Search
King toppled from throne by gender-neutral card deck
Entertainment - By
Reuters | February 2nd 2021 at 11:15:00 GMT +0300
After a lot of trial and error, Mellink designed a genderless deck (Courtesy)
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.”
Social Share
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.
Woman creates genderless deck of cards without King or Queen
00:06 Thursday, 21 January 2021
Share it
A woman in the Netherlands has created a genderless deck of cards.
Indy Mellink has designed a deck of cards without a king, queen or jack.
The idea came to Mellink after playing cards with her cousins and wondered why a king was worth more than a queen.
She decided that it was time to break down the sexual inequality in playing cards that rank men above women.
According to
“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,”