Mutant1988 said:
It's baffling to me that any attempt to address inequality, injustice of bad attitudes is interpreted as "being inequal".
Seriously, when the playing field is so massively tilted in favour of one gender, is it a sin to try to change attitudes and promote more women to work in fields like video games?
It comes across as any attempt at all at pointing out issues is reactionary and extremist. Why the hell are you so insecure as to pounce and criticize any attempt to change the status quo?
Here's some reading material for you:
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/LaralynMcWilliams/20150211/236179/Diversity_Drives_Success.php
Things need to change. If that means giving a temporary advantage to a disadvantaged group then we can just deal with it. I know I can. Why is that so hard for people like you?
No, it doesn't mean giving a temporary advantage to one group. That's utter bigotry to decide that individuals born outside of that group need to be disadvantaged just because you say so. You are literally advocating discriminating against individuals based on the way they were born. How can you justify that in the name of something as noble as equality?
That's bullshit bigotry. "Well, we would have hired you but since you were born with a dick we've decided to be sexist against you for the next few weeks because we're full of ourselves and don't recognize the irony in our marching on equality when we're really just going to be sexist against another group" That's nuts and people should be aware that this is nuts. Not only is temporary bigotry still bigotry, but who decides the degree of the advantage to give the other group and who in their right mind would ever try to decide that the advantage is good enough and it's time to remove it? Take affirmative action for example, it has basically led to race quotas and continued beneficial treatment of individuals based on race or gender. At some point it will be recognized as a racist/sexist law that requires race and sex be taken into account when making hiring decisions rather than just reviewing hiring policies to make sure it isn't having biased effects. Anyone in office who advocates ending it in favor of an even playing field policy would be throwing their political career away and would be automatically assumed bigots.
Look, people say there's a problem in the industry. But is there? I'm perfectly willing to believe if there is one or isn't one. But the way to determine if there's an issue is to look at the number of candidates applying for the job and make sure that women are being hired in proportionate numbers when qualifications are equal. If they are, then there's no problem. If they aren't, then there should be a problem and we need to look closer at the why of it. For example, there may be a significant difference in experience in the industry where males tend to have five years of experience on average and women may have less on average. So we need to figure out a way to adjust for that and then run the numbers again. If it's still disproportionate to the hiring demographics then we need to keep going until we find a reason for why it's different that isn't acceptable and work on how to resolve it.
What we DON'T do is decide that breasts are more valuable than dicks because we're sexist assholes and decide that we want to marginalize the individuals who have dicks.
Except they are not. You just think it's comfortable the way things are and are afraid that you will be pushed aside for someone else's advantage. Did it ever cross your mind that the lack of women in certain fields isn't because they aren't interested and is caused by ingrained attitudes that some people prefer not to change? Women aren't disinterested or incompetent. They are harassed out of male-dominated fields or paid less on average and many times criticized and held up to a higher standard than had she been male.
You're making some pretty bold claims without backing them up.
Women may be less interested in the field than others. There are fields where the reverse ratio is true where men are significantly less interested. Take teaching, 76% of teachers are women. [http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=28] Do I think that's sexist? No. Not necessarily. I think more women are applying to those jobs because studies have shown that women find that kind of work more rewarding than men do. Teaching was also a job more commonly performed by women and so I'd expect that males interviewing for the job may have less experience than their female competitors. That doesn't mean we should step in and make males have an easier time to get the job. That means that the best candidate is the female with more experience. As long as the males have fair access to the job market then time will naturally compensate for the experience problem. However, if males just aren't applying in common enough numbers then time isn't going to do anything and it's not really a problem to address.
So, how can you know with absolute certainty that video game developing isn't a similar area? We know that males play video games at a much higher rate than females. Especially AAA titles and the more traditionally high-revenue genres of games. So I invite you as a mental exercise to figure out why more males might be applying for these jobs. Especially since the gender gap of who liked gaming at all was far higher ten years ago than it is now. The ESA study on gaming demographics completely failed to differentiate between gaming genre and platform in their numbers. There's a good reason to suspect that the huge shortening in the gap is due to the inclusion of iOS gaming in their data which should mean that iOS companies should have a better gender ratio than traditional AAA gaming markets. Additionally, even if the gender gap in gaming has closed in recent years, this doesn't mean that women are instantly available to apply for these markets. The interest is only the first spark, it then has to be followed up with training and schooling to be capable of programming. I'd imagine that we should see a greater increase in applications from females in the coming years but I have no idea if that will ever be an equal ratio.
However, this is what we do know:
http://p2.pscdn.me/content/PS_Gender_Infographic_972.png
I don't think we can really claim that women aren't making equal pay. In fact, it's especially hard to explain why women actually make more than men all the way up into the 30s. I personally believe that the 4% still needs to be monitored and addressed but it could be caused by a number things from differences in assertiveness (willingness to take a riskier position or ask for a raise) or something like howwomen take time off for kids so that five years experience may be useful but not as useful as say someone who had those five years more recently (might explain why the tech field is the full 4% but I'd think nursing would be even more severe, maybe not). But that's certainly not the 80% gap that I used to erroneously think it was. People made the terrible mistake of just taking industry-wide averages and assuming that meant something. But if someone doesn't have equivalent qualifications they do not deserve to make the same amount of money. There is also something considerably nicer in the fact that women seem to take the more socially beneficial roles. I have a lot more respect for women in knowing that they forgo more lucrative jobs in pursuit of more personally rewarding positions that benefit society.
But what you guys are largely fighting for actually isn't making women get paid more for doing the same job. You're fighting for women with less experience to be paid more than men with more experience. Overt sexism.
So yeah, if efforts are made to combat such pervasive cultural attitudes then tough. Once people get over the shock things are likely to return to normal - Except maybe with more mutual respect. The idea that a 50/50 division (If that) will be enforced forever is pure fantasy.
What shock? The shock that someone just got a job they were more qualified for due to sexism or merely the shock that women are developing in games? Because they already are so the time for shock is well past.
It's hard enough for women already in these fields (Especially video games) to stay with all the harassment they get.
While the whole gamergate bit was nuts, I'm pretty sure that typically all sorts of developers get harassed when they say things that the gaming population disagrees with. We just care more when it happens to a female. I don't know if it happens more frequently to women. It could just as easily be that we sound the alarm all the louder if it happens to a female than we would if it happens to a male. I'm not sure and have no numbers on the matter but I'm not going to accept it on face value when it could be so many other things.
Mutant1988 said:
Ratty said:
How about promoting STEM fields to young women and encouraging them to pursue them, instead of fear mongering about outdated notions of sexist office culture that do not seem to actually reflect reality?
Because it does reflect reality.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/05/06/rhianna-pratchetts-1reasontobe/
http://kotaku.com/5963528/heres-a-devastating-account-of-the-crap-women-in-the-games-business-have-to-deal-with-in-2012
http://gamasutra.com/blogs/LaralynMcWilliams/20141030/229072/Shes_Not_Playing_It_Wrong.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/LaralynMcWilliams/20150211/236179/Diversity_Drives_Success.php
That's a very cute list of anecdotal bandwagon and yellow journalism. Written by at least one very questionable journalist. How about you try and find some facts to base statements on? That would be the appropriate thing to do rather than clinging to yellow journalism that doesn't cite any facts at all.
Saying that games are marketed towards men isn't saying that women can't be in the industry. There are a TON of things that are marketed towards men that have no issues with women working hand and hand in the industry itself. From marketing to so many other things. If any company is honestly saying "We don't hire women because X" then they should get slapped with a discrimination law suit. So name and shame those companies specifically.
But this? These aren't really saying anything or proving any points.
