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[Amir0x]

Yesterday I was making my post on institutional racism, and I thought of tackling another issue that is specifically relevant to neoGAF's interest in games. There's much talk about the issue of female depictions in games, but do the numbers reveal an issue exists? People in some corners like to deny there is a problem and adopt a "see no evil" approach, but in the great interest of "following where the facts lead, not where we wish them to go" I thought I'd do some research on exactly where things stand.

In this thread I encourage female members of the game industry to share their experiences in development or as gamers. I want others to introduce statistics they've found showing issues they believe to exist. Because of how politically charged this topic has become of late, I think it's important to show precisely what we're dealing with and why it's important to change this.

Note: This can go hand in hand with the type of portrayals of women in games, but since that's a bit more open to interpretation, I'm going to stick to what we definitely know. This is also not a #MEN-TOO thread. So don't.

____________________________________

A STATISTICAL PRIMER
____________________________________

● Percentage of Female Game developers is 22%; transgender/androgynous only 2%. This is up from 11% from 2009. Better, but still terrible.

● Women in the game industry make an average of $12,192 less than men. They receive massively less pay in audio, art, programming, production. The only exception is QA. (Credit: Lime)

● Less than 12% of Computer Sciences Bachelor Degrees were awarded to women in survey from 2010-2011; this is down massively from 38% in 1984.

● Why did women stop coding? Because the Computer industry started targeting men/boys in Advertising. (Credit: marcurius)

● 52% of gamers in the UK are women. Persistent problem then shifts in trying to devalue the importance of mobile games as "real games." Except...

● Women compose 57.8% of mobile market, 53.6% of the RPG market, 34% of the FPS market, 50% of PC market including social.

● ...Approximately 1/3rd of console and PC gamers are also women (Second Source: Gamasutra)

● Women face far more severe forms of harassment online, from stalking to rape threats

● Women far more likely to report being harassed, facing sexism, threats, etc.

● Only approximately 15% of all games have playable female protagonists

● Beasley and Standley (2002): 13.74 percent of the 597 analyzed characters were female
● Haninger and Thompson (2004) also supported the notion of imbalance in gender representation by virtue of their sample pool having 72 out 81 playable male characters versus only 42 playable female characters
● Dill et al. (2005) found that 10 percent of their sampled digital game characters were female.
● Mou & Peng (2008) did a similar study in which both gender and race were analyzed across the 19 most popular games in 2008, where all leading characters were male with no leading female character
● Williams et al. (2009) showed that only 14.77 percent of all virtual characters in the 150 top selling digital games across all platforms in the U.S. were female
● Downs & Smith (2010) made comparable observations which showed that 14.3 percent of a sample pool of 489 virtual characters in 60 digital games were women

● Here is a great list of resource articles analyzing the inherent issues women are facing within the game industry. It's absolutely breathtakingly chronicled by neoGAFer Lime.

____________________________________

HOW DO WE CHANGE THIS?
____________________________________

I'm still collecting data and will be adding more to the OP over time. But for the moment, I think this is a good start.

I am not a female, obviously. But I think it's important to be able to untangle oneself from the position one has in life and look at the unvarnished truth of things. IF we accept the reality of statistics like those above, what does that mean? If women make up 52% of all gamers, and 1/3 of all console/PC gamers, why are only 15% of games featuring women leads? Why are only 22% of employees in the game industry women? Why are they paid so much less on average? Why are there so many fewer lead female game designers?

You don't have to be political to understand diversity of perspective in games is hugely important. It is vital to not just have the opinions of people who are vitally connected to the industry but those outside it to perhaps get a picture of what needs changing or what can be added or improved.

There is a great anecdote about how Rhythm Tengoku came to be. Tsunku, a well known Japanese record producer, songwriter and vocalist - and a videogame outsider - came to Nintendo with a proposal to make a game that did not rely on visual indicators for its gameplay. The result is one of the most highly rated rhythm game series in the industry, and one that is near universally loved.

Tsunku is not a female, but the point is the same: All manner of perspectives are vital to create an industry that meets ALL the idiosyncratic needs of players, including women. And if you have this massive number of female gamers and yet a huge gap in the number of female perspectives in the industry, the problem becomes clear.

There is often a lot of complaint from some corners as well about enforcing certain quotas for hiring. Another great anecdote comes from outside the game industry, where the showrunner of the comedy show COMMUNITY, Dan Harmon, was forced to maintain a 50/50 quota for female writers. At first, he hated it:

I remember going, “Are you f*cking kidding me?” to myself. “Okay, I got a sitcom, and this is as far as you go,” because I’ve just been told that half of my staff needs to be a quota hire.

But then...

Now you have a staff that is just as good as the staff you would have had, but happens to be half women. And it seems like the greatest thing in the world, because the world is half women. And the male writers across the board, from top to bottom, in their most private moments drinking with me, when they’re fully licensed to be as misogynist, reactive, old-boy-network as they want, all they can say is, “This turned out to be a great thing.”

I don’t have enough control groups to compare it to, but there’s just something nice about feeling like your writers’ room represents your ensemble a little more accurately, represents the way the world turns.

Even though Bromstad’s gone, now I’m carrying this legacy, going, “Eh, guys, we really need a half-female writing staff.” I would teach it. I think we have to stop thinking of it as a quota thing and think of it as a common-sense thing.

Game development is no different in terms of the importance of having diverse perspectives and what the impact can be when properly applied. I am sure this thread will share many of those stories, and I can't wait to read them.

But what do you guys think need to be done to start changing things? How would you go about it?

 

[Vice]

Thanks for posting this topic. I'm going to go through your links before replying with more.

 

[Mesoian]

Amirox, you're burning up the airwaves with your damn OTs! Nice job!

 

[Dragon]

Great OP, glad things are slowly changing. Reminds me of other social issues that seem to babystepping along. Ami even though you can be an ornery old cuss you certainly have your heart in the right place and I look forward to other such topics in the future.

 

[petran79]

dont women today have a greater percentage as video game artists (animators, designers, backgrounds etc)?

Or do you refer mainly to the programmers, which is a separate branch?

 

[The Technomancer]

The Dan Harmon quotes are great

 

[ShadowSoldier89]

There are a lot of problems there, especially the harassment, however I'm not sure we really have the proper data to say that the female employees are truly paid less than male counterparts. Things like average work experience arent factored in when you just list position type and salary.

I do find the mobile players statistic to be generally worthless, especially when immediately followed by a section about percentage of protagonist gender considering that many popular mobile games dont feature much of anything in the way of protagonist. However with the 1/3 console and PC player split thats listed we have a much better comparison to make, if we're looking at it that way at minimum 18% more games should feature a female protagonist.

I'm not a fan of strict numbers on these things (I advocate for more female protagonists just because I prefer female leads despite being a guy), and I'm sure many female and male players probably dont feel too strongly about protagonist gender, but if we split those opinions out then the numbers clearly do line up that some shift should occur.

 

[Dimmle]

The gender spread in a typical CS class is pretty depressing. I completely understand why women don't feel welcome in this industry.

 

[The Technomancer]

Does anyone remember the source of that study that actually broke down the player gender proportions by genre? I remember some great stats like 55% of RPG players being women and a surprisingly high number of female FPS players, among other things

 

[marcurius]

Here's a podcast I generally enjoyed that discusses why women are now so underrepresented in technology in general, which I'd say is probably the biggest reason why there are so few in games. Pretty short as well; worth a listen.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/17/356944145/episode-576-when-women-stopped-coding

e: And as someone working as a developer, it kinda sucks to have barely any female coworkers. Out of ~20 people on my job, four are women but only one is currently a developer, while one used to code but is now a sort of project manager.

e2: fixed the link.

 

[InsaneZero]

The gender spread in a typical CS class is pretty depressing. I completely understand why women don't feel welcome in this industry.

A good majority of your typical CS class are dreamers that want to make video games. And as it turns out, the people that want to make video games are primarily male. And the reason that a male majority exists is because the gaming industry by large targets men.

It's really a self-perpetuating cycle. Mobile gaming should be celebrated due to how easily accessible it is to people that are not in your typical gaming demographic.

 

[fader]

you are on a role with these threads today Amir0x

 

[hatchx]

It seems the nerd culture up until the early 2000s was dominated by men, so I can understand why the industry has shifted this way. As far as fair wages and online harassment, there's almost no one approach to fix all of it.

My hope is that more female gamers will inspire more diverse games being made, and will therefore open this industry. There's no surprise more females play on mobile when consoles are dominated by games starring males.

I think companies like EA need to come and offer women's sports games, and games like call of duty need to introduce more important females leads in the campaign.

 

[The Technomancer]

It seems the nerd culture up until the early 2000s was dominated by men, so I can understand why the industry has shifted this way. As far as fair wages and online harassment, there's almost no one approach to fix all of it.

My hope is that more female gamers will inspire more diverse games being made, and will therefore open this industry. There's no surprise more females play on mobile when consoles are dominated by games starring males.

I think companies like EA need to come and offer women's sports games, and games like call of duty need to introduce more important females leads in the campaign.

I really do like that Polygon piece about how back in the Atari days gaming as both an industry and entertainment really was seen as a "for everyone" thing because they, were, well viewed as toys and no-one would say "women don't play with real toys" or anything

Spoiler

(shut up)

 

[cubicle47b]

dont women today have a greater percentage as video game artists (animators, designers, backgrounds etc)?

Or do you refer mainly to the programmers, which is a separate branch?

The percent of women programmers is much lower than 22%. When I went through undergrad there were a few women in my upper level CS classes. In grad school (many years later) the percentage hasn't really changed and there were zero women in the 3d game engine design class. This is on a campus where 60% of the students are women and we have CS outreach programs targeting girls each summer (since 2002). Not an easy problem to fix.

 

[Weltall Zero]

Awesome OP. I like the idea of having a thread that can be used to shut up nonsensical claims like most women being only mobile game players at best.

Amir0x, you might want to add this part to the quote, because it's the one part I found most interesting in the way it's not just Harmon changing his opinion on the matter:

Now you have a staff that is just as good as the staff you would have had, but happens to be half women. And it seems like the greatest thing in the world, because the world is half women. And the male writers across the board, from top to bottom, in their most private moments drinking with me, when they’re fully licensed to be as misogynist, reactive, old-boy-network as they want, all they can say is, “This turned out to be a great thing.”

That whole part of the interview is great, because even I had my doubts that enforcing a quota would be a good thing, but it makes you realize how important it is and how different and stronger it makes the final product.

 

[jon bones]

Fantastic thread.

It does seem that there are some serious culture gaps that need to be crossed in order to truly have fair representation in the industry.

Those Harmon quotes are great, I hope more people read them.

 

[SerTapTap]

The problems are interesting and complicated--a lot of it is unfortunately so ingrained lots of people are blind to the reality (women play games), don't see a problem with things as they are (boys will be boys!) and thus perpetuate the problems and make it difficult to address them.

I was pretty surprised my Youtube viewership (let's play videos) is right around 50% male/female (occasionally leaning a few percent either way). But most of my channel is flash/web games, experimental games, indie games I find interesting, very little "big name" stuff (most of the "big" things I've covered like Binding of Isaac and Minecraft I accidentally covered before they were "big").

I was pretty surprised there'd be a fairly even female audience for my vids but I'm not too surprised any more seeing some of these stats. Also I think it's important to note the % of women in specific gaming spaces--there was a good breakdown of this a few months back I think? It showed that women are still a very sizable minority even in console/PC games, not just mobile; I loathe mobile and the notion that women gamers are an exclusively mobile thing, even if it does have a slightly higher than average percent--I think that's a problem "normal" games have, not something innate to mobile.

The women in CS thing is a problem too, I think it's due to all the gross shit we instill in our kids about men/women's roles, what "nerds" are supposed to be, what's "women's work" or not, all that nasty regressive shit. Striking those attitudes down is hard though. Especially when garbage like Big Bang Theory is popular.

 

[Palculator]

I really do like that Polygon piece about how back in the Atari days gaming as both an industry and entertainment really was seen as a "for everyone" thing because they, were, well viewed as toys and no-one would say "women don't play with real toys" or anything

Spoiler

(shut up)

Do you mean this one?

http://www.polygon.com/features/2013/12/2/5143856/no-girls-allowed

Because that actually gives a good explanation for the paradigm shift as well: After the crash Nintendo examined which group of people was still a viable market for video games after the general public lost trust and they determined boys to be the most suitable target demographic.

Edit: Also,

Spoiler

dildos

.

Here's a podcast I generally enjoyed that discusses why women are now so underrepresented in technology in general, which I'd say is probably the biggest reason why there are so few in games. Pretty short as well; worth a listen.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/17/356944145/episode-576-when-women-stopped-coding

e: And as someone working as a developer, it kinda sucks to have barely any female coworkers. Out of ~20 people on my job, four are women but only one is currently a developer, while one used to code but is now a sort of project manager.

e2: fixed the link.

While indeed interesting to listen to, I doubt that podcast's content is very relevant to today's computer science... I mean, advertising and computer use in general is not at all represented as something "for guys" anymore. And, at least in my experience with the two University's I've been enrolled in, modern computer science is such a highly theoretical field that "knowing computers" or even prior programming knowledge is optional at best. Math is the skill that's more important. Although I guess you could argue that once CS became a science for boys it got stuck being one.

 

[DUFFMCWALIN]

The gender spread in a typical CS class is pretty depressing. I completely understand why women don't feel welcome in this industry.

I think the most women I had in a CS class in school was three. There were so many more women involved in the CS program in the 80's and 90's. Its sad.


edit: I love Harmon's second quote. Having a more diverse group of people to work on a game is never a bad idea.

 

[The Dutch Slayer]

EVERYONE should listen to this.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/17/356944145/episode-576-when-women-stopped-coding

As it stated in the OP fantastic listen.

 

[Vlade]

Great topic.

How to change?
The way I imagine it is walking forward in all spheres - education, career, audience, management. I think that is all going to start by informing the culture of these places. here we are, talking the stats and noticing that they are disappointing, good. i hope as actionable plans spring up, more and more people will have an interest in making them succeed, and will resist them less simply because "why do this change?".

i work in a technical field and i have watched it go from ~90% men to ~50% men. not much is different in cold passionless work terms, but the industry is that much better off for the boon of possible productive professionals previously overlooked, and people are succeeding in their pursuits without gender being a roadblock (as much?). it's good. my work doesnt have an audience. it seems like media would prefer to have the diverse perscpective even more than my job just turning a crank for customers.

 

[Gattsu25]

Great OP. Going to read through all these links.

 

[kswiston]

22% is actually better than I would have guessed for women in gaming. Still bad, but if I was asked for an estimate, I probably would have said 10-15%. Perhaps 20 years from now it will be close to 50/50.

As for the 2% transgender, I don't think that differs much from the general population.

EDIT: Obviously the inequal pay thing has to be fixed in this and every other field.

 

[Dimmle]

The women in CS thing is a problem too, I think it's due to all the gross shit we instill in our kids about men/women's roles, what "nerds" are supposed to be, what's "women's work" or not, all that nasty regressive shit. Striking those attitudes down is hard though. Especially when garbage like Big Bang Theory is popular.

oh man, this

 

[Amir0x]

22% is actually better than I would have guessed for women in gaming. Still bad, but if I was asked for an estimate, I probably would have said 10-15%. Perhaps 20 years from now it will be close to 50/50.

As for the 2% transgender, I don't think that differs much from the general population.

EDIT: Obviously the inequal pay thing has to be fixed in this and every other field.

There was a decent (and also funny, if you need to be entertained with your info dumps haha) segment on the wage gap on John Oliver's show and one of the crucial points was this:

Whether the pay gap was 80 cents on the dollar or 98 cents on the dollar, it doesn't matter. They're both awful. There should be none. The same logic applies I think to the idea of the hiring being "better than expected" for women at 22%. Whether 11% or 22%, they're both examples of something being very very wrong in the cycle of education -> college -> employment -> pay scales. Something is broken, right?

 

[DoktorEvil]

I want to see more Roberta Williams/Jade Raymond's/Corrine Yu's female devs in the business.

There is more than plenty of space for female perspectives in gaming that can lend itself to better, more fleshed out game experiences.

Regarding the mobile statistic, the argument I've seen thrown around to deflect that number has amounted to: Mobile ain't shit. Only console/PC counts. I say that mobile is the biggest cash cow in Japan, so of course mobile counts! Discounting mobile because of PC/Console biases is really stupid from a financial perspective.

Equal pay will never be fixed. Any person, man or woman, does not have an equitable negotiation advantage when it comes to talking salary/fringe. Women will always be discounted mainly because of the issue of having children and that lost time.

 

[cubicle47b]

I think to the idea of the hiring being "better than expected" for women at 22%. Whether 11% or 22%, they're both examples of something being very very wrong in the cycle of education -> college -> employment -> pay scales. Something is broken, right?

There are almost certainly things that are broken (what isn't to some degree?), but not necessarily. People are free to choose what field they go into, societal gender roles / expectations are enforced much earlier and outside of education and employment, and there may be (minor) differences in men and women that make them lean towards different interests in general.

 

[Orayn]

There are almost certainly things that are broken (what isn't to some degree?), but not necessarily. People are free to choose what field they go into, societal gender roles / expectations are enforced much earlier and outside of education and employment, and there may be (minor) differences in men and women that make them lean towards different interests in general.

The problem is when people jump to the conclusion that any given imbalance must be due to "hardwired gender differences" without actually being able to control for that variable. A lot of the time, it's just a thought-terminating cliche used when someone is okay with the statues quo and doesn't want to address the issue at all.

 

[Amir0x]

There are almost certainly things that are broken (what isn't to some degree?), but not necessarily. People are free to choose what field they go into, societal gender roles / expectations are enforced much earlier and outside of education and employment, and there may be (minor) differences in men and women that make them lean towards different interests in general.

You simply reinforced the idea that there's a problem. IF 'societal gender roles / expectations' are being enforced, all you're doing is shifting the idea from the problem being one place to it being another place. And there is no evidence I know of that adequately can account for any 'hardwired gender differences' in this field, so that's sheer conjecture.

As stated, women made up 37% of computer science degrees in 1984. Now it's 11%. Did women suddenly change their biological nature in the interim years? Of course not. Something within society changed, as well as institutional problems being compounded. The question is which changes should be identified as the issue, and which institutional problems need to be fixed.

There's a great study that was done which found that the more gender equal a society was, the more likely it was the gender gap in mathematics disappears. It is implied the same precise thing applies to most fields that require logical/mathematical basis, such as Computer Sciences.

 

[InsaneZero]

Equal pay will never be fixed. Any person, man or woman, does not have an equitable negotiation advantage when it comes to talking salary/fringe. Women will always be discounted mainly because of the issue of having children and that lost time.

Probably not with an attitude like that. A pregnancy doesn't discount the fact that she should still be paid at the same rate as a man would, even if she can't put in the same hours. So if it's not fixed, then we should work to get it fixed rather than accept the current situation.

 

[sn00zer]

Kinda confused on the "only 2% transgender" Id expect it to be even smaller given how small the population is. 22% female though is an issue

 

[Nekofrog]

The pay gap/wage discrimination needs to end yesterday.

My wife just got her masters degree, how am I going to sit around at home like a bum and live off of her if she's not making the same amount of money I would if I were working.

:\

 

[Vlade]

Equal pay will never be fixed. Any person, man or woman, does not have an equitable negotiation advantage when it comes to talking salary/fringe. Women will always be discounted mainly because of the issue of having children and that lost time.

or, conversely and just as easily, not this.

having a baby is something quite personal, and is human enough to be compensated for by the workplace in terms of the time it takes. the way youve laid it out says simply that women should expect to make less, which isn't at all appropriate.

edit: by quite personal, i mean not an expectation a workplace would have of any person based on looking at them

 

[Jumplion]

As a student dual majoring in both Computer Science and Game Design, I can at least anecdotally confirm the severe lack of women in both fields. Most women I've seen/met seem to go for more web design stuff in the CS department and art/design in the Gaming department, which isn't bad in and of itself but it leaves something to be desired.

 

[Bacon_Boss]

I'm curious if this takes into account the experience within these fields. Assuming 100 male programmers ranging from fresh to lead programmers, even if lead programmers were 18% you'd have about as many male programmers in a leading position or more experienced pay grade than you would total women programmers if their number was 22% of the male population.

Actual job title and experience numbers would be pretty valuable in this case.

 

[Garrett Hawke]

Thanks for all these stats. Really useful data as someone who often wades into gender debates.

 

[GamerJM]

Another great topic. Those statistics are staggering, though I've personally seen most of them recently.

 

[Lime]

amirox, your salary survey statistics are out of date. Check out the one from 2014 and include it in the OP instead.

Here are some more stuff to throw unto the OP:

And as evidenced, online harassment or mistreatment are especially taking place in the sphere of gaming culture and has an effect on the players experiencing it. From Gamasutra's report on a study released last month that looked at player reactions to a female voice, a male voice, and a neutral voice in FPS games:

The goal of this study is to determine how gamers’ reactions to male voices differ from reactions to female voices. The authors conducted an observational study with an experimental design to play in and record multiplayer matches (N = 245) of a video game. The researchers played against 1,660 unique gamers and broadcasted pre-recorded audio clips of either a man or a woman speaking. Gamers’ reactions were digitally recorded, capturing what was said and heard during the game. Independent coders were used to conduct a quantitative content analysis of game data. Findings indicate that, on average, the female voice received three times as many negative comments as the male voice or no voice. In addition, the female voice received more queries and more messages from other gamers than the male voice or no voice.

And from Emily Matthew's study from last year

Statistics on Gender representation:

• Beasley and Standley (2002): 13.74 percent of the 597 analyzed characters were female
• Haninger and Thompson (2004) also supported the notion of imbalance in gender representation by virtue of their sample pool having 72 out 81 playable male characters versus only 42 playable female characters
• Dill et al. (2005) found that 10 percent of their sampled digital game characters were female.
• Mou & Peng (2008) did a similar study in which both gender and race were analyzed across the 19 most popular games in 2008, where all leading characters were male with no leading female character
• Williams et al. (2009) showed that only 14.77 percent of all virtual characters in the 150 top selling digital games across all platforms in the U.S. were female
• Downs & Smith (2010) made comparable observations which showed that 14.3 percent of a sample pool of 489 virtual characters in 60 digital games were women

Some nice quotes by scholars:

“many public gaming spaces are male-dominated and this gender asymmetry works toward excluding female gamers at a stage prior to the gendering of gaming texts.” (Bryce & Rutter, 2005, p. 305)

“And perhaps women are underrepresented in certain game genres not because they don’t like those games but because male players who dominate many physical and social access points actively discourage women from entering.” (Yee, 2008, p. 89)

"how social groups are treated in cultural representation is part and parcel of how they are treated in life, that poverty, harassment, self-hate and discrimination […] are shored up and instituted by representation.” (Dyer, 2002, p. 1)

“the individual forms identity of self and identity of others through the images one views. As the individual views images that resemble or do not resemble the self, she or he develops a perception of one’s position in society. […] Those who are at the bottom of the various power hierarchies will be kept in their places in part through relative invisibility” (Dunlop, 2007, p. 409)

And here's a list of some academic articles (some referenced above) focusing on the topic of gender in video game culture:

• Beasley, B., and T. C. Standley. 2002. “Shirts vs. Skins: Clothing as an Indicator of Gender Role Stereotyping in Video Games.” Mass Communication & Society 5 (3): 279–93.
• Behm-Morawitz, Elizabeth, and Dana Mastro. 2009. “The Effects of the Sexualization of Female Video Game Characters on Gender Stereotyping and Female Self-Concept.” Sex Roles 61 (11-12): 808–23. doi:10.1007/s11199-009-9683-8.
• Bryce, Jo, and Jason Rutter. 2002. “Killing like a Girl: Gendered Gaming and Girl Gamers’ Visibility.” In Paper Presented at the Computer Games and Digital Culture Conferences. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc...10.1.1.97.9334.
• Burgess, M. C. R., K. E. Dill, S. P. Stermer, S. R. Burgess, and B. P. Brown. 2011. “Playing with Prejudice: The Prevalence and Consequences of Racial Stereotypes in Video Games.” Media Psychology 14 (3): 289–311.
• Cassell, J., and H. Jenkins. 1998. From Barbie® to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. MIT Press. http://www.google.com/books?hl=da&lr...5htBE_DyIJvmAY.
• Consalvo, M. 2003. “Hot Dates and Fairy-Tale Romances: Studying Sexuality in Video Games.” The Video Game Theory Reader 1: 171–94.
• Crawford, Garry. 2012. Video Gamers. London; New York: Routledge.
• Cruea, Mark, and Sung-Yeon Park. 2012. “Gender Disparity in Video Game Usage: A Third-Person Perception-Based Explanation.” Media Psychology 15 (1): 44–67. doi:10.1080/15213269.2011.648861.
• Dickey, Michele D. 2006. “Girl Gamers: The Controversy of Girl Games and the Relevance of Female-Oriented Game Design for Instructional Design.” British Journal of Educational Technology 37 (5): 785–93. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8535.2006.00561.x.
• Dietrich, David R. 2013. “Avatars of Whiteness: Racial Expression in Video Game Characters.” Sociological Inquiry 83 (1): 82–105.
• Dietz, T. L. 1998. “An Examination of Violence and Gender Role Portrayals in Video Games: Implications for Gender Socialization and Aggressive Behavior.” Sex Roles 38 (5): 425–42.
• Dill, K. E., D. A. Gentile, W. A. Richter, and J. C. Dill. 2005. “Violence, Sex, Race, and Age in Popular Video Games: A Content Analysis.” http://psycnet.apa.org/books/11213/008.
• Dill, Karen E., and Kathryn P. Thill. 2007. “Video Game Characters and the Socialization of Gender Roles: Young People’s Perceptions Mirror Sexist Media Depictions.” Sex Roles 57 (11-12): 851–64. doi:10.1007/s11199-007-9278-1.
• Downs, E., and S. L. Smith. 2010. “Keeping Abreast of Hypersexuality: A Video Game Character Content Analysis.” Sex Roles 62 (11): 721–33.
• Dunlop, J. C. 2007. “The US Video Game Industry: Analyzing Representation of Gender and Race.” International Journal of Technology and Human Interaction (IJTHI) 3 (2): 96–109.
• Embrick, David G., Talmadge J. Wright, and András Lukács. 2012. Social Exclusion, Power, and Video Game Play: New Research in Digital Media and Technology. Lexington Books. http://www.google.com/books?hl=da&lr...6zYbPHYSHBoXvA.
• Everett, Anna, and S. Craig Watkins. 2008. “The Power of Play: The Portrayal and Performance of Race in Video Games.” The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning, 141–64.
• Fox, J., and J. N. Bailenson. 2009. “Virtual Virgins and Vamps: The Effects of Exposure to Female Characters’ Sexualized Appearance and Gaze in an Immersive Virtual Environment.” Sex Roles 61 (3): 147–57.
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[DoktorEvil]

Probably not with an attitude like that. A pregnancy doesn't discount the fact that she should still be paid at the same rate as a man would, even if she can't put in the same hours. So if it's not fixed, then we should work to get it fixed rather than accept the current situation.

Should be? Yes.

Realistically, If an employer can avoid having to pay someone for PTO/Maternity Leave, they will.

There's a reason that the business loves targeting young 20-something men and paying them crap pay relative to the value provided. The publishers finance a game, which the devs now have to budget with and make sure they hit goals/deadlines and pay vendors. Underpaying and overworking young guys is just SOP. They're expendable freelance hires.

I think teaching women the skills to negotiate on fairer terms and learn the intricacies of negotiation will benefit the women who choose to become game devs much more than shoving a Master's degree and years of debt into their lives just to work in video games.

or, conversely and just as easily, not this.

having a baby is something quite personal, and is human enough to be compensated for by the workplace in terms of the time it takes. the way youve laid it out says simply that women should expect to make less, which isn't at all appropriate.

edit: by quite personal, i mean not an expectation a workplace would have of any person based on looking at them

I don't think anyone should make more or less then the value they bring. I don't expect or want women to make less in STEM. I'm hypothesizing why women are ending up with less in their take home in STEM, a very lucrative field.

 

[Shrike_Priest]

There are almost certainly things that are broken (what isn't to some degree?), but not necessarily. People are free to choose what field they go into, societal gender roles / expectations are enforced much earlier and outside of education and employment, and there may be (minor) differences in men and women that make them lean towards different interests in general.

There's an awesome Radiolab episode that looks at the computer industry before and after 80s marketing of home PCs to boys. It definitely provides ample evidence for the claim that gender roles are enforced earlier than education/employment. It also provides as much proof that the male-oriented nature of computer sciences is a phenomenon that was created with the advent of home PCs and the aggressive marketing there.

Even if it couldn't be traced back to something as facile as that, leaving a field dominated by one gender is problematic is in it's very nature due to the inherent sexism in an "asymmetrically divided work force" (http://iangent.blogspot.se/2013/10/the-petrie-multiplier-why-attack-on.html).

Now, I'll agree that to change this, you need to work both at earlier ages (encouraging young boys and girls to equally enjoy techy things), but obviously hiring practices, company guidelines and whatnot can definitely speed up the process and make the situation better for the people who are there.

 

[Amir0x]

amirox, your salary survey statistics are out of date. Check out the one from 2014 and include it in the OP instead.

Thanks, this was exactly the one I was looking for originally but couldn't find it haha. Fixing now.

Here are some more stuff to throw unto the OP:

This is actually in the OP under the "particularly severe forms of harassment" graph, second link beneath it. But I'll add the graphs. Gonna add your commentary too if you don't mind.

 

[CouldBeWorse]

You simply reinforced the idea that there's a problem. IF 'societal gender roles / expectations' are being enforced, all you're doing is shifting the idea from the problem being one place to it being another place. And there is no evidence I know of that adequately can account for any 'hardwired gender differences' in this field, so that's sheer conjecture.

As stated, women made up 37% of computer science degrees in 1984. Now it's 11%. Did women suddenly change their biological nature in the interim years? Of course not. Something within society changed, as well as institutional problems being compounded. The question is which changes should be identified as the issue, and which institutional problems need to be fixed.

There's a great study that was done which found that the more gender equal a society was, the more likely it was the gender gap in mathematics disappears. It is implied the same precise thing applies to most fields that require logical/mathematical basis, such as Computer Sciences.

Have you looked into the huge influx of immigrants in the computer science field over the past 2 decades and the assumption (due to personal experience) that most of this influx is male?

 

[Lime]

This is actually in the OP under the "particularly severe forms of harassment" graph, second link beneath it. But I'll add the graphs. Gonna add your commentary too if you don't mind.

Of course, that was the intention. The statistics on representation are really relevant to the topic as well. Here's a visual of the Williams et al. survey from 2009:

 

[Zafir]

Yeah, it's rather sad. In my classes it's generally only one or two other females and myself in a given class. The only exceptions are modules which have students from other courses coming in.

It's a cyclic problem too, as long as it continues to be heavily male dominated, it kind of pushes females away. A lot of people are put off by the fact it's mostly male. I'm not really sure what they can do to fix it. :/

 

[Amir0x]

Have you looked into the huge influx of immigrants in the computer science field over the past 2 decades and the assumption (due to personal experience) that most of this influx is male?

I'll have to see if I can account for this stuff in my research tonight.

Of course, that was the intention. The statistics on representation are really relevant to the topic as well. Here's a visual of the Williams et al. survey from 2009:

This is some incredible stuff, Lime. This post of yours is so detailed I have to imagine you've been researching this stuff for a while and have a lot of it handy? I'm clearly a hanger on compared to the extent you're immersed in the topic, I'm seriously impressed. I'm sooo glad you have these links, I'm going to pour over them and info dump the shit out of it into the topic haha.

 

[DoktorEvil]

Have you looked into the huge influx of immigrants in the computer science field over the past 2 decades and the assumption (due to personal experience) that most of this influx is male?

The H1B Visa plays into that, right?

 

[cubicle47b]

You simply reinforced the idea that there's a problem. IF 'societal gender roles / expectations' are being enforced, all you're doing is shifting the idea from the problem being one place to it being another place. And there is no evidence I know of that adequately can account for any 'hardwired gender differences' in this field, so that's sheer conjecture.

There's evidence. Whether it's true or not is up for debate. That's why I said 'may'. I'm open to it going either way. And yes, I shifted where the problem might be, because trying to solve the problem in the wrong place isn't productive. I know my university does what it can to try and recruit women into the CS program including middle school CS camps for girls. It hasn't made much of a difference so far, despite being around for 12 years. If a big part of the problem is early (before age 5) gender role enforcement, that's not the problem of our education and employment systems.

It's hard to gain much information from the 37% figure in 1984. It was a small field at the time, early in its conception. There were massive opportunities for people who ignored or dropped out of college and went straight into employment (or started their own companies). It was around the time video games became hugely popular and inspired kids to make games. Kids that would turn out to be mostly boys. It was possibly around this time that it became associated with men and who was mostly involved in enforcing this view? Men in the field? Parents?

I'm all for doing what we can to close the gap, but I don't think a 50/50 split is realistic.

 

[Amir0x]

There's evidence. Whether it's true or not is up for debate. That's why I said 'may'. I'm open to it going either way. And yes, I shifted where the problem might be, because trying to solve the problem in the wrong place isn't productive. I know my university does what it can to try and recruit women into the CS program including middle school CS camps for girls. It hasn't made much of a difference so far, despite being around for 12 years. If a big part of the problem is early (before age 5) gender role enforcement, that's not the problem of our education and employment systems.

It's hard to gain much information from the 37% figure in 1984. It was a small field at the time, early in its conception. There were massive opportunities for people who ignored or dropped out of college and went straight into employment (or started their own companies). It was around the time video games became hugely popular and inspired kids to make games. Kids that would turn out to be mostly boys. It was possibly around this time that it became associated with men and who was mostly involved in enforcing this view? Men in the field? Parents?

I'm all for doing what we can to close the gap, but I don't think a 50/50 split is realistic.

I agree with the principle of finding out where the true problem lies. I would suggest, however, that there is no -single- problem. Of course there is likely an issue with social pressure / gender role enforcement. There's also an issue with male dominated computer advertising. There's also an issue with the type of harassment a women in these fields is likely to face. It all adds up to discouraging women, in other words.

And as for "50/50", that's not even the important to place up as a goal. Because no matter where you think that number ultimately should fall, the fact is that we are at a terrible place right now. There is a real problem.

 

[PdotMichael]

Most people in the CS field in the 80s had a mathematics background - a field where ~50% of the people are women.
CS became male dominated because it started as niche activity and such niche activities are often completely male dominated - for whatever reason.