Focus on my Clothes, Hair, not game - Divya Deshmukh

G GOWTHAM
Indian chess player divya Deshmukh has claimed that she was subjected to sexist conduct from fans at the recently finished Tata Steel Masters in Wijk Aan Zed, Netherlands, claiming that they "focused on irrelevant things like her hair, clothes and accent" throughout the event.
The 18-year-old international Master from Nagpur, who won the Asian women's chess championship last year, wrote a lengthy social media post condemning the sexism that women players suffer on a regular basis and detailing her bad experience in Wijk Aan Zed. ''I've wanted to address this for a long, but I was waiting for my tournament to end. I was informed, and I've witnessed, that women in chess are sometimes overlooked by onlookers,'' Deshmukh remarked.

"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,'' she wrote in an instagram post on Sunday.

Deshmukh finished 12th in the Challengers division at the Tata Steel Masters, scoring 4.5.
'EVERYTHING WAS DISCUSSED EXCEPT MY GAMES'

The adolescent said that whereas male players received attention only for their game, female players were graded on factors unrelated to their chess prowess.
''I was pretty disappointed to hear this, and I believe it is the unfortunate fact that when women play chess, people frequently underestimate how brilliant they are, the games they play, and their power,'' she stated.
''I was upset to see how everything was addressed in my interviews (by the audience) except my games; very few people paid attention to them, which is rather disappointing.

"I felt it was unfair in a way because if I went to any guy's interview, there would be way less judgement on a personal level, actual compliments about the game and the player," she said.



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