All-female chess team reaches top tier – then are told they must recruit a man
The UK’s only all-women’s chess team has secured promotion to the top tier of the sport, but they have now been told they must include a man in their squad.
She Plays To Win Lionesses A Team were promoted to the first division of the Four Nations Chess League (4NCL), but a rule dictates that every squad in the competition must have at least one male player and one female.
The rule was ironically introduced to boost women’s participation in chess, but She Plays To Win may now have to sacrifice one of the team’s pieces – so to speak – by replacing a female player with a man.
The team were allowed to field an all-women’s side while competing in 4NCL’s second division, as long as one player was under the age of 18.
Per the Guardian, 19-year-old Alisha Vyas joined She Plays To Win after playing in mixed squads, often as the sole female.
“I knew I was only there to fulfil the quota as a woman, and there wasn’t that sense of community,” she said. “Being part of She Plays To Win is amazing – we have team dinners every time, and there’s real camaraderie between the girls.”
Teammate Emily Maton, 18, added that the squad was “promoted on [its] own merit” and should have to adhere to the first division’s gender rule.
“There’s no shortage of male players in the division,” said Maton. “The whole point of the team is to bring female representation when there isn’t really any at all, and they introduced this rule because there weren’t enough female players. It’s going against the entirety of the rule, and it undermines what we’re trying to do as a team.
“The expectations for me were always a lot lower than they were for male players. I’d have coaches say things like: ‘You’re very good for a girl.’ We’ve had people tell us we don’t deserve to be in this division, that we’re not good enough. We got to the top proving everyone wrong, and now this undermines that.”
Mike Truran of 4NCL said: “Since its inception in 1994, the top division has always been a mixed-team competition, each team requiring a mix of males and females.
“We remain the only league in the UK, that we are aware of, that encourages female participation in chess by requiring mixed teams.
“We surveyed all the team captains during the 2025/2026 season about whether the rule should be changed; there was no significant appetite on the part of the captains to do so. We remain open to changing the rule in future should captains’ opinions change.
“There is no evidence that the rule as it stands discourages female participation in chess. Indeed, we believe that – by requiring all teams in the top division to have at least one female player – we actively encourage female participation in chess.
“We believe that changing the rule to one that has no mixed-team requirement at all, such that teams in the top division are not required to include a female player, would serve to actively discourage female participation in chess.”
