Credit: X

Credit: X

Indi an chess player Divya Deshmukh allegedly faced sexist comments and remarks from the crowd during the recently concluded Tata Steel Masters in Wijk Aan Zee, Netherlands.  The International Master with a rating of 2420 finished 12th with a score of 4.5 out of 13 while taking on the likes of Hans Niemann and Harika Dronavalli.

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The  Asian women's chess championship 2023 winner from Nagpur took to social media and called the blatant misogyny women players in Wijk Aan Zee faced. She further revealed that crowd members focused on her clothes, hair, and accent instead of her chess.

Women in chess are often just taken for granted:  Deshmukh

In a social media post,  Divya Deshmukh wrote,  ''I have been wanting to address this for a while but was waiting for my tournament to be over. I got told and also myself noticed how women in chess are often just taken for granted by spectators."

"My most recent example of this on a personal level would be in this tournament, I played a few games which I felt were quite good and I was proud of them.  I got told by people how the audience was not even bothered with the game but instead focused on every single possible thing in the world: my clothes, hair, accent and every other irrelevant thing.'' 

Everything was discussed except my games: Divya Deshmukh 

The 18-year-old further expressed disappointment with how the general audience overlooks women's chess and their ability. She also revealed how audience interviews were about everything but chess, a trend not present for men.  ''I was quite upset to hear this and I think it is the sad truth that people when women play chess often overlook how good they actually are, the games they play and their strength,'' she wrote

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''I was quite disappointed to see how everything was discussed in my interviews (by the audience) except my games, very few people paid attention to it and it is quite a sad thing.  I felt it was unfair in a way because if I go to any guy's interview there would be way less judgement on a personal level, actual compliments about the game and the player,'' she asserted.