Chess has two title ladders. What is the difference?
FIDE awards GM, IM, FM and CM, and a second set — WGM, WIM, WFM, WCM — with lower requirements at every step. Counted across all 24,486 titled players, the two ladders sit a remarkably constant distance apart.
Two ladders, not one ladder with a note
The open titles are Grandmaster, International Master, FIDE Master and Candidate Master, and anyone may earn them. Alongside them FIDE runs a second ladder of women's titles — WGM, WIM, WFM and WCM — with their own norms and their own, lower, rating requirements.
The two are frequently confused, and the confusion runs in a specific direction: people assume a WGM is a Grandmaster with a qualifier. She is not. The Woman Grandmaster title has a rating requirement closer to the International Master's than the Grandmaster's, and it sits one full rung down the ladder by design rather than by accident.
Women are eligible for both ladders and many of the strongest players hold open titles. A woman who earns the Grandmaster title is a Grandmaster, recorded on the list exactly as any other GM is.
The gap is about 240 points, at every rung
Comparing the median rating of each title's holders shows how far apart the ladders actually sit. Grandmasters have a median standard rating of 2481 and Woman Grandmasters 2220 — a gap of 261 points. At the International Master rung it is 234 points, at FIDE Master 215, at Candidate Master 263.
The consistency is the striking part. Four independent comparisons, four different populations, and the answer comes back between 215 and 263 points every time. Whatever else the women's ladder is, it is calibrated: each rung really does sit a fixed distance below its namesake rather than drifting.
That distance is roughly one rung of the ladder itself. The gap between GM and IM medians is 131 points, and between IM and FM 107 — so the 240-odd points between the two ladders is closer to two rungs than one, at the top.
| Open title | Holders | Median | Women’s title | Holders | Median | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GM | 1,883 | 2,481 | WGM | 339 | 2,220 | 261 |
| IM | 4,264 | 2,350 | WIM | 927 | 2,116 | 234 |
| FM | 9,715 | 2,243 | WFM | 2,202 | 2,028 | 215 |
| CM | 3,802 | 2,099 | WCM | 1,354 | 1,836 | 263 |
Counted from FIDE's published titled-player list: 24,486 titled players, 19,664 holding an open title and 4,822 a women's title. Medians are of standard ratings; holders without one are counted but not included in the median. The list records a title and not a gender.
Where a WGM actually sits
The most useful way to read the table is to ignore the names and look only at the ratings. The median Woman Grandmaster is rated 2220. The median FIDE Master — two rungs down the open ladder — is rated 2243.
So in rating terms a WGM and an FM are close to interchangeable, and a WIM at 2116 sits between the FM and CM medians. The women's ladder maps onto the open one shifted down by about two steps, consistently, from top to bottom.
None of which says anything about how strong any individual is. These are medians of populations that overlap heavily: plenty of WGMs are rated above the median FM, and plenty of FMs below the median WGM. A title is a record of a performance once achieved, and the guide on titles covers why so many holders sit below their own title's threshold today.
What this data cannot tell you
It cannot say anything about women in chess, and it is worth being blunt about that because the table invites the mistake. FIDE's list records a title, not a person's gender. Women holding open titles are recorded as GM, IM, FM or CM and are indistinguishable here from anybody else.
So the 4,822 women's titles are not a count of women in competitive chess — they are a count of people holding titles from the women's ladder specifically, which excludes exactly the strongest women, the ones who went for the open titles instead.
Any claim about participation, or about the distribution of strength between men and women, needs data this list does not contain. What is on this page is a description of the two title systems and the ratings of the people holding each one, and it should not be read as anything more.
The other caveats
Medians are of standard ratings, and a handful of titled players hold no standard rating at all — they are counted as holders and left out of the median. Every column says which of the two it is counting.
Titles are permanent and never revoked, so each population contains everyone who ever reached the standard, including players long retired. That pulls every median in the table downward, and it pulls both ladders down together, which is part of why the gaps between them are so stable.
The National Master title and other federation-level titles are not FIDE titles and are not in this list at all, so a country's own masters do not appear here unless they also hold a FIDE title.
Common questions
Is a WGM the same as a GM?
No. Woman Grandmaster is a separate title with lower requirements, sitting about two rungs below Grandmaster in rating terms. The median GM is rated 2481 and the median WGM 2220 — a WGM's rating is closer to a FIDE Master's median of 2243.
How much lower are the women's title requirements?
Measured by the median rating of actual holders, the women's ladder sits between 215 and 263 points below the open one at every rung, and the consistency across all four rungs is striking.
Can women earn the Grandmaster title?
Yes. The open titles are open to everyone, and a woman who earns the Grandmaster title is a Grandmaster, recorded on FIDE's list exactly as any other GM. That is also why the count of women's titles is not a count of women in chess — the strongest are on the open ladder.
Data updated 2026-08-02
Chess.com publishes no rating distribution. Those figures are derived from the Lichess distribution mapped through the conversion anchors, and are rounded accordingly.