New Delhi: An 18-year-old Indian chess player has sparked a conversation on attitudes towards women in the sport with an Instagram post about her experiences.
Divya Deshmukh, who is an International Master (the second-highest title in chess), said that her chess videos often received online comments that focused on her appearance rather than her games.
“It’s a sad truth that when women play chess, [people] often overlook how good they actually are… and every irrelevant thing is focused on,” she wrote, adding that she had wanted to address the issue “for a while”.
Deshmukh shared the post at the end of the recent Tata Steel Chess tournament held in the Netherlands as she said that the behaviour of the audience had irked her throughout the competition. The organisers of the tournament later issued a statement supporting her and said that they “remain committed to promoting women in chess and ensuring a safe and equal sporting environment”.
Sexism is still an under-discussed topic in chess, which is one of the few mainstream sports where men and women often compete against each other. Deshmukh’s post, experts say, has ignited a crucial conversation on the behaviour of fans and even male players towards women in chess – even Susan Polgar, the world’s first woman grandmaster, joined in.
Deshmukh told the BBC that she has been receiving hateful comments related to the way she dresses, looks or speaks since she was 14 years old. “It makes me sad that people don’t pay the same kind of attention to my chess skills,” she said.
Thousands of people have liked her post, and many have left supportive comments. One Reddit user noted how even seemingly innocuous jokes and comments were often “laced with sexist attitudes” while another said that it was common for people to leave sexually suggestive remarks under videos featuring women players.
“With an increase in online tournaments and with games being livestreamed, women players have become disproportionately vulnerable to receiving misogynistic comments from the predominantly male audience online,” says sports writer Susan Ninan, who has written extensively about chess.
She adds that such trolling deepens sexist attitudes about chess and can impact the confidence of young women players.
