I Have Been the Only Girl in the Room
Why girls leave chess and why I started a project to bring them back
By Eugenia Karas
At my first international open tournament, I was 11 years old and trying to count how many girls were in my section.
It didn’t take long.
I’m 17 now, a Woman FIDE Master representing England, and I’ve spent the last four years coaching younger players at my local chess club in North London. From both sides of the board, I’ve watched the same pattern repeat itself again and again:
Girls start chess in roughly equal numbers to boys. But somewhere between the school chess club and the first serious tournament, most of them quietly disappear.
People usually explain this by saying chess is “a boys’ thing.” There’s truth in that. But I don’t think culture alone explains why girls leave chess.
I think confidence does.
Chess is brutal in a very specific way. Every move is a public statement about your judgement. There’s nowhere to hide behind teammates or group work. If you make a mistake, it’s yours alone.
And many of the girls I’ve coached are incredibly capable players but hesitant ones. They often choose the safer move instead of the stronger one. Not because they lack ability, but because they doubt themselves.
That confidence gap exists far beyond chess.
A 2025 report by the Royal Economic Society found that girls are significantly less likely to study A-Level Economics in the UK, despite often achieving equally strong results. One reason was self-confidence: girls were more likely to underestimate their abilities, especially in mathematical subjects.
Chess feels like the purest version of this problem.
After I started winning more games as a teenager, I lost count of how many times I heard some variation of:
“I can’t believe I lost to a girl.”
Most people would never openly say women are bad at chess anymore, but the attitude hasn’t disappeared completely. You still feel it sitting across the board sometimes.
And that’s exactly why keeping girls in chess matters.
Because the benefits go far beyond ratings.
Yes, studies show chess improves reasoning, memory and academic performance. But the biggest change I notice in the girls I coach is something less measurable:
They stop apologising for themselves.
After a year of regular play, they lose games without crumbling. They trust their decisions more. They sit across from stronger opponents without immediately assuming they’ll fail.
Those aren’t just chess skills. They’re life skills.
That belief is what led me to start the Girls Chess Empowerment Project (TGCEP) in 2024, a free online initiative connecting girls in countries with limited chess infrastructure to coaching, community, and opportunities.
The idea was simple:
A chess set is cheap. A Chess.com account is free. Talent exists everywhere.
What’s often missing is support.
So far, we’ve worked with girls in countries including Belize, Nauru, St. Kitts, Eswatini, and expansion into the USA is underway. While the project is thriving, we’re still on the journey toward our long-term goal of 10,000 members. But even now, some of the outcomes already feel deeply meaningful.
In Belize, the programme helped inspire a girls-only chess club at St Catherine’s School. In Nauru, one participant qualified to represent her country at the 2025 Oceania Youth Chess Championships and is now preparing for the 2026 Chess Olympiad.
For a girl from a country of 12,000 people, that matters.
What I’ve learned from building TGCEP is that the biggest barrier usually isn’t talent.
It’s the absence of someone saying:
“Yes, this space is for you too.”
That person doesn’t need to be a Grandmaster. Sometimes a 17-year-old WFM with a webcam and patience is enough.
If chess organisations genuinely want more girls to stay in the game, I think the solution is less about symbolic gestures and more about consistent support early on:
- structured beginner coaching,
- visible female role models,
- girls coaching girls,
- and normalising failure as part of improvement, not proof you don’t belong.
Because every chess player loses. Constantly.
The girls who stay are usually the girls who learn that losing a game is not the same thing as being incapable.
The pieces don’t care who you are. They only care what you do with them.
And honestly, that might be the most important thing chess can teach a girl.
We’re always ready to welcome more hands and hearts into our growing global community. If you’d like to be part of the mission, you can DM me directly, email me at e.karas2017@gmail.com or reach out on LinkedIn.