Women chess players get second-class treatment

The queen may rule the chess board, but women players get second-class treatment
By WILLIS RYDER ARNOLD •

After Team USA won the Women’s World Cup Soccer Championship, people started talking about money. The women’s teams competed for a fraction of the prize money compared to the men’s championship. This pay disparity is replicated throughout the sports world, even in chess. And the irony with chess is this is a game played with the mind. It’s a game that has nothing to do with strength or height.

This week 17-year-old Aiya Cancio travelled from Arizona to St. Louis to compete in an all-girl chess tournament. She says these tournaments are inspiring in the face of a male dominated sport.

“The all-girl tournaments really actually help just because you get to see how many other girls there are just like you. And it, I don’t know, keeps you going,” she said.

Cancio is competing in the 12th annual Susan Polgar Foundation’s Girls’ Invitationalthis week in St. Louis. The event comes in the middle of a year that reignited the debate of sexism in chess.

Polgar herself says gender disparity remains a significant problem in the sport.

“It sounds crazy in the 21st century,” Polgar said, “but we’re still not quite there with equality when it comes to equal opportunities or equal encouragement with girls in chess.”

Polgar herself is no stranger to discrimination and the fight to combat stereotypes. For hundreds of years only men held the coveted title of Grandmaster in chess. But in 1991, Hungarian-born Polgar became the first female to hold the sport’s highest title through conventional completion rules. Polgar now lives in St. Louis where she runs the Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence and the Susan Polgar Foundation at Webster University.

Full article here: http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/queen-may-rule-chess-board-women-players-get-second-class-treatment