Female Poker Players: an Analysis of Women’S Responses to Minority Situations
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Female Poker Players: An Analysis of Women’s Responses to Minority Situations A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Department of Sociology at The Colorado College in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Bachelor of Arts Christina R. Ford May 2012 On my honor, I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid on this assignment. Christina Ford May 2012 ABSTRACT The data for this thesis was collected from eight interviews and participant observation. Participant observation took place in league poker games in bars and restaurants and cash poker games and tournaments in casinos. Interviews were conducted with both players of the poker league and casino poker. Poker is a male dominated game and it is a leisure time activity, outside of the workforce and the private home. Individuals who participated in these poker games reproduced gender binaries by performing gender. Male poker players respond to and treat women different than men, and women who participate in the poker games are expected to perform specific, stereotypical female roles. The research has addressed how gender is performed not only in the workplace or in private homes, but also in leisure activities in the public sphere. The implications of this include the reproduction of poker as a male dominated game in a male dominated arena and the reproduction of female stereotypes. Though women have been accepted into this male dominated game in great numbers, the men still treat women as though they do not belong. The females who participate in these poker games have extended the intentions of the feminist movement by seeking for equality of women in public arenas. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ….…………………………………………………………………………...1 HISTORY OF POKER …………………………………………………………………….........2 Women and Poker ……………………………………………………………………….3 SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND GENDER ...…………………………………………….....4 Feminism ………………………………………………………………………………..4 Gender Performance ……………………………………………………………………5 Tokenism ………………………………………………………………………………...8 Visibility. ………………………………………………………………………...8 Contrast. ………………………………………………………………………..10 Assimilation. ……………………………………………………………………11 METHODS ……………………………………………………………………………………..13 Participants ……………………………………………………………………………..14 Procedures ……………………………………………………………………………...15 FINDINGS ……………………………………………………………………………………..15 League Poker …………………………………………………………………………..16 Casino Poker …………………………………………………………………………...23 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………...27 FURTHER RESEARCH ……………………………………………………………………….30 APPENDIX ……………………………………………………………………………………..32 REFERENCES …………………………………………………………………………………34 The binary of gender has been studied extensively throughout the history of sociology as an academic discipline. Gender inequality, gender performance, identity and sexuality have been defined and redefined by several influential social scholars for the past 200 years. As society changes, the knowledge and opinions of gender and sexuality have developed along with it. As women entered the workforce, gender was studied in an arena outside the private home. Gender performance, sexuality and identity have not been extensively studied in the arenas of leisure activities in American lives in a public sphere other than the workforce. One leisure activity in which sexuality and gender is prevalent is through games. Sports and games are gendered in our society, and gender roles are reinforced and reproduced though the behaviors of the players. The separation of boys and girls teams, boys and girls sports and the exclusion and stigma of individuals based on their gender allows the binary to continue. This thesis focuses on the game of poker, and the gendered behaviors and performances displayed within it. In my family, poker was a game that was played during the holiday seasons or for other celebrations where everyone came together for a good time. When I was 19, I joined a poker league in the city in which I lived. Several family members were already in the league and through this league I was able to improve my poker playing and knowledge of the game. Upon entering the league, I immediately became aware of my gender as a female and noticed the sexualized arena in which these games took place, in bars and restaurants. As a sociology student, I began to wonder how the gender performances and identity that I observed during the poker games related to the larger body of research on gender and society. This thesis aims to understand gender performance and gender binaries in the leisure activities of our society. The theories of feminism and gender performance are utilized in my research along with the theory of tokenism. The theory of tokenism has been applied to the data I 1 have collected. Tokenism is outlined in detail in the book “Men and Women of the Corporation” by Rosabeth Moss Kanter. Previous research on tokenism, such as Kanter’s, has been applied to understand the trends and patterns formed from the methods of my research. The methods include interviews with poker players and observations from league poker games and casino games. HISTORY OF POKER The term “poker” refers to a group of games involving playing cards and betting. Some of the most well-known poker games include Hold’em, Three Card or Five Card Stud, Chicago High and so on. Poker can be dated back to as early as the fifteenth century and has expanded throughout the world ever since (McManus 2009:42). Though hundreds of poker games are played throughout the United States alone, the research for this project focused on the poker game of No-Limit Texas Hold’em. Texas Hold’em, developed in Texas from the previously existing poker games, is currently the most popular variant of poker played in the United States. “Five-card stud was played as early as 1860, with the seven-card version developing toward the end of the nineteenth century. Hold’em wasn’t played until early in the twentieth and didn’t overtake draw and seven-stud as the most popular game until the late 1980s” (McManus 2009:244). No-Limit Texas Hold’em is the focus of the research for this thesis because the betting style allows for more aggressive poker playing. The idea of no limit betting was first applied to Texas Hold’em in 1970, after the first World Series of Poker was held at the Binion’s Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas (Brunson 2005). In the years following the first World Series of Poker, the popularity of Texas Hold’em grew throughout the country and the world. Poker became accepted 2 in popular culture as it was featured in several movies such as The Cincinnati Kid (1965), California Split (1974), and Maverick (1994). The most popular movie to feature Texas Hold’em is Rounders (1998), starring Matt Damon. Along with movies, poker books began emerged detailing the history of the game and tournaments as well as game theory and strategy. With coverage of the World Series of Poker by ESPN, popularity and knowledge of the game became available to men and women alike across the country. Women and Poker Though women were never explicitly excluded from Texas Hold’em or other poker games, the games remained male dominant. The general attitude during the early years of Texas Hold’em popularity was accurately expressed by David Spanier, a poker player and writer, in 1977. Spanier (1977) wrote: No girl I have ever seen at a poker table has ever managed to win consistently. There are plenty who try, in gorgeous palaces of Las Vegas and in Gardena, and in the workaday casinos of London, too. Women players, typically, are tense, beady-eyed, chain-smoking ladies. (P. 142) Due to the general attitudes of male poker players toward female poker players, the game has remained male dominant throughout its popularity and women generally have kept their distance. Since 1977, the number of women participants in the World Series of Poker, and other poker games and tournaments throughout the country, has increased dramatically. Though more and more women enter the tournaments and games, the majority of women poker players are playing online. The general attitudes, such as these displayed by Spanier, toward women poker players are eliminated during online play, due to the anonymity, allowing for a possible advantage to the female online poker player. More than one third of online poker players are women, whereas only about 5% of face-to-face poker players in high stakes tournaments are 3 women (Zupko 2010, McManus 2009:353). It is hard to say whether the number of female online poker players would be larger without gambling laws such as the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006. However, the anonymity of online poker players may provide women with a playing advantage, or at least a level playing field. The amount of resources targeted at female poker players has increased as well, including publications such as the Woman Poker Player Magazine and books including the Badass Girl’s Guide to Poker. Whether women are playing on the internet or in face-to-face games in casinos or leagues, the number has certainly increased. One reason for the increase of female poker players may be the shifting attitudes of the males in this male dominant game. Though to this day, no woman has won the World Series of Poker, even Spanier has declared “Women are no longer considered as accessories to be brought to the poker table, but as equals at the game” (McManus 2009: 353). SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND GENDER Feminism, gender performance and tokenism make up the theories that frame my research in order to analyze and discuss the experiences of women poker players