&gt; How does it hurt men, hurt competition, for women to have their own prize?<p>This has already been answered and I&#x27;d like to hear your rebuttal.<p>It hurts men and competition by devaluing the prizes. To quote jstanley again:<p>&quot;She&#x27;s no better than me, but she is a WGM and I am nothing&quot;.<p>Do you see how this hurts competition directly? Like it or not people compete for the recognition which is embodied by the prize. If the prize can now be given out without full attainment of the skill being tested for, then it loses its meaning and its signaling value.<p>&gt; For whatever reasons, women aren&#x27;t competitive with men (in chess, at this point in time)<p>I&#x27;d also be curious to hear from you why you think the reasons for this are &quot;whatever reasons&quot; - I&#x27;m presuming by that you mean, that the reasons are inconsequential or they don&#x27;t matter or they are not important. Why do you believe that to be the case, without first knowing what the reasons actually are?<p>EDIT: all players have their own ELO score but they are still competing for the prize, which is the embodiment of the attainment of certain skills.  If women can win this prize without attaining the same skills then this is devaluing the prize. Please address this directly, if you will. Again, to make this clear, players compete for the prize, not for the ELO score. If players did not compete for the prize, there would not be a prize.