South Korea's International e-Sports Federation (IeSF) has decided to allow women to compete in the company's video gaming World Championships.
Women will now be able to compete in Blizzard's Hearthstone game, as well as other tournaments at the November event, which was previously exclusive to men, according to PC Magazine.
The gender division in the World Championship became an issue after the Finnish Sports Federation made an announcement for its Assembly Summer 2014 event. The announcement was posted in a picture on Reddit, stating that the Hearthstone tournament would be open only to "Finnish Male Players." However, representatives from Assembly Summer 2014 said the announcement was not meant to be sexist.
"In accordance with the International e-Sports Federation's (IeSF) tournament regulations, since the main tournament event is open to male players only," Markus Koskivirta, head admin of the event, explained. "This is to avoid possible conflicts (e.g. a female player eliminating a male player during RO8) among other things."
Men and women were slated to compete in different games at the event - four for men and two for women. Men would play Dota 2, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, Ultra Street Fighter IV and Hearthstone, and women would play StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm and Tekken Tag Tournament II, CNET reported.
As a result of heavy criticism on several social networks, the IeSF removed gender restrictions so that players of all genders could play any of the aforementioned games, PC Magazine reported. A separate female-only tournament, which will include StarCraft II and Tekken Tag Tournament II, will also take place at the World Championship.
"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," IeSF said in a 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."
