The world’s biggest organizer of video gaming tournaments has responded to calls for better gender equality by abolishing its men-only division, though is still to keep its women-only division in use. Mixed messages?
It’s being heralded as a victory for equal rights and fair representation – no longer will male and female video game tournaments be held separately. That is, at least not those organized by the International E-Sports Federation, which is one of the world’s biggest organizations of its kind.
But here’s the thing – in making a stand against discrimination, the IESF has actually managed to ruffle a few feathers on the other side of the fence. It’s great to see that a new “Open for All” division has been put in to replace the “Male” division, but at the same time they’re still keeping the “Female” division open for women only.
So no male-only group, but still a women-only group.
The IESF faced a heavy backlash after it announced a Hearthstone tournament that would be close-off entirely to women. As for its reasoning for changing it’s often aggressive standpoint on single-sex gaming, the folks behind the organization made a pretty fair argument.
“The IeSF Board addressed its reason for maintaining events for women, citing the importance of providing female gamers with ample opportunities to compete in e-Sports—currently a male-dominated industry,” read the statement.
“Female gamers make up half of the world’s gaming population, but only a small percentage of e-Sports competitors are women,”
“The IeSF’s female-only competitions aim to bring more diversity to competitive play by improving the representation of women at these events,”
“Without efforts to improve representation, e-Sports can’t achieve true gender equality.”
Fair point and well made, but what’s with the women-only division still holding in place?
Not sure about that one…