PAWNS TO QUEENS

Chess is more than just a game. It is a low-cost, high-impact educational tool that strengthens cognitive development, enhances academic performance, and nurtures critical life skills. Its benefits extend far beyond the board, even long after a child has stopped playing.

Learning chess from an early age sharpens the mind and stimulates key cognitive skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, logical reasoning, pattern recognition, and spatial awareness. It teaches children to plan ahead, assess consequences, and make thoughtful decisions—developing essential executive functions like working memory, impulse-control, time management and cognitive flexibility.

In the classroom, chess helps children understand complex concepts which supports learning in subjects such as mathematics and science, and even language and the arts. Outside the classroom, it cultivates discipline, sportsmanship, and emotional intelligence. It teaches children how to take accountability for their decisions, and work towards long-term goals. Through play, children build confidence and self-esteem, as each move strengthens their belief in their own ability to think, adapt, and lead.

Chess is also a great equalizer. It requires no expensive equipment or elite facilities. All a child needs is a board and pieces. It is a universal language of logic and leadership, offering a platform for excellence that transcends geography, income, and circumstance.

Chess also supports mental health and well-being. It provides a structured yet stimulating environment that can help improve attention span and self-regulation. As children mature, the game can become an excellent stress management tool and mental clarity.

Finally, chess fosters imagination and innovation. Players must anticipate multiple possibilities, adapt quickly, and develop unique strategies—skills that are increasingly valuable in a world that demands not only knowledge, but creativity, resilience, and vision.

Women remain underrepresented in nearly every professional field across the globe—from STEM and finance to politics, law, and leadership. According to UN Women, nearly 50% of women globally are employed in low-paid, undervalued roles, and women hold only 28% of managerial positions worldwide. 

Even in chess, the gender gap is stark. There are currently more than 1,700 Grandmasters in the world—the highest title awarded by the International Chess Federation (FIDE)—but fewer than 45of them are women. To date, there has never been a female World Chess Champion.

In STEM, women remain underrepresented across the pipeline, from education to employment, in both traditional and emerging fields. Globally, women account for only 28% of engineering graduates, 22% of AI professional, and less than one-third of the STEM workforce overall – despite no evidence suggesting that men possess superior intellectual ability.

What girls and women lack is not intelligence, imagination, or ambition—but access to opportunity.

This disparity begins early. In underserved and rural communities in South Africa, girls face layered systemic barriers which are often exacerbated by socio-economic challenges. Some girls miss large weeks of school each year because they cannot afford menstrual hygiene products. Others fall behind due to being disproportionally burdened with household responsibilities. Teenage pregnancy also disproportionally affects girls. Over time, these setbacks accumulate, limiting the access these girls have to opportunities for leadership, independence and intellectual growth.

Chess offers a powerful counterbalance. 

It teaches girls to trust their minds, assert their ideas, and make bold, strategic moves. It cultivates STEM-aligned thinking, builds self-confidence, and provides a quiet but transformative space for girls to excel in a world that too often tris to silence them. Chess is one of the few sports where income, cultural background, and physical strength do not determine the outcome. With a board and a set of pieces, every child has a chance.

The global gender gap is not a reflection of ability—it is a reflection of structural exclusion. And it will not close on accident. It requires intentional, calculated interventions.

I was taught how to play chess by my mother, and I grew up playing chess with my sister. This allowed me to walk into male-dominated spaces with confidence. The greatest female chess player of all time, Judit Polgár, also grew up playing alongside her sisters, Susan and Sofia. But this is not the experience of most girls. Many face the chess world alone—walking into chess clubs full of boys and receiving the quiet but clear message: You do not belong here.

Pawns to Queens is about more than teaching chess. It is about creating space, planting possibility, and pushing back against systemic gender inequality – strategically, powerfully and together.

South Africa is not on track to meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030, particularly SDG 5: Gender Equality. Targets like ending violence against women and girls, recognising unpaid care work, and increasing access to leadership positions, technology and economic resources remain unmet. According to the 2024 SDG Gender Index, this is not unique to South Africa, and no country in the world is currently on pace to achieve gender equality by 2030.

In South Africa, most gender-based interventions focus on keeping girls safe: a crucial priority in a country grappling with one of the highest rates of gender-based violence and femicide in the world. In the year ending March 2024, more than 5,500 women and 1,600 children were murdered. However survival alone cannot be the goal. There has to be more to life for girls than staying alive. 

This is why the time for Pawns to Queens is now.

Chess is one of the few low-cost, high impact interventions that address this moment directly. It was one of the first domains where the power of artificial intelligence (AI) was meaningfully explored—through programs like Fritz and IBM’s Deep Blue, which famously defeated World Champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.

Even in a resource-limited like South Africa, every serious chess player I’ve known—including myself since the age of nine—has used AI-powered engines as a routine part of chess training. For us, AI was never futuristic or intimidating. It was simply how we played and improved our game.

That’s the power of chess: it makes complex concepts like AI feel accessible, and familiar.It offers a logical entry point into systems thinking, and digital fluency-precisely that will define the future.

Ensuring that girls are not left behind in this next wave of technological transformation is not a luxury. It’s a necessity. Chess can be the gateway.