The Women's World Chess Championship is a chess match played to determine the Women's World Chess Champion. It has been administered by FIDE since its inception in 1927, unlike the absolute World Chess Championship, which only came under FIDE's control in 1948.

There have been three main eras in the history of the Women's World Championship: the Menchik era (1927–1944), the Soviet-dominated era (1950–1991), and the China-dominated era (1991–present). Vera Menchik won every Women's World Championship from 1927 to 1944. The Soviet Union won every Women's World Championship from 1950 until 1991, particularly Georgian champions Nona Gaprindashvili and Maia Chiburdanidze, who combined for ten titles in a row, five each in succession. From 1991 onwards, China has 16 of the last 21 titles, spread across six different champions, including two four-time champions Xie Jun and Hou Yifan, and the reigning five-time World Champion Ju Wenjun.

The championship has not always used a match format, instead originating as a round-robin tournament. A lone championship match was played in 1937, and the championship switched to a match format as the predominant format in the 1950s. This continued until 2000, when a new knockout format was established. The match format returned in 2011 on an alternating basis with the knockout format before replacing the knockout format altogether in 2020.

The Women's World Chess Championship was established by FIDE in 1927. FIDE wanted to gain control of the absolute World Championship and thought establishing a Women's World Championship they had already controlled would help them achieve that. They hosted a women's round-robin tournament as a side event at the Chess Olympiad and weeks after the tournament ended, decided to retroactively declare the winner of the tournament, Vera Menchik, to be the inaugural Women's World Chess Champion.

Menchik remained champion until her death, defending the title seven additional times. Throughout Menchik's reign, the world championship was primarily contested in tournaments, in contrast to the absolute World Chess Championship that used a match format and a challenge system. The lone exception was a privately organized 1937 match between Menchik and Sonja Graf, which was formally recognized by FIDE. The Women's World Championship continued to be held in conjunction with the Chess Olympiad. As a result, it was held on a more regular basis than the absolute World Championship that was only held sporadically whenever there was a challenger.

Menchik died, still champion, in 1944 when her house in Clapham was bombed by a V-1 flying bomb. The next championship was another round-robin tournament in 1949–50 and was won by Lyudmila Rudenko. Thereafter a system similar to that of the overall championship was established, with a cycle of Candidates events (and later Interzonals) to pick a challenger to face the reigning champion.

The first such Candidates tournament was held in Moscow, 1952. Elisaveta Bykova won and proceeded to defeat Rudenko with seven wins, five losses, and two draws to become the third champion. The next Candidates tournament was won by Olga Rubtsova. Instead of directly playing Bykova, however, FIDE decided that the championship should be held between the three top players in the world. Rubtsova won at Moscow in 1956, one-half point ahead of Bykova, who finished five points ahead of Rudenko. Bykova regained the title in 1958 and defended it against Kira Zvorykina, winner of a Candidates tournament, in 1959.

The fourth Candidates tournament was held in 1961 in Vrnjacka Banja, and was utterly dominated by Nona Gaprindashvili of Georgia, who won with ten wins, zero losses, and six draws. She then decisively defeated Bykova with seven wins, no losses, and four draws in Moscow, 1962 to become champion. Gaprindashvili defended her title against Alla Kushnir of Russia at Riga 1965 and Tbilisi/Moscow 1969. In 1972, FIDE introduced the same system for the women's championship as with the overall championship: a series of Interzonal tournaments, followed by the Candidates matches. Kushnir won again, only to be defeated by Gaprindashvili at Riga 1972. Gaprindashvili defended the title one last time against Nana Alexandria of Georgia at Pitsunda/Tbilisi 1975.