I try to keep the PSRD breaches on this site to a minimum, but it’s time. So, here is the warning: I am about to piss you off. If you don’t want to be pissed at me, do not continue reading.
Okay, so science discovers yet again what anybody with a brain cell already knows – that men and women are interested in different subjects and this is the reason why there are so few women in technical fields. This also explains why there are so few women in game development.
This has infuriated me in the past. I got into a rather vituperative conversation about two years ago on Game Girl Advance about why are so few women in game development and why the ones who do enter the field seem to get a lot of attention, especially if they are attractive. (I posted there under the handle BadmanX). A poster in that thread explained patiently that the only reason women aren’t more prevalent in game development is because of sexism.
Hello? Hello? Are you shitting me? (Oh, I’m going to swear in this post too. Just a warning. Megan, stop reading.) Most HR departments are falling all over themselves to hire women! Do you really fucking think that HR directors all over the country are saying to themselves, “Wow, what a fantastic resume…TOO BAD SHE’S A CHICK! Into the round file with her!” Don’t be absurd.
Attempting to appease the Gods of Political Correctness by artificially “evening out” the number of male and female game developers is doomed to failure. It will only hurt the game development industry and companies shouldn’t bother, no matter how much the feminists bitch.
On the other hand…making games tailored for women was and is a fantastic idea. Women arrived to the gaming party a little late, but now they are here and ignoring them is just stupid. People just need to come to grips with the fact that far fewer women are going to be inspired to make their own games than men. And there probably always will be.
Certainly there are fewer women interested in the field, but I’m not sure the data support a conclusion that there “probably always will be.”
The globe article has interesting information about the gender differences that exist, but it doesn’t attempt to identify the factors that cause these differences.
Certainly it’s a stretch to suggest that all the difference between boys’ and girls’ interests are due to overt sexual discrimination. But it’s also a stretch to suggest that the differences are known to be inherent or immutable.
That the gender ratio in physics is six times higher in some countries than others indicates that non-genetic factors play a big role here.
Is a similar role played by genetic factors? At present we simply don’t know.
This is an easy fix. Make more games for more women. The more girls we get playing games, the more girls will want to make those games when they grow up.
You are absolutely correct about that, Dave, but the odds are very good that there will always be more men interested in making games than women.
I’m still not sure where you’re divining these odds from.
I mean, sure it’s the case at present. No argument there. But that sort of prediction about the future… what does it stand on, really?
Isn’t it more accurate to say “Fewer women are interested in technical fields today, and we have insufficient data to make accurate predictions about what’s likely to come in the future”?
We can observe that the gap between men’s and women’s interest in technical fields varies greatly in response to nongenetic factors such as nationality and time period.
How far can such variation go, and where will it go in the future? Fuck me, I sure don’t know. But I’m pretty sure nobody else does either.
To look at a similar matter, here’s a graph with trends in PhD awards during the last 50 years: http://whyfiles.org/220women_sci/images/all_fields_phd.gif
We can see the % of women receiving PhDs in physics and engineering is pretty low… but we can also see it’s been trending upward for decades and seems to have quadrupled during my lifetime. Is it gonna stop before it reaches 50%? On what basis can we make a prediction?
There are a lot of unknowns in science. We shouldn’t be afraid to admit when we run into one.
Mind you, I don’t think that “non-genetic factors” necessarily implies sexual discrimination. There’s a whole lot going on here.
If I had to -guess- about those engineering PhDs, I’d probably guess that they’ll keep trending upward for decades to come.
But would I say my prediction has “very good odds”? Nope; I’d say it’s a guess by a guy who doesn’t -begin- to understand the factors in play here.
Ryan, nothing would please me more than to see more (good) female developers. What I strenuously object to is forcing the issue to please the Godesses of Political Correctness (especially since they are never really happy).
I sense a sort of chicken-egg problem regarding girls developing games.
Games can be just about anything. However, mostly men are developing them, finding out what sorts of things you can do. So how do we design games for women? How the heck should I know, I’m a man..
So how to get female game designers? First we need someone who is interested in games enough to design some, to push the envelope so to say, find new things. And the best way to do so is to make games that are interesting to women..
Sooo.. to track back, we need male game designers who are interested in things more commonly considered women’s interests, and/or female game designers who are interested in things more commonly considered men’s interests. Maybe both. Then we pour enough money to their crazy business plans (as they will be trying something new, which is scary), wait a couple of decades, and see what happens.
Easy!
Sorry I’m late, just coming at this from scrolling back through the blog entries.
Broadly speaking I agree with what you’re getting at, but limiting the sexism question to the hiring and firing aspect – which I don’t think is where the issue lies – ignores how it crops up in the workplace itself. The fact that it is such a male-dominated field means that some male programmers, whether consciously or otherwise, feel the presence of a female in “their” domain as an encroachment, and react accordingly. I’ve seen a couple of instances (one in particular involving a close friend of mine) where a female developer has burnt out on the gaming industry primarily because of the sexism that they’ve been subjected to by their coworkers (and the lack of corrective action on the part of male superiors).
Nobbling the numbers may not be the answer, but the fact that men and women are interested in or better at different things doesn’t mean that there aren’t capable female developers or that sexism is a non-issue.