So, about chess. I had to explain this to someone once.
Chess has two leagues. A woman's league which is open to only women, and an open league, which is open to everyone.
Of course, this person thought this was ridiculous. Chess is a mental game, no physicality to create a gap. If the open league is open to all, why does the woman's league exist? Money. The answer is money.
Women chess players tend to top out at 2400 elo. Men chess players tend to top out at 2700 elo. That's actually a ridiculously huge gap. While there have been a number of women who've had 2600-2700+ elo across the years, they're more the exceptions that prove the rule.
So these 2400 woman grandmasters want to 1) actually have a chance at being winners and 2) make money by playing chess. The 'average' top female chess players cannot compete with the top percentage of the open league. So they don't.
And that's why the women's league exists despite the open league being as non-sexist as possible.
Chess is absolutely for women, it's a game. Competing at chess? I mean, they have to have their own league in order to have a chance at winning. Belarusian Israeli Chess Commentator might not be wrong.
Eh, so what if it's just for money? If it works, I got no problem with it. It's like a weight class in fighting sports: it's done so that the company can make more money, yes, and the guys of a higher weightclass would beat up those of a lower weight class, but it still makes money, so why not do it?
Basically, the question is if women's chess is more like the WNBA or Women's Tennis. One of those makes money, the other is a woke money sink. And from what I can tell, pro chess itself seems to be a money sink kept afloat by rich donors up until recently, where it suddenly became popular. So I don't see the problem.
The future of chess really seems similar to esports rather than sports, I'll be honest. Twitch streaming, individual creators, and companies that turn it into a computer game (chess.com for example) are what seem to be leading the way to make money, not sponsorships/ad revenue/ticket sales.
Also, if we only cared about the best players, then the computer chess championship would be all the rage, not anything else.