CSGO star Juliano reveals why women’s CS is so far behind men’s

Following some community backlash regarding the Besiktas Esports’ womens CSGO roster’s performance at the DreamHack Rotterdam event, team captain and CSGO veteran Julia ‘juliano’ Kiran took to Twitter to lay out all the reasons why the gap exists between the women’s scene and the men’s scene.

Make no mistake about it, the women’s CSGO scene is highly competitive. Teams like Besiktas, CLG Red, the Copenhagen Flames and Dignitas are all consistently battling each other for the top spots at women’s events. 

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Most recently, Besiktas defeated CLG Red at the DreamHack Valencia Showdown, taking home $50,000 and earning a spot at the DreamHack Open Rotterdom tournament.

Unfortunately at Rotterdam, the womens’ performance was not nearly as competitive, as Besiktas dropped all three of their maps in one-sided affairs to AVANGAR and Hard Legion Esports. As is tradition, people took to places like reddit and HLTV to criticize and crack jokes at the women’s CSGO scene, so Besiktas’ captain Juliano took to Twitter to weigh in on why there’s still a gap between scenes.

She writes, “It is scientifically proven that men’s brain have a better hand-eye coordination and faster decision making so idk why people keep using this ‘it’s not physical’ excuse all the time.”

Much like how men and women don’t play in the same leagues in traditional sport, due to differences in size and speed and body type, Juliano argues that men and women’s brains are wired differently, and that the men’s brain is more suited to excelling at a game like Counter-Strike.

Numerous studies do in fact back up this claim. According to Columbia University’s “A Brain Divided”, men are better when it comes to hand-eye and spatial coordination, as well as a sense of direction and precise muscle movement.

This is not to say that there aren’t women who can compete at the same high level as men, and this is a point that Juliano argues as well. Even the women who compete at the highest pro level aren’t invited to compete alongside men in the top scene, and includes herself in that group.

Juliano says she’s never been asked to join a mixed team, and even when the opportunity to play with men arose, she was told that there were pro and semi-pro players who didn’t want to play alongside women.

Juliano says another problem is that this lack of respect extends past pro players into the community as well, and that female players are hit with a double-edged sword. They’re challenged to compete against men to prove that they are good enough, and then immediately hit with trash talk when they fail.

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Whether the solution is a more expanded women’s scene, or the implementation of more mixed teams in CSGO, the women of CSGO still have a long way to go to gain the respect they deserve.