AKIPRESS.COM - Mongolia is the nation ranking highest for promoting gender equality in chess, and the Nordic countries occupy three of the four worst spots, chess.com says, citing the results of a new study.

Research commissioned by the World Chess Federation's (FIDE) Women in Chess Commission and published jointly with the University of Queensland ranked 105 of the world's national chess federations to create a new Gender Equality in Chess Index (GECI).

The study used three key indicators, "Participation," "Performance," and "Progress," to compare gender equality within the international chess community. Data was taken from the FIDE ratings list and the proportions of participants taking part in recent World Youth, World Cadet and selected Continental Youth Championships.

Top of the table was Mongolia with the highest GECI score of 86.53. According to the report, almost 40% of Mongolia's active players on the September 2023 FIDE rating list are women.

"Mongolians have been playing and developing chess since ancient times and nowadays people are paying a lot of attention in teaching chess to their kids because of the successful achievements of our youth and professional women players," Mongolian federation's president Gurvanbaatar Erdenebaatar said in the report.

According to the President, the Mongolian Chess Federation maintains a policy of equal prize money for men and women chess players at national level tournaments. In addition, the Federation tries to involve women chess players in decision-making at the management level.

Mongolia's highest-rated female player Munguntuul Batkhuyag told FIDE she has received significant support to help her career progress.

"We have a government bonus when we become a grandmaster. Also since 2012 with a break for four years we have a national team that receives a salary from the state. Now there is a tendency to increase the support of the national team, and, for example, the national championships have the same prize fund for both women and men," the chess player noted.

Mongolia was followed by Sri Lanka, Uganda, Vietnam, and Namibia.

The Nordic nations fare badly, with Denmark bottom of the table with a GECI score of 34.34, Iceland second-worst in 104th, Sweden ranked 102nd, Finland in 99th, and Norway 94th.

FIDE has 199 countries as affiliate members, in the form of National Chess Federations, of which 76 were excluded due to missing data. One of the nations missing was China which currently dominates women's chess and has held the women's world title since 2016.

As China's top juniors were unable to travel to world and continental age championships during the COVID-19 pandemic the authors said there was not enough data for a Progress score at the time of publication.

The authors recognised the analysis was "imperfect", but said they hope the report "can foster positive and constructive discussions within federations and across the broader chess community."