Is it true that Chess is generally more played by men? I have recently heard that the only 5% percent out of entire chess players are women. I find this suspicious. Who says that only men can play chess? Is this statistic true, and if it is, why?
Among active players in the United States, about 15% seem to be women.

If you look at the rankings on this page, there are currently 9513 women active out of 64634 total players. That's 14.7%.

My guess is that the composition of female players skews more heavily towards juniors than the composition of male players, but I didn't find any numbers on that. I say this because I saw more female players at scholastic tournaments as a child than I do now at open tournaments as an adult.