Gender and Chess - The Ever-Changing, Never-Ending Question...
Susan Polgar: Women's Champ Battles Discrimination

From the Microsoft "Kasparov vs. Deep Blue - The Rematch" website:
http://www.research.ibm.com/deepblue/home/may08/story_2.html,
May 8, 1997,

by Julia Lawlor

If there ever was a doubt that chess remains a man's game, one glance around the 49th floor of the Equitable Center in Manhattan this week would put it to rest. The crowd huddled around the buffet table and glued to the action on the video screen is chock-full of chess Grandmasters, almost all of whom are male.

Susan Polgar wants to change that.

Polgar, 28, is the 1996 Women's World Champion of chess and one of only six female Grandmasters out of a total of 400 in the world today. Susan is the first woman ever to reach the level of Grandmaster, chess's highest achievement. Susan's younger sister, Judith, is also a Grandmaster.

Polgar says societal expectations discourage women from ever starting to play the game. And by adolescence, many girls who have played chess have given it up, she says. But much of the blame, according to Polgar, can be traced to the male-dominated upper echelons of the chess world.

"It's discrimination," says Polgar, a native of Budapest, Hungary, who has lived the last three years in New York. "For a long time, women were not allowed to compete in world championships against men. The leading chess players can't imagine that women can play as well as men."

Polgar first started playing chess at the age of three, when she found a chess board in the house and asked her father to show her how to play. Her father, a psychologist, played as a hobby. Her mother, a language teacher, does not play.

At the age of 4, she won her first tournament, winning 10 out of 10 games against 9- and 10-year-olds. By age 12, she was a National Master, and by 26 was named official Women's World Champion. She has ranked as high as 54 among the top male and female chess players in the world. When she began to insist on playing in mixed tournaments, rather than only against women, Polgar says the Hungarian Chess Federation punished her, refusing to let her travel and play in tournaments for several years. "They wanted me to play only against women."

Polgar pulls out a copy of Chess Life, which includes an excerpt of a 1962 interview with chess great Bobby Fischer telling Harper's magazine: Women are "weak, stupid compared to men. They shouldn't play chess. They're like beginners." Polgar, who has played a few "friendly games" with Fischer since he moved to Hungary, says Fischer now laughs those comments off, explaining they were made "a long time ago."

Polgar has taken a break from competition, recently opening a chess center in Queens. She has played the former champion, Anatoly Karpov, and would love to play against Garry Kasparov one day. Asked what she thinks of Kasparov, she rolls her eyes and says, "He is not an easy person."

She has hopes that women will one day become a more visible part of the game, and sees signs that more young women are continuing to play chess into their teens.

"It's changing," she says, "but very slowly."

Julia Lawlor