Why is there a Women's World Championship?

In many ways, we don't need anyone to play.

Although for my selfish desires, I want it to be possible to be a professional :) I appreciate that it's possible today, but if nobody really cared about chess then I would respect that fact and focus on getting a real job :)

Just a question because I don't know the answer... is the European country of Hungary considered a Western country?

So you're saying, for money

Well, not everything is about money

But that doesn't mean nothing is about money.

But nothing can't be about anything ;)

sounds like a male-created/male-subsided problem that males are complaining about.

Sure, but anything can be about nothing.

Stop discriminating against us!

it may not be anything but it's not notheing.

It was part of the Communist bloc when the Polgars grew up, and is still a country in Eastern Europe. It's quite rare with women top players without roots in Eastern Europe (or even further east nowadays), I can't think of anyone.

At least that's something.

Possibly the rarity of "Western" women to be among the higher ranks is due to the historical paucity of western women chess players. Even in the US, the bulk of top women chess players seem to have their roots in countries and areas that actively encourage girls to participate.  

Only is those women created her.

I hadn't known about this until now:

"The Turkish Chess Federation, with the sponsorship and support of the Gaziantep Metropolitan Municipality, under the auspices of the City of Gaziantep and the European Chess Union, provided a prize fund of 150,000 Euro for all three events. This is the biggest prize fund in the history of European Women's Chess events. For the first time in the chess history the European Women's Champion will get a higher prize sum, 20,500 Euros, than the Champion of the (Open or "Men's") European Individual Championship, which will be held in Plovdiv after this event." http://chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=7961

The mens 1st prize is €14,000...

Cue In Limbo: "You're living in a fantasy woooooooooorld....."

I mean, dude, I'd love for what you said to be correct, and I'd love it if chess could flourish without having to consider marketing strategems, but this isn't the planet in existence right now, and right now if we want lots of high-end tournaments, more people have to get involved, and prefarably a different population than fat stinky guys who purposefully bump into girls I bring to bookstores hosting chess clubs.

The best players in the world are programs. Why do we need humans?

Then buy the book Pogonina says she is writing since a few years back, it's supposed to contain unique training methods in "sexchess", will relate chess positions to other types of positions, and the subject usually makes the (male) interviewers very excited. :-)

http://www.chess.com/article/view/interview-with-wgm-natalia-pogonina

Ha! the same is true about American male chess players. 

Gata Kamsky?  That guy's just gotta' be from Iowa, right?

But there were Morphy, Pillsbury, Marshall, Fine, Fischer, etc so there's at least a history of strong American men, while all the best women have Eastern European roots (Krush, Zatonskih, Abrahamyan, Baginskaite, Foisor, and so on). 

So do you believe this issue to be more of an economic one than a social one?