The world chess federation FIDE recently made the incredibly transphobic and mysogynist ruling to exclude trans women from competing in women’s tournaments, to strip trans men of pre-transition titles and to subject trans people to a two-year long surveilance process that could lead to forced outings. The German and French chess federation have now decided to ignore this ruling. Source in German (mostly with the info from the image): https://www.queer.de/detail.php?article_id=46744
idk if the research still holds up, but i believe there’s some studies showing that women, due to stereotype threat caused by the sexist culture and gender imbalances in chess, will often underperform when matched with male players