Women in Chess: Before and After
The perfect storm scenario happened for chess in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic, combined with the launch of the acclaimed Netflix show The Queen's Gambit brought unprecedented level of exposure to our game. While significant progress remains to be done regarding female inclusion in chess, as anyone who hasn't lived under a rock lately can attest to, this article aims to be mostly data-driven and stick to numbers.
Personally, I am interested in high-quality chess, which, in a loose definition, means that deciphering the moves and the position is well above my pay grade, so the struggle of finding the truth elevates the spirit. Before 2021, my contact with high-quality chess was minimal. I would follow top level tournaments like Tata Steel, FIDE World Cup, FIDE Candidates, etc., but would never dare to dream about potentially attending such events, even as a spectator. Well, I am happy to report that the Romanian Chess Federation has done a tremendous job of organizing two high-quality events that I am very proud to have attended, as they changed my outlook on competitive chess.
In August 2021, Iasi was the host of the European Individual Women's Championship. I went there in incognito mode, mostly to hang out with people I had known from Twitch streaming, back when I was also engaging in such activities as a way to make the pandemic lockdown go by faster. There was some mischief involved - I had to beg the Chief Arbiter (IA Ashot Vardapetyan) to offer me a possibility to watch the games live beyond the customary 10 minutes allotted to volunteer staff or photographers. When my request was met with a rather stark refusal, I bluffed my way to grabbing a VIP badge from the Arbiters' table after hours and simply used this on subsequent days, acting nonchalantly. The adrenalin rush from doing something forbidden in the interest of spectating 100 outstanding games every day made it totally worth it.
Then, last week, the Queens Chess Festival, a closed WGM norm tournament happened mere minutes away from my office building in central Bucharest - you can check the results at https://chess-results.com/tnr805474.aspx?lan=1&art=1. The tournament was outstanding to spectate, not only because 4 of my friends were duking it out, but also because it offered a true spectacle. Few draws, lots of crazy turnarounds, and well...a podium comprised entirely of friends. What more could you ask for?
After its conclusion, I decided it was time to take into my own hands a task I had been postponing far too long. Namely, how has women's chess evolved between 2019 (before the pandemic) until now, when the effects can be evaluated more clearly with data analytics. The first step, I will tell you how I did it, so you can replicate it if you wish - I downloaded the FIDE Standard rating list from September 2019 and did the same for September 2023. I used Python and Jupyter Notebook, but of course you are free to do it your way. A repository of my other tools coded in Python is available at my GitHub.
Let me explain a few of the metrics that I have computed, with graphs included. For my first analysis, I was curious about the percentage of female players in European countries now, in 2023. Here's the output, which should be self-explanatory.
Maybe you are interested to visualize a time-series, how these percentages have changed between 2019 and 2023? Don't worry, I got you, with countries ordered from the largest percentage increased to the lowest. If you know what's happening in Croatia, let me know in the comments. The percentage of women there has nearly doubled, from 8% to 15%!
Let's travel a bit outside Europe and graph the net increase in (rated) females across many countries, sorted by the top ones. Here, I have opted to restrict my attention to rated players only, because they show an extra commitment to the game itself and can be deemed more involved in the community. The results show some countries with tradition in women's chess, but are not too informative otherwise. After all, Russia and India have been at the top or near the top for a long time!
The second thought was to normalize this net increase...this simply means dividing the net increase in female players by the number of rated female players on the Sept 2019 standard list. Here, the results are a bit more interesting, as they offer some extra information. Only countries with at least 500 rated women are shown, as the normalized results are more relevant with a cutoff in place.
Still, this is likely not a satisfactory way to extract the most important info. Namely, we might not necessarily consider it a success for women's chess in Italy if their female player base has increased by 32%. whereas their men might have increased by 40% (hypothetically) in the same timespan. Hence, we come to the final graph of this article - normalized female increase as a ratio to normalized male increase.
It is true, women's chess in Italy is progressing at a faster rate than men's chess. On the other hand, the previous graph was a bit misleading for Sri Lanka. It looks like chess is indeed growing quickly there, but the men are leading the charge in numbers. Still, look at Hungary! The amount of rated female players that have entered the list in the past 4 years is nearly double the amount of rated male players. A different type of Budapest Gambit...
For now, I will wrap the analysis here, but I am curious to hear your thoughts. I am happy that my federation is finally recognizing the importance of grassroots movements and implementing a Chess in Schools Program. What has changed in your country, how does your home federation treat women in chess, and what other steps do you see necessary?
