An all-female chess team has criticised a controversial league rule after earning promotion to the sport’s top domestic division – only to discover they must recruit a male player to compete.
She Plays to Win Lionesses A Team secured their place in Division One of the Four Nations Chess League (4NCL) through promotion on the board, but their success has now been overshadowed by regulations requiring every top-flight side to include at least one player of each gender.
The rule means the squad, made up entirely of women, would have to make room for a male player despite winning promotion with an all-female line-up.
Players say the requirement threatens the identity of a team created specifically to encourage more women and girls to play competitive chess.
The 4NCL, which features teams from England, Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland, has 12 clubs competing in its highest division.
Women remain significantly underrepresented in elite chess, accounting for only around 11 per cent of the world’s highest-rated players.
Lorin D’Costa, founder of the She Plays to Win initiative, believes the promotion should have been a moment of celebration rather than compromise.
“The Lionesses earned promotion the hard way, but now their reward is losing the thing that makes them special,” he said.
“Not enough girls are playing chess at a young age, and this matters because chess teaches unique strategic skills for life.
“Learning these skills can help more girls go on to thrive in the type of strategic roles that end up defining the world of tomorrow – roles that for too long have been dominated by men.
“It takes work to create an environment and sense of community where girls and young women feel that they belong in chess, like our teams in the national league.”
The Lionesses were previously permitted to compete with an all-female squad while playing in the second division, provided they also selected at least one player under the age of 18.
For several members of the team, the environment has offered something they struggled to find elsewhere.
Nineteen-year-old Alisha Vyas said she had previously represented mixed teams where she often felt isolated.
“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.”
Emily Maton, 18, said the team’s promotion had been achieved entirely on merit and argued that forcing them to include a man contradicted the purpose of the regulation.
“There’s no shortage of male players in the division,” she said.
“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.”
The Four Nations Chess League has defended its long-standing policy, insisting it was introduced to increase female participation rather than reduce it.
Mike Truran, speaking on behalf of the league, 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.”
