‘The whole room is full of boys’: Chess’ gender disparity
“Some of my friends say girls shouldn’t play chess because they aren’t smart enough,” 2025 Australian under-8 girls’ chess champion Eleanor Wu told SBS News.
She says she gets frustrated when she hears chess described as a game for boys.
“I just say ‘only smart girls can play’ because chess is really hard.”
Despite chess soaring in popularity in recent years, the number of women playing at an elite level remains low — of the world’s almost 1,500 chess grandmasters, less than 50 are women.
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Chess grandmaster David Smerdon, an associate professor in the school of economics at the University of Queensland, wrote the International Chess Federation’s (FIDE) 2026 Gender Equality in Chess Index (GECI) report, which ranked 119 countries based on female participation. Among the 119, Australia ranks 108th with female participation rates well below the global average.
Smerdon believes women face additional barriers in competitive chess, contributing to many teenage girls dropping out of the game in Australia.
“As soon as school finishes and they have to go to their first open tournament, there might be 100 men in the room and three girls, and suddenly you don’t have that same social connection,” Smerdon tells SBS News.
“The real issue here is that if girls don’t see role models, they don’t see clear support, and they don’t see a clear path forward, then they’ll leave the game, even if they’d prefer to keep playing.
Read more: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/australia-aspiring-grand-chess-masters/1uqh6hcnp
