The UK's only all-women chess team reaches top division — only to be told it must add a male player

19-year-old Alisha Vyas, 18-year-old Emily Maton, and every other chess player of the "She Plays to Win Lionesses" team have battled their way through mixed squads and gender stereotypes to reach the country’s top division on their own merit. But when they broke all expectations and raised the bar, they are now being asked to give up their “all-female chess team” status. After getting promoted into the game’s top tier, the eight Lionesses are being told that one of them needs to get out of the team to make way for a male player, according to a July 31, 2026 report by The Guardian. The announcement has left the players disappointed in and discouraged by the system, and they are fighting back.

Dispiriting for women

According to the BBC, this is the first time an all-female team has reached the top division in the past 33 years of the UK’s national league. The players said the rule would require one of the current eight members to step aside, something they argue undermines the team's purpose. After the Lionesses scored in the top division, the Four Nations Chess League (4NCL) announced that it requires each of its 12 first division teams to have at least one player of each gender.

'We're going backwards'

The proclamation left the participants in fury, many of whom believed that it would “destroy the team’s camaraderie and discourage female participation in the game.” Maton, who grew up hearing “You’re very good for a girl,” believes that each player has shattered the expectations on their own merit and shouldn’t be compelled to move out to accommodate a male player. Anusha Subramanian expressed the same in conversation at BBC Woman’s Hour. “I think having this new rule just kind of undermines what the team is all about. You know we want to encourage more young girls to get involved and feel like this is a sport that every girl can access, and I think this new rule undermines the entire purpose,” she lamented. “It essentially feels like we’re going backwards," commented Vyas.

Twisted against its own purpose

Lorin D’Costa, who founded the team during the COVID pandemic, said, “The Lionesses earned promotion the hard way, but now their reward is losing the thing that makes them special.” Part of this fury comes from the paradox that the agency first made this “at least one player of each gender” rule to encourage the participation of female players. Now the rule is being twisted against its own motive. “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,” reasoned Maton.

Women's representation in competitive chess remains low. According to the House of Staunton, only 11% of the FIDE-rated chess players are female, and 2% of FIDE grandmasters are women. “Not enough girls are playing chess at a young age, and this matters because chess teaches unique strategic skills for life,” ruminated D’Costa, adding that it’s these strategic skills that help women land in positions that have been strongly dominated by men for long.

League defends the rule

As an explanation for the incongruity, Mike Truran, a representative from 4NCL, said that the rule has been running ever since the agency was built in 1994. He added that the agency is open to changing the rule in the future, provided that the captains show some interest and are open to change. But as long as the rule exists, it is not intended to discourage females. Truran argued that if it was for discouragement, they wouldn’t have imposed the same rule on all-male teams.

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