Why are tournaments (or rankings; it's hard to tell from the article) sexed in the first place?
As for why this discrepancy exists, that's really a very different question, and it's one that I don't know the answer to. There are potentially many factors at play. It could be as innocent as there are many more male players than female, so the odds are much higher for super-high-skill players to emerge in the male population than the female population.
That's caused by IQ distribution differences between males and females. On average men and women have an IQ of 100, but there are more men that are both smarter and dumber than women.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_intelligenc...
Assuming IQ and chess ability are correlated, this would explain the lack of women at the top tiers of chess playing.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_intellige...
I'm pretty sure they set up female tournaments in order to encourage women to develop interest and skill in the game. But, no good deed unpunished.
It looks from the article like there is indeed a women-only circuit.
It's easy to look and say, that group is taller and has bigger muscles so that's an obvious advantage.
It's harder to see mental advantages. Statistically, men have better spatial reasoning and are possibly better at the kind of logic (and intuition) chess requires.
Or maybe it's environmental. One way or another, every single one of the top 100 chess players in the world are men.
There's nothing in science that says women should be worse at it than men, or that there aren't enough good women who play chess, and could crack the top 100. We just don't know is the bottom line and anyone who says differently probably has an agenda.
Separate tournaments were added as way to get more women playing than anything else as the sport has alot of educational value even if it's not the only way to develop those same intellectual "muscles". Hopefully, it will expand to the point where enough good players of both genders come in and we finally see more women at the highest levels. But that may not happen.
Something as complicated as intelligence is not strongly tied to a single genetic marker, so while there may be some variance, it won't be nearly as broad as in something simpler (but still complicated), like height.
(I'm just trying to reason against you, I don't think the fitness Anand was talking about requires crossing the boundary where being male is an advantage.)
I would liken competitive chess to an endurance sport like marathon running instead of to something like boxing or sumo wrestling, where physical mass and brute force can be deciding factors.
There's no reason that women can't be as physically or mentally prepared for such as sport as men.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK5TQSKmS3o
I'd recommend not taking the stand that "women are physically disadvantaged in chess" is a "simple fact." You welcomed citations for reasons why that may or may not be - but much like sociological studies across ethnic differences in accomplishment, studies across gender differences accomplishment for non-physical activity are going to be, shall we say, "muddled."
People may not be able to levy citations that argue against that thesis, but it's still a very difficult thesis to defend both socially and rhetorically. Engaging in dialectics about it is unlikely to be productive, and I think it's probably more fair to take an even ground in the absence of compelling evidence on other side. Extrinsically, yes, women display collective disparity in overall chess accomplishment. But we cannot infer anything about womens' chess ability intrinsically unless we have more women in chess. Specifically, we cannot infer anything physically about the female brain that would demonstrate a disadvantage.
This doesn't mean you're wrong; it just means that it's so emotionally loaded, and so devoid of clear, replicable data that even a debate with citations will probably be disappointing at best, and personally insulting at worst.
That's right. If one said women are better home makers, teachers, and parents, people would either agree with you or say you're being sexist. What is wrong with teaching, parenting or home making? Without taking a position on whether men are better than women at chess, why does it even matter if women are better at some things and men at others? It's so overwhelmingly political and emotional, and why should women be ashamed to be good parents or home makers? Those are no less respectable than any other occupation. However, as you said, you can't even touch this topic without getting in trouble.