

Previously male-only Hearthstone competition now open to all genders - sampo
http://www.polygon.com/2014/7/3/5867015/international-esports-federation-reverses-gender-segregation-policy

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samirmenon
"the segregation was in accordance with IeSF tournament regulations and was to
'avoid possible conflicts (e.g. a female player eliminating a male player
during RO8 [round of eight]) among other things.'"

What makes that a 'possible conflict'?

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AndrewDucker
The previous IeSF regulations had separate male and female tournaments, and
there wasn't a female one for Hearthstone, so allowing a women to knock a man
out when she couldn't go forward herself made no sense.

Fixing it by allowing women to go forward was what made the most sense.

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makmanalp
Hmm, and do you know what was the reasoning behind the original rule that said
women couldn't go forward?

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sampo
Well, before IeSF changed their rules yesterday (under massive social media
feedback + comments from Blizzard), there was no world championship for women
in Hearthstone; it was male-only.

So even if the local organizers in Finland would have rebelled (which they did
not), and allowed women to participate in the national event (which would have
been against the IeSF rules), they probably could not have sent the national
champion – in case she was female – to the international championship games.

So the local organizers decided to follow the IeSF rules and not allow female
participants. But something like this stands out in Europe, so there was
something of a media storm, and everything turned out nicely: IeSF decided to
update their rules.

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AndrewDucker
Makes sense to me. There's nothing intrinsically making either gender better
at computer games.

It's not like running the 100m or a marathon, where women aren't capable of
competing, so there's no reason to keep them segregated.

Also - it's fascinating how fast changes happen nowadays. A bunch of people
point out how stupid something is and it changes within days.

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err4nt
Wait instead of men's and women's, it's now women+men and women-men? How is
_that_ equal?

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TwiztidK
Systems like this are pretty common in programs where one gender greatly
outnumbers the other (such as eSports). At my university, which is mostly
(75%) men, broomball is a popular sport among students. Within our broomball
organization, there was a main league (for men or women) and a women's only
league. The main purpose of the women's league was to get them involved in a
male-dominated sport in a way that makes them feel more comfortable.

In the case of Hearthstone, the main tournaments are primarily men anyway. So
having the women's league in addition to the mixed league will help women get
involved in the activity. As the gender gap gets closer to 50-50, the need for
the women's league decline and they could consider switching to a mixed only
league.

