shinobi602
Member
.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
EA Exec: Sexism isn't keeping women out of the industry
- Thread starter shinobi602
- Start date
Shining Sunshine
Banned
And then in Activision, Kotick gets fined for sexual harassment.
But, yeah, need more female Software Engineers to curb the problem. Management is filled with men, but as they grow older, the ratio should be better since a better gender ratio will be taking charge.
But, yeah, need more female Software Engineers to curb the problem. Management is filled with men, but as they grow older, the ratio should be better since a better gender ratio will be taking charge.
Principate
Saint Titanfall
TBF some professions will most probably almost always be screwed to one gender for cutural reasonsand unless someone wants to tackle those reasons (which is a whole another kettle of fish) it will probably remain so.
With video games being more widely accepted than in the earlier decades this is probably the best chance to make a gender shift.
With video games being more widely accepted than in the earlier decades this is probably the best chance to make a gender shift.
chickdigger802
Banned
STEM.
Going to an Engineering school.... yeah, the lack of women is all too real
Going to an Engineering school.... yeah, the lack of women is all too real
I'll go as far as to say I don't even see sexism in the industry. Yeah, there's a lot of stereotypes, just like they are in Hollywood. In media, everything is always glorified, Sexuality is glorified. Features are glorified. Characters have no acne. Male characters are ripped, broad shouldered and chiseled with deep voices. Females have low bodyfat, prominent chest, sharp model like facial features. This isn't sexism. And there have been games that break the stereotype. Half life, Mirror's Edge, Beyond Good and Evil, etc.
Infact its a videogame, where I have seen the best role for a female from across all the movies and games that I have played. The Boss from MGS3. This game's storyline left a mark, very intense stuff and great character development.
Also this video:
http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/yluvyt/hey-ash--whatcha-playin---tomb-raider
Infact its a videogame, where I have seen the best role for a female from across all the movies and games that I have played. The Boss from MGS3. This game's storyline left a mark, very intense stuff and great character development.
Also this video:
http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/yluvyt/hey-ash--whatcha-playin---tomb-raider
ViewtifulJC
Banned
STEM.
Going to an Engineering school.... yeah, the lack of women is all too real
Now is that because of sexism, or because women generally aren't interested in being engineers
Principate
Saint Titanfall
STEM.
Going to an Engineering school.... yeah, the lack of women is all too real
Ahaha engineering, at leasts that's progressed though Mechanical engineering is probably still grossly under represented.
Principate
Saint Titanfall
In general males have typically take on the majority of maths based courses with engineering having the largest skew, and I honstly doubt sexism has much to with the reason for it. It's most Probably because it's a job with masculine connotations. Like a builder probably not to the same degree. Probably like male nurses
faceless007
Member
Her recommendations are good and should be encouraged but they aren't mutually exclusive with the idea that women get sexist treatment within the industry.
Funchameleon
Banned
It's partly because of endemic sexism in society that discourages little girls from pursuits like mathematics.
and the OP? She's not right just because she's a woman. Some women deny even enjoy functioning in sexist environments. There are definitely sexist attitudes in the industry but like all of society it's rapidly improving.
Microsoft's Computer Entertainment's division VP came to my university to talk last month. He stated: any videogame begins and ends with programmers, and essentially, a programmer is all you need to create any videogame. The designers, artists etc, are there to provide guidance, but overall everybody in the studio recognizes programmers are the key to the game's development and once released, only the programmers stay there to keep up the support+patching. Nobody messes with programmers, but programmers can mess with others.
Tl;dr - Once females start embracing the major of computer science, they'll crowd up video game development studios as well.
Yeah. I worked in a hospital and 90% of the staff was female, and 10% was male.
And the majority of the males were doctors with only few male nurses.
Some jobs attract more of one sex than the other, because its pushed over and over since childhood, with toys or Tv show, that males do X and Female do Y. And females who do X are weirds, and X who do Y are "obviously gay".
But I agree that some jobs are "reserved" to a class of people, like police or firefighter. The strong category, and males are usually stronger than females so we get more males in the police.
Funchameleon
Banned
Its not sexism if we objectify both men and womens at the same time.
Ah yes, the game with like 10 women in thong armour and one man (that plays up his freaky gropey BDSM appearance and isn't at all equatable to the women). Nice!
This is a form, or rather symptom, of sexism.
ViewtifulJC
Banned
I can see that, but if they're doing what they enjoy, who are we to say they're wrong? If they're free to choose what they want, who am I to say Engineering is a better choice for you than, teacher or librarian, to name a couple of generally female composed occupations.
idlethreats
Member
Her "three little secrets" aren't exactly secrets so much as they are obvious truths that pretty much everyone who thinks seriously about these issues already knows.
I also disagree, somewhat, with her premise:
I also disagree, somewhat, with her premise:
Saying that sexism keeps women out of the industry is not the same thing as blaming men. She's equating the two, as though an accusation of sexism is tantamount to attacking men, and it's not. The issues that came up and were discussed extensively during #1reasonwhy cannot be so simply distilled down to "blaming men," and it's a disservice to the discussion that she appears to do so here.
Would have been blown apart by now. But yeah, I'm glad women in the industry are starting to speak about it. I think the situation is being way fucking overblown, like with that Dead island CE off the market.
Give me a few years, I'm working on it.
I don't think the better alternative is to say "women are biologically predisposed not to want to become engineers"
It might not be outright sexism, but there are probably large social gender constructs that have to be overcome to get women into more fields like that.
Grand Funk Carwash
Banned
No she is also right because she is Electronic Arts executive vice president and chief talent officer Gabrielle Toledano!
Like? What is stopping females from picking up STEM in the Western hemisphere?
Funchameleon
Banned
The exact same things that would have stopped you from becoming a male nurse or male flight attendant (should you have wanted to)
The trick is to have a lifeline to the business faculty. Lots of parties with majority women.
idlethreats
Member
Women are frequently accused of internalized sexism too, you know.
Themselves and the people around them mostly. Most people dont like to know there will be a hassle and constant explanation. Its kinda like telling people "Oh my hobby? Video games." Because you just know that they will look at you weird and think you are some kind of sociopath or have some mental issue.
Visualante2
Member
Yep, all coming from the company responsible for EA Spouse. When people can raise families and have relationships happily the games industry will be a lot better off. I wish there was more of a movement for free range games. To my understanding Pixar made a lot of changes after Toy Story 2, like maximum working hours.
Principate
Saint Titanfall
Yeah but it's something that'd take several decades maybe even centuries to fix. labelling it as sexism is the easy way out, with ideas so cuturally ingrained and complex as they are to put such wide sweeping terms with negative connotations. For example for most jobs you won't really find a lot of people admitting to or even really thinking for example being a nurse is a females job. And that is easily intentifiable sexism, the issue is for you yourself if your a male to actually want to do a job like that. And if barely anyone makes the jump that stigma won't change regardless how society evolves. The push is needed but often the push needs to be extremely large for a sizeable amount to jump.
Nothing's stopping them, but cultural upbringing means that less females are interested in STEM in the first place.
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
I imagine that one of the primary reasons why there aren't as many female developers is because there aren't as many female computing majors. It's something like 15% of computing graduates being female in the last few years. And this is not some underlying patriarchy thing, women used to be 40% of graduates, and it's been dropping sharply since the 1980's. It's like they just aren't interested.
it's true though...
how can a company hire someone if they don't apply? In my engineering class, it was 99% guys, 1% girls.
Are companies supposed to automatically hire those 1% girls to match a diversity quota? no. they're supposed to hire the best.
So, perhaps girls should start becoming more computer programmers?
how can a company hire someone if they don't apply? In my engineering class, it was 99% guys, 1% girls.
Are companies supposed to automatically hire those 1% girls to match a diversity quota? no. they're supposed to hire the best.
So, perhaps girls should start becoming more computer programmers?
Visualante2
Member
But the industry is art dominated now, especially with all the middleware. Is there a shortage of women in other creative fields?
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
Any stats for proportion of people working in a given company being technical vs non-technical?
That is a very intelligent read and it is true, The more Female workers there are in the industry, the better the communication between the two genders. Yes, it used to be male dominant market, but now that, ''gaming'' is mainstream, more females will be programmers, engineers, heck, even managers and directors and this will just bridge the gap the sex have in the industry.
Hang on, are you saying that Female demography have dropped lower than before when it comes to programming? I thought, it got higher :/
I don't think that's a comparable case anymore. Specially with the nerd/geek stereotype suddenly becoming 'cool' within the last 10 years, but if it never stopped males, it shouldn't have stopped females. Specially today, women engineers, coders don't have that stigma or taboo they may have had, if ever.
Infact, I'll make the argument male flight attendants and nurses being more of a violation of the status quo than female programmers.
Male nerds/geeks sure, but the attitude towards female nerds/geeks isn't so nice.
JordanN
Banned
Is this true? Maybe it's because I'm not American but I've never heard of women being discouraged from doing math.
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
Computer work was originally envisaged as being a "female job" because many saw it as an extension of typing and similar clerical work that was female dominated at the time. I found this quite interesting given modern preconceptions of the field.
Yep. The figures I was just looking at say 15%, down from 40% in the 80s.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
The fact is that the "STEM" disciplines are still male dominated. I don't know how you make women want to take computer science and learn about P vs NP or sorting algorithms or whatever, but it's been a problem for decades and stems from something in our early education system.
Biology, in a very broad sense, is probably the most "equal" of the sciences in terms of gender disparity, but that's probably due to a wide variety of factors (including the fact that Biology is the typical path to Med School).
Biology, in a very broad sense, is probably the most "equal" of the sciences in terms of gender disparity, but that's probably due to a wide variety of factors (including the fact that Biology is the typical path to Med School).
I did a IT class once upon a time. We had 4 female in the class.
One was a 46 yo ex prostitute drama queen who didnt know how to use a computer (Not exaggerating)
Two young girls who were pretty mediocre with computers
And a cute singer girl who was also mediocre with computers who failed the class twice.
And when I say mediocre, I mean that they all failed programming, Cisco, analyse, Dos, Mac, Networking ect and had to often pass test twice. The 46 yo had to redo the entire Year and a half course because she failed 80% of the classes.
I think the main problem was interest. None of the girls really liked computers, they were there to have a job and IT give a great pay in companies.
Visualante2
Member
Sorry can't cite anything specific. I thought maybe the annual Gamasutra industry survey would break it down but it's only available in the subscription. I'm fairly confident most studios are artist dominated now though, too much HD modeling and surfacing to be done. Remedy is one of the exceptions I know of that is programmer driven.
Principate
Saint Titanfall
Rather society should start representating female programmes in a more glamorous light. I mean law by itself isn't particularily glamours as any lawyer would tell you but public perception of it is. which is why it tends to be oversubscriped. Media generals perception of these things would need to change before we get anywhere.
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
Depends on the STEM in question. At least for my university, Computing and Engineering are massively male dominated. Physics is male dominated. Chemistry is split down the middle. Biology is slightly favoring women (60-40 roughly). Psychology and Sociology are massively female favored (80-20).
On average, yeah, more men in STEM than women, but you need to look at the sub-components to get a clearer idea.
You're kidding right? I don't see this the case at all. Why the hell else is it so cool and announce yourself as 'Girl gamer' and not 'Guy gamer' ?
All girls who I know are gamers never try to hide the fact that they are gamers, they're quite proud of the hobby. Infact its the guys I know that often try to hide their nerdy hobbies in new social groups.