As D. Gukesh brings home the glory after being declared the youngest in the world to become a chess champion, one question that comes to mind is whether chess in India portrays gender disparity.
If one were to keenly observe one would notice the huge difference in participation rates between men and women, or boys and girls, in India. Experts say this has to do with cultural stereotyping that discourages girls, especially in Tier 2/3 cities and rural households, from pursuing chess, in comparison to boys. This is all the more pronounced at the competitive level especially as women's chess tournaments often have smaller prizes compared to that men's.
At the moment in India, amongst Indian chess players 85 Grandmasters (GM), only 23 are women and of 124 International Masters (IM), who are men, there are 42 Woman International Masters (WIM) as of May 2023, according to FIDE, the International Chess Federation.
Dr David Smerdon of FIDE, explains lucidly the participation gap and the performance gap between men and women in chess, by way of a self-explanatory illustration which suggests that women make up only 16% of FIDE master list, 7 out of the top 20 earning Streamers, barely 11% of FIDE (Classical) rated players.
This has an impact on the disparity in the performance too, between the two genders and the gap is stark - women make up for one out of the top 100 adults, 3 out of the top 100 juniors, and shockingly, just 2% of grandmasters. And this performance gap again in turn leads to low levels of participation by women in the game. So, are things improving? "Yes, but slowly," says Smerdon. Additionally, there's strong evidence that girls drop out faster than boys at all ages and that dropout is especially severe after the age of 16.
In a paper titled, 'Which gender plays more beautiful chess?' author Azlan Iqbal attempted to determine if games between men and women showed any statistically significant difference in terms of aesthetics.
"We analysed using a computational aesthetics model two sets of games (one small, one large) between males and between females irrespective of playing strength and age. We found in the smaller set that there was no difference but in the larger set, the games between men were, on average, more beautiful than those between women. This suggests that men are more likely to have a better artistic sense of the game and therefore appreciate it more. It might also help to explain the relative non-existence of master female chess problem composers," he says.
So then should we have quotas for women in chess? But the evidence on gender quotas, say experts, that sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. If stereotypes unrelated to performance are causing girls to drop out at higher rates, then quotas are probably a good idea.
Smerdon suggests that there be an annual FIDE retreat for talented girls, featuring role models, the introduction of a ‘gentle’ quota into national leagues and Developing and publishing of an annual Women in Chess Federation ranking.
