List of Women Grandmasters in Chess

by Michael Bluejay • November 2006

I was surprised that I couldn't find a timeline of all women grandmasters in chess anywhere on the net, so I decided to compile one. This is a list of women who have attained the gender-blind "Grandmaster" (GM) title, not those who have earned only the "Women Grandmaster" (WGM) title. The GM title is afforded to both men and women, and is harder to achieve than the women-only WGM title.

One normally becomes a grandmaster by achieving a rating of at least 2500 and two or three favorable results ("norms") in a tournament involving other grandmasters.  Another way is to win the World Junior Championship.

Women have an additional way to get the title: winning the Women's World Championship (WWC).  FIDE started awarding GM titles to WWC winners in 1978.  The five WWC's before that didn't get the title.  (See Women's World Champions, below.)  Note that four of the seven WWC's earned their titles the traditional way, anyway.  FIDE also awarded the grandmaster title to two women who won the European Women's Championship, but then stopped that practice.

A little-known fact is that Sofia Polgar was the first female to take the first step to becoming a grandmaster, earning a norm in a grandmaster-level tournament in 1989 when she was only 14.  However, she never pursued becoming a grandmaster after that.

There are far fewer female grandmasters than male grandmasters, but there are also far fewer women playing chess than men at any level.  That begs the chicken-and-egg question:

• Would there be as many women grandmasters as male grandmasters if there were equal number of male and femail players?  And for that matter, might there be even more women grandmasters as male grandmasters in that case?
• Or is the fact that there are fewer women participating already evidence that women somehow aren't as suited to the game?

(I'm inclined to believe the former, but time may tell.)

And why is it that fewer women play chess than men in the first place?  Is it because they less competitive?  Or is there something else about the game that makes it less interesting to women?  Or is there yet some other answer?

Susan Polgar once trounced me in just 24 moves in a simultaneous exhibition.  It was an honor.

Update, Oct. 2010.  In the four years since I wrote the above article, the number of women grandmasters has doubled!  The bad news is that even with this doubling, women make up fewer than 2% of the world's grandmasters.  Still, if they can keep up this rate of growth, they'll tie the men in 20 years.  It will be interesting to see what happens.

Women Grandmasters (GM's, not WGM-only players)

Women’s World Champions

Related links:

• Chess Records. Very interesting assortment of chess records, including best performance ratings, longest winning run, most consecutive tournament wins, youngest grandmasters, etc.
• Chess Mind. Article about women grandmasters and a debate about how some were awarded the title.
• Chess Bitch. Book about women in chess, written by the American Women's Champion Jennifer Shahade.