set of players. We corroborate that females display higher levels of sophistication and even overtake males when incentives are provided and gender is primed. On the other hand, males who believe that females are better in the game display higher sophistication when playing against females

Promoting the nation: The rise of ethno-nationalism and early modern drama

Most political scientists locate the rise of ethno-nationalism in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. English ethno-nationalism is developed throughout that period through a xenophobic identification of racial, religious, and national others. This study examines how Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, Willian Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Thomas Middleton promote English ethno-nationalism through the use of stereotypes, especially the collection of stereotypes known as the Black Legend of Spain. Chapter one outlines the theory and psychology of ethno-nationalism, laying the foundation for subsequent chapters devoted to specific plays, including Kyd\u27s The Spanish Tragedy, Marlowe\u27s The Jew of the Malta, Shakespeare\u27s The Merchant of Venice, Jonson\u27s The Masque of Blackness and The Masque of Beauty, and Middleton\u27s A Game At Chess