Women in chess

Modern top-level women's tournaments help provide a means for some participants to be full-time professional chess players.

Among these new GMs, Hou Yifan has been the only other woman to reach the overall top 100 and regularly compete in high-level open tournaments.

It has been demonstrated statistically that the low numbers across all levels can largely account for the lack of women at or near the top.

Judit Polgár and Hou Yifan are generally considered the only players to regularly play in these elite highest-level tournaments this century.

Albeit also uncommon, it can be more common for women or girls to participate in the open sections of these events, and more so at youth levels.

Some female players have won their country's overall national championship, including grandmasters and international masters such as Judit Polgár, Nino Khurtsidze, Viktorija Čmilytė, Keti Arakhamia-Grant, and Eva Moser.

[1] The reigning Women's World Chess Champion is Ju Wenjun, who has won the title four times in a row from 2018 through 2023.

[2] In April 2011 the Texas Tech Knight Raiders won the President's Cup;[3] this made Polgar the first female head coach to lead a chess team to the national title.

[5][6] Three women, Maia Chiburdanidze,[7] Polgár,[8] and Hou Yifan,[9] have been ranked in the world's top 100 players.

Analysis of rating statistics of German players in an article from 2009 by Merim Bilalić, Kieran Smallbone, Peter McLeod, and Fernand Gobet[11] indicated that although the highest-rated men were stronger than the highest-rated women, the difference (usually more than 200 rating points) was largely accounted for by the relatively smaller pool of women players (only one-sixteenth of rated German players were women).

Jennifer Shahade, a FIDE Woman Grandmaster and the women's program director at the United States Chess Federation (USCF), said there is a large drop-off of girls at the USCF around the ages of 12 and 13, which she attributes to the lack of a social network for girls that age in chess.

[15] Jovanka Houska, an International Master and Woman Grandmaster, argued that overconfidence by boys gives an advantage over girls.

[16] In a 2007 study at the University of Padua, male and female players of similar ability were matched up with each other on online games.

[18] Polgár,[14] Shahade[13] and Houska[16] have said that they have encountered sexism, including belittling comments about their abilities, opponents who refused to shake hands, and online trolls questioning if girls and women belong in chess.

In a 1963 interview, Bobby Fischer was dismissive of female players, calling them "terrible" and said it was because "[women] are not so smart".

[19] In 2015, Nigel Short argued that male players performed better because men and women were "hard-wired" for different skills,[20] which was met with controversy.

This was seen by many chess players as having no purpose other than to discriminate against transgender women, as unlike physical sports, there are no concerns about biological advantages.

American Woman Grandmaster Jennifer Shahade commented "It's obvious they didn't consult with any transgender players in constructing it...

In 2010 at a conference at the National Museum of Scotland on the Lewis chessmen, Gudmundur Thorarinsson (a civil engineer and a former member of the Icelandic Parliament) and Einar S. Einarsson (a former president of Visa Iceland and a friend of the chess champion Bobby Fischer)[30][31] argued that Margret the Adroit made them.

It is a claim that the American author Nancy Marie Brown supports in her 2015 book, Ivory Vikings, the Mystery of the Most Famous Chessmen in the World and the Woman Who Made Them.

Historian Marilyn Yalom has argued that the queen was able to become the most dangerous piece on the board in the late 15th century because of the example of powerful female rulers in that era of European history.

Her involvement in a male competition caused a furore that necessitated a successful appeal to the High Court and caused the World Chess Federation president, Max Euwe, to rule that women cannot be barred from national and international championships.

Recently, Hou Yifan has been the leading female chess player, for example winning the Biel GM tournament in 2017.