The game of Chess evolved from an ancient Indian game called chaturanga over 1,500 years ago. Chaturanga is a Sanskrit word that means “four divisions” (infantry, cavalry, elephants, and chariots). The game moved to Persia, where people called it shatranj. The term “checkmate” came from and sounds like Persian phrase shāh māt, which means “the king is helpless”. The game reached Europe by the Middle Ages where the advisor piece  was changed into the queen we use today. Thus Chess started in India as chaturanga and moved through Persia and the Arab world, where the piece next to the king was a male advisor called the mantri or vizier. The Europeans however changed the advisor (or vizier) to a queen (a woman) to match their own royal courts and social structure. This was symbolically as though making a woman suffer what the man in her place, previously used to be suffering from.  Ideally a woman should not have to suffer to earn the crown yet what is there in practice is far from what should have been in principle. Assuming the role of men is not necessarily what can uplift women, rather they can have their own cherished domains of ambition and activity. 

A woman who manages a household, raises children, earns money, cares for ageing parents, navigates harassment, protects herself, withstands emotional burdens and still shows up every morning is moving like a chess queen—in every direction. Unlike other chessmen a queen moves forward, backward, sideways, and diagonally often placing herself in harm’s way to protect the king and preserve the larger........

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