At the height of the pandemic, Indy Mellink decided to use her newfound free time in an attempt to “dismantle the patriarchy” with playing cards . The 23 year old Dutch women created a deck of cards that eliminated the use of the King, Queen and Jack imagery . A New Hierarchy
Mellink took issue with the stereotypical, hierarchical depiction of men over women in standard playing card decks. As a result, she replaced Kings, Queens and Jacks with gold, silver and bronze and named it GSB Cards . “The reason I did this is because traditional card packs portray the stereotypical gender roles of the man, which is the King, above the Queen, which is a woman,” Mellink said in a promotional video. “And all of them are usually white people.” According to Mellink, she had a discussion with her parents after thinking about the issue. It was her parents that ultimately told her to create a new, more inclusive deck. “We experienced another hard lockdown in the Netherlands so I had extra time on my hands,” Mellink said in an interview . “I always enjoy playing card games with my friends and family every summer so I was brainstorming a card game myself and as I was going through the standard explanation in my head I suddenly said, ‘Yeah, okay standard hierarchy, King above Queen above Jack.’ And then suddenly something clicked in my head like, woah, wait a minute why is the King worth more and the Queen worth more than the Jack?” Women and Poker
Since Mellink claims that using playing cards which promote the patriarchy has “subtle inequalities” that “do affect people,” it seems pertinent to examine women, the subjects of that inequality, in the poker world .
Last year, 2,000 women participated in an 888 Poker online survey to document their experiences playing poker . It was found that 56% of women have never played poker before, only 16% play once per week and 32% agreed that they felt less inclined to play because of their gender . More recently, a WSOP […]
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