The Gender Gap in Competitive Chess: Commanding Queens in Command Economies

Currently, the World Chess Federation lists 1,643 male Grandmasters compared to only 37 female Grandmasters, highlighting a well-known disparity in competitive chess achievement between genders. However, a lesser-known fact is that the gender gap in competitive chess varies significantly across different countries.

For example, for every 100 male players at the Candidate Master level, there are approximately 48 female players in Vietnam, 47 in Georgia, 38 in China, 4 in the U.S. (Japan), 3 in France (Sweden), and just 2 in Denmark (Finland). These stark gender discrepancies lead this paper to examine the factors contributing to these gaps through a cross-country analysis. By controlling for key economic development indicators and various measures of gender equality, the study finds that a country’s legacy of a command economy is the most significant predictor of a smaller gender gap in competitive chess.