It’s not a physical game, yet I have never seen any women playing against men. I remember once there was a charity game where men and women played but not official Fide tournaments.
Forgive me if they have, they r very rare at least.
Is there a proper reason ?
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Men and women do play against (and with) each other. However, because of its history and *gestures vaguely at the world*, there’s a lot of misogyny in the chess world. For example, there are plenty of female chess streamers who have shared stories of sexual harassment and assault at chess tournaments, including while they were still children. That’s before we just get to hostility, bias, and unfair treatment.*
Not to mention the battle to be taken seriously. There was a recent instagram post from 18 year old Divya Deshmukh pointing out that in the recent Tata Steel tournament in after-match interviews her male colleagues were asked about the chess they’d just played, whereas she was asked about what she was wearing. She said that she’d been asked about her clothes and being pretty rather than chess in supposedly-serious interviews since she was 14.
Because of all of this and to encourage more women to play the game there are women-only tournaments and women-only titles, so that those who might otherwise be put off have people to look up to and places they can play competitively without having to worry about their safety or not feeling welcome.
This is a slow process, and there is still a massive gender imbalance in the sport. Just that gap alone would mean that almost all – if not all – top currently-active players are men, which means that that’s who you’ll see competing at the top-level tournaments, which are the ones that get mainstream coverage.
Had things been slightly different, then perhaps we could have seen Hou Yifan competing in the current Candidates tournament for the opportunity to become World Champion. However, she’s retired from professional chess, and because the pool is much smaller and resources are much more scarce, it’s going to be a while before we see another female player as strong as her or with the potential she had.
*As an example, IM Anna Rudolf was once accused of cheating in a tournament because the other players didn’t believe that a woman could play as well as she was. This put added stress on her, and threw off her game. She hasn’t said so explicitly, but since she was competing for a GM norm at the time, it’s implied that if it weren’t for this incident and the way it affected her in the moment and subsequently, she may have become a GM.
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