Please rein in your dismissiveness. It is not <i>insane</i> to consider the ways that men and women have advantages. I&#x27;m not trying to step into this argument on one side or the other, but this kind of mocking is unhelpful.<p>&gt; Women are consistently and institutionally disadvantaged across the board. Why do so many men fail to understand this?<p>I think because it isn&#x27;t true? Assuming &#x27;across the board&#x27; means &#x27;in every aggregate scenario&#x27;, then there certainly are places where it&#x27;s men who are consistently and institutionally disadvantaged (two classic examples are judicial sentencing and when a victim of domestic violence).<p>One can think that women are disadvantaged &#x27;overall&#x27;, if one wanted to construct a score-card, without believing that women are disadvantaged in every (aggregate) scenario.<p>In this <i>particular</i> scenario I think it makes sense to say &quot;We wanted more female participation, so we introduced an incentive&quot;. This addresses a particular point, and people can argue about whether the goal (more women at high levels of chess) is worthwhile, but at least that doesn&#x27;t turn the whole discussion into an &#x27;us against them&#x27; mentality.<p>IOW: Please try to raise the level of debate.