The Queen’s Gambit and the Social Realities of Female Chess Players
- Justin Hew
- Feb 15, 2021
- 4 min read
The Queen’s Gambit is a fictional Bildungsroman that explores the life of a precocious child, Elizabeth Harmon (played by Anya-Taylor Joy), who rises to the top in the 60s chess world. The Netflix series, inspired by Walter Tevis’ book published in 1983, was starkly reminiscent of his past coming-of-age tales, The Hustler, among others.
The story follows an Elizabeth Harmon, orphaned at the age of nine, who resided in Methuen’s Home for Orphaned Children, a sequestered building imbued with a kind of solemn tenor. Under those walls, the lights glowed a dull tawny tint on the linoleum floors, and in the vestibule and corridors there pervaded the air of somnolence and austerity.
The basement too, was similar, embellished with decrepit draperies and rickety adornments, replete with dust: nothing much deserving of great attention. Yet, it was here that Harmon met a taciturn elderly man, Mr. Shaibel, who became her chess coach during her nascent years. It was therefore in Methuen’s Home of Kentucky that she began her journey in the game.
There is much more to be said about the series. Its commendable cinematography, Anya-Taylor Joy’s acting tour de force, among others. Yet, one facet that raises most debate was the overly benign treatment of our female protagonist by her male counterparts.
Judit Polgar, a former female chess champion and top 10 player in the past, said that “they were too nice to her” and “the reality is often not like that”. Interestingly, Harmon’s idiosyncrasies (her tepid temperament and most notable staring at the ceiling in a pensive manner) resemble those of the late Bobby Fischer, a former American world chess champion who has profusely chastised female involvement in chess. In 1963, he asserted that “women are terrible chess players… I guess they’re just not too smart”. He was hardly alone in this belief; as hitherto the enactment of the FIDE World’s Women Chess Championship in 1927, misogynism was ubiquitous.
Yet, one must wonder how such notions emerged. In the book Birth of the Chess Queen (2001) by American historian Marilyn Yalom, she avers that “Russian women have probably been playing chess as long as men”, evidenced by the oral epic poem Bylina (были́на) that described a “chess duel” between a young woman, Katerina Ivanovna, and the Prince of Kiev, where the former was triumphant. Thus, Yalom suggests “it simply proves that Russian women played chess in the past and were good enough to play with men”.
Granted, following the ingress of the Byzantines into Russia, bringing Christianity along with them, misogynistic beliefs were at their apotheosis. “A man who was dominated by his wife was not a man…[women] were supposed to be submissive, chaste, humble, and silent… a husband had the right to beat her”. It was therefore during the emergence of religious polity that chess popularity among the female population stifled. Admittedly, it was no secret that prior to the latter, women were already oppressed in premodern Russia, but the propagation of religious doctrines further exacerbated the fact.
Fast-forward to the turn of the 17th century, women, for reasons not entirely clear, had completely stopped playing chess. And whether because of matrimonial responsibilities or societal expectations, this persisted for the next 300 years; the sentiment became that females were “innately bad at chess”. Moreover, the aggressive and competitive nature of the game further discouraged their re-entrance considering the stereotypical demure and deferent disposition they were “expected” to uphold. Chess had therefore become completely masculinised.
Why are there so few top female players now?
We should preface this by stating that any evidence suggesting women being “innately bad at chess” is purely conjectural, and completely unjustified. And as Wei Ji Ma, FIDE Master and Professor of Psychology at New York University puts it, “has everything to do with statistics and external factors”. Statistically, the lack of top female chess players can be explained by the participation gap. Of all FIDE (World Chess Federation) players in 2019, only 10% of them were female. In other words, comparing the number of top players within a 90% population against a 10% is obviously illogical and unfair.
Another possible explanation has to do with the concept of stereotype threat. In a 2013 study conducted by Rothgerber and Wolsiefer, where they examined the results of 12 chess tournaments, they found that “girls as young as six are aware of the stereotype that ‘good chess players are usually boys’”, which culminated in poorer performance against male opponents of equal or even lower rating. Female players were therefore more likely to feel intimidated and anxious upon learning that they will face a male adversary.
Furthermore, the hostile environment female chess players experience must be emphasised, as it has been shown to result in an increased dropout rate. In an interview with prominent chess player Susan Polgar, former female chess champion and sister of the aforementioned Judit Polgar, who competed mainly in the 90s, stated that most men she faced were extremely confrontational, they often expressed outright refusal to shake her hand and slammed the desk repeatedly when they lost to her. In fact, her experiences were certainly not unique to that time. One notable incident (2008) was the erroneous accusation that female Hungarian chess player Anna Rudolf was surreptitiously using her lip balm as a cheating device during her games. The arbiters hastily responded to the allegations by disallowing her from using her lip balm and also from leaving the tournament hall. She was also publicly shamed as a cheater.
Hidden under the silhouette of the false pretences were the murmurings of disbelief and hints of acrimony, “How could she beat him?”, “How did she play so well?”. In truth, the allegations were everything but justified.
Conclusion
While The Queen’s Gambit does not provide a realistic portrayal of the social realities of female chess players, it does, however, allow for the increased exposure of the game to females. Perhaps then, we might see true gender diversity in chess.
A final note
Certainly, the abject mistreatment of women in chess extends beyond its context and transcends into the universal. In politics and corporate culture, we find that women are often the subjects of critical opprobrium; their intelligence denigrated, their actions subverted. Blatantly, the reasons are no different from sexism we see in chess.
Further Readings
The Birth of Chess Queen by Marilyn Yalom
https://www.euronews.com/2020/11/27/the-queen-s-gambit-why-there-has-never-been-a-female-chess-world-champion
https://aeon.co/essays/why-are-only-two-of-the-world-s-top-100-chess-players-women
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