Has Anything Changed?

I finished reading Jennifer Shahade's book Chess Bitch today. It was a great read - I was disappointed to get to the end of the book! I especially appreciated the section where she talked about women who played chess in the "early days" in the United States ("Playing for America.") As I was reading, I was very much struck with this story from the career of U.S. player Mary Bain, and I take the liberty of quoting from Ms. Shahade's book: (p. 229) It was not until 1951 that Bain managed to capture a single title from the Gresser and Karff duo [U.S. Women's Chess Champion title holders]. This enabled her to take another stab at the world crown. She was thrilled to travel to Moscow, along with second-place Karff, to participate in the 1952 World Championship Candidates. . . . (p. 230) She was livid that the American Chess Federation offered her neither financial nor psychological support. "My sendoff was cruel. I was told that I was not going to represent the USA and USCF but Zone Number Four. No use complaining..." She also had no second to help her analyze adjourned games, which ususally resumed the following day: "When I have an adjourned game I stay up all night and then make the worst move." Ideally, Mary would be sleeping soundly, while her trainer would work through the night, and then supply her with a thorough analysis in the morning. British Master Golombek sympathized with Bain, pointing out, "It is very sad that a great country like the USA should have such a weak chess federation." Perhaps the worse insult was that the Soviet Federation had been willing to pay all expenses for her second, but Bain had not been told this until it was too late to arrange. Does this sound familiar? We have the same kind of treatement of our women chessplayers going on over fifty years later. Two recent examples are the way the USCF treated the Women's 2004 and 2006 Chess Olympiad Teams - the same way they treated U.S. Women's Chess Champion Mary Bain - like dirt! It is well known and publicized that the USCF tried its best not to fulfill its contractual obligations to the 2004 Women's Olympiad Team, including waiting several months to pay them the bonus money the team members earned by bringing home the first ever Women's Team Olympiad Medal (Gold) and promptly cancelling the Women's Olympiad Training Program that Susan Polgar had been asked to spearhead just a few years before! I have written in this blog about the inability of the USCF to keep the 2006 Olympiad team together - they finished in fourth place and had earned a spot to play in the recently-concluded First Women's World Team Chess Championships. But we couldn't even field a team of players. Botswana sent a team of four players to the Championship, which didn't win a single match. Wouldn't our "B" team have done better? Of course, the USCF probably didn't have a contingency plan for a "B Team" - or the money to send the team to Russia to compete even if we did have a "B Team." Geez! The richest country in the world - so we claim. But we can't afford to send four women to Russia to compete in a chess tournament. Pathetic, absolutely pathetic.