12th Women’s World Chess Champion Alexandra Konstantinovna Kosteniuk topped the cover of the September issue of Bolshoi Sport magazine. She posed for a photoshoot as she answered questions on the hot topics put her by Dmitry Maslov. Naturally, the conversation couldn’t but touch upon the gender issue: “I believe that chess is one of the few sports where women are in a privileged position: there are both women’s and unisex tournaments, but there’s no ‘for men only’ tournament. It surprises me that men don’t protest”, Kosteniuk said. “For many years there has been much discussion about why men are stronger than women. Just recently I published an article on this subject, and I also consulted with Judit Polgár. She attributes the gender gap to historical and sociological factors, and I quite agree with her: people have a lot of prejudices that are difficult to break. Subconsciously speaking, girls always feel and know that they’re weaker than men and that they can only aim for the Women’s World crown. There are leading female players who seriously assume that women are the weaker sex. A change of mentality depends on a small change in consciousnes. The question is not even whether a woman will ever become absolute World Champion: unique personalities can succeed if a number of factors coincide. But women should appear in the top 100 of the world rankings much more often. At one time, Judit Polgár was one of the world’s top ten, now 侯逸凡 (Hóu Yìfán) is in 84th position, and the list ends with them. Of course, modern chess is a very harsh discipline. In order to fight on equal terms with men, women have to work seriously all of the time, full-time. But I don’t see any problem with playing both women’s and unisex tournaments”. Photos: Platon Shilikov/Bolshoi Sport.
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