This Woman Creates A Gender And Race-Neutral Deck Of Cards, Can’t Keep Up With The Orders
When’s the last time you played a card game? Did you notice anything unusual with your card deck? Indy Mellink, from the Netherlands, certainly thought that something was strange.
Last summer, the 23-year-old card fan realized that traditional playing cards were, in her opinion, sexist and racist, so she created a new deck of cards that would be fully inclusive by completely removing “gender hierarchy and race differences” altogether.
Indy, spurred on by her supportive dad, founded ‘GSB Playing Cards’ where, instead of Kings, Queens, and Jacks, the cards feature Gold, Silver, and Bronze. She had a lot of time on her hands because of the Covid-19 lockdown, so she put her graphic design skills to use.
By Emma Taggart on January 27, 2021
In a traditional deck of playing cards, Kings are worth more than Queens and Queens are worth more than Jacks. However, this concept seems a little outdated now that we live in a world where gender equality is the goal for many people. That’s why 23-year-old Indy Mellink decided to design a new deck of cards that would be inclusive of everyone. The Netherlands-based designer created the GSB Playing Cards a deck featuring Gold, Silver, and Bronze cards instead of Kings, Queens, and Jacks.
Mellink’s idea for the project came in June 2020, when she was playing cards with her family during lockdown. “I really like to play games with my friends and family, like card games and board games, but I also like to design games myself,” she tells My Modern Met. “So over summer, during the hard lockdown in the Netherlands, I was brainstorming one of my new card ga
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OEGSTGEEST, Netherlands – Indy Mellink, a Dutch card fan, was explaining a game to her cousins last summer when she asked herself: why should a king be worth more than a queen?
The 23-year-old forensic psychology graduate, encouraged by her father, decided it was time to break with the centuries-old tradition of sexual inequality in playing card decks that rank men above women.
“If we have this hierarchy that the king is worth more than the queen then this subtle inequality influences people in their daily life because it’s just another way of saying ‘hey, you’re less important,” she said in an interview. “Even subtle inequalities like this do play a big role.”
Indy Mellink is a 23-year-old graduate of Forensic Psychology. Indy Mellink with her gender-neutral set of cards. | Photo Credit: Twitter
Amsterdam: When we think of playing with a deck of cards, we never imagine ourselves thinking about the gender inequality that a simple King card could pose in terms of its Queen counterpart.
A woman from the Netherlands named Indy Mellink has come up with a rather card deck that has gender-neutral alternatives to the king, queen, and jack cards in a normal deck. The aha moment for her came about when she was explaining the card game to her younger cousins. It was then when she realized that the king cards have an upper hand over the Queen.