The global landscape of women’s chess, and where Harika Dronavalli fits in

Only India’s second woman grandmaster, she’s been winning internationally since 9, and just led India to an unprecedented win. More women are stepping up to the board in the country, she says.

Harika Dronavalli, 30, won her first international medal, a silver, at the World Youth Chess Championship (U-10 girls) in Spain, aged 9. At 17, she won an Arjuna Award. At 20, she became only the second Indian woman to become a grandmaster, after Koneru Humpy.

Dronavalli recently led India to an unprecedented win, a silver, at the recently concluded FIDE Women’s World Team Championship. She also won a silver for her individual performance.

A three-time bronze-medallist at the Women’s World Chess Championship, Dronavalli dreams of winning gold. But that just got harder. It used to be a knockout between 64 of the world’s most skilled women chess players. Now, it’s going to follow the open format, where two of the world’s best women chess players, selected after a two-year cycle of tournaments, will battle it out to be named world champion. How Dronavalli fares in two upcoming tournaments will determine whether she will make it in.

Dronavalli achieved her highest ranking at world no 5 in 2016, and has won bronze at the biennial world women’s championships thrice, with dreams of winning the gold – the ultimate title in chess – one day, hopefully next year, if she qualifies for it.

One of the reasons she was encouraged to play the game, she often says, was because there was less competition in women’s chess. When she started India didn’t have a single woman grandmaster. In 2002, 16-year-old Humpy became GM, making her the youngest woman to achieve the required norms. Dronavalli followed suit nine years later. A decade has passed since, and they remain the only two Indian women with the title.

To put it in perspective further, India has 69 grandmasters (those with a chess rating over 2500) by latest count – only two are women.

But the chess ecosystem for women in India is progressing. Dronavalli says there are many more events and open tournaments for girls and women to participate in now than there were when started more than 20 years ago.

“There are also talents that are emerging, with ambitious parents who are taking up chess and hoping to make it big,” says Shah. “I believe they will shine. But when you compare it to the boys in our country, there’s quite a big gap there.”

But also consider this number – in the 1,739 GMs in the world currently, only 39 are women, and Dronavalli is ranked 11 among them.