Life In 19x19

Women don't have the same type of competitiveness men do. Men are more attracted to prov[ing] their [s]kills than women.

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.

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

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

judicata wrote:

Women don't have the same type of competitiveness men do. Men are more attracted to prov[ing] their [s]kills than women.

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.

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.