Ok but why are there womens chess competitions? That doesnt make sense at all
I believe that initially, women's only chess competitions arose from the fact women weren't allowed or simply strongly discouraged to compete in regular competitions. And while women have been allowed to participate in regular competitions for a while now, there are just so many barriers for women to overcome just to enter the chess world.
Historically, women have been discouraged from playing chess. The first real women's chess tournament was held in the late 19th century, even though chess has been around for several hundreds of years before that. Quite a few women throughout history have been known to be formidable chess players, such as Queen Elizabeth I, who accoding to a London placard, was actually great at chess! Benjamin Franklin has also been noted to have played chess with noble women in Paris, who were strong opponents and matched his strength in the game.
So the issue isn't, and has never been, that women are just bad at chess.
The problem arises when you consider that across cultures, women are simply discouraged from having intellectual pursuits. And as you know, chess is often considered to be the most intellectual of games. You can see this pattern not only in chess. Even if you look at cultures often considered to be "liberal," the percentages of women engineers are incredibly low.
I know this myself. I was taught how to play chess when I was 11, and I was fascinated by the game. But I had no real incentive to play. No one wanted to play with me, no one believed I could be good, and I just.. never nurtured that passion for the game. Meanwhile, my cousin Fred, who is 12 years older yet learned the game at a similar age, was motivated to enter chess competitions in his city right off the get go and ended up becoming quite a decent player.
Besides, there is a lot of investment that goes into competitive chess. Major chess competitions are often held in different countries (ex. in Greece one year, in Russia the next, etc) and a lot of teams and coaches just don't want to invest that much in their female players, for lack of belief in their capabilities as there are so many social boundaries for them to even start training.
Though, I do believe (and hope!), that women and girls will no longer have those barriers in chess someday, and that we will have the same intellectual nurture to succeed in the game.
