The Women's World Chess Championship 2017 was a 64-player knock-out tournament, to decide the women's world chess champion. The final was won by Tan Zhongyi over Anna Muzychuk in the rapid tie-breaks.

At the FIDE General Assembly during the 42nd Chess Olympiad in Baku in September 2016, the organizational rights to the event were awarded to Iran, who held the Championship in Tehran from 10 February to 4 March 2017.

Some top female players decided not to attend the tournament. Hou Yifan, the outgoing women's world champion and top ranked female player, decided not to enter the tournament because of dissatisfaction with FIDE's Women's World Championship system. The 2015 Women's World Champion, Mariya Muzychuk, and US Women's Champion Nazí Paikidze also elected not to attend, out of protest at the tournament's location in Iran, where it is mandatory for all women to wear a hijab in public (a rule which also applied to the participating players). Other notable absentees were women's world number four Humpy Koneru and eight-time US Women's Champion Irina Krush.

On 12 May 2017 FIDE suspended the Chess Federation of Iran for non-payment of Women's World Championship prizes. On 2 June 2017, the ban was lifted.

The tournament was originally placed on the FIDE calendar for October 2016. However, the March 2016 meeting of the FIDE Presidential Board ultimately postponed the event to 2017 due to the lack of an organizer.

The original agenda for the General Assembly made no explicit mention of Iran, only indicating that the event had been postponed until 2017 due to the lack of an organizer, similar to the situations in 2014 and 2015. When the agenda item (5.20.7) for Women's World Championship came up for discussion in Baku, Iran offered to host the event, and after a brief discussion of the applicable dress code, none of the 159 attending delegates objected. Only when FIDE published the General Assembly decisions two weeks later did the existence of the Iran offer become widely known, and the issue rapidly became explosive, in part due to the social media activity of Nigel Short, who alternatively claimed that awarding the event to Iran was against FIDE Statutes or the Code of Ethics (or founding Principles) of the International Olympic Committee.

Nazí Paikidze, who qualified by finishing tied for 2nd in the 2015 US Women's Championship, was the first female player to protest FIDE's decision to allow Iran to host the event. Through the media she announced that she would not participate most particularly because of Iran's dress code requiring women to wear a hijab, though initially she also secondarily mentioned the risks to Americans and other foreigners of being detained in Iran because of their nationality. In a later petition on Change.org she included a third item, namely that there could be speech restrictions on women.

Chess, like other sports, has had a degree of controversy regarding women's attire. A statement from FIDE Press Officer Anastasiya Karlovich was published at Susan Polgar's site Chess Daily News on October 1, 2016, indicating that FIDE has not received any official complaints to date (including from prior women's events held in Iran), but that they would be reviewing all possible solutions for the players’ comfort and would discuss all the issues with the organizers in Iran during meetings in the next few weeks. Polgar requested that concerned participants contact the FIDE Women's Commission, of which she is co-chair.