If you don't know what topic I am talking about, it was a twitter topic this past week about sexism in the games industry, go check it out.
I realize that being sexist is wrong, and I believe it is, but I have always wondered why games have been traditionally developed mostly by men. I would think it stems from the fact that most programmers have always been men, and why? My theory is:
Back in the wee early days of computing, around WWII, there were two fields interested in programming: engineering and military. The reason behind my theory that the first programmers were men were because back in this era, sexism was either acceptable or people fell into these roles anyway, and all of the military officers and engineers were both only men. Then, programming came about, and you guessed it: male dominated industry. Eventually, as personal computing came about, men still were almost completely all programmers. Games stem almost completely from programming, and once again, it is dominated by men. There you have it. The reason you have sexism in the computer games industry. All solved right here on GDnet.
My Thoughts On #1ReasonWhy
Why is <field> dominated by men? It isn't just the games industry.
Almost every industry has it.
Construction always has been (and probably always will be) a male dominated field. Politics is male dominated. And when it comes to programming, mathematics related fields are male dominated.
Also, it varies by location and by time in history. Sometimes it flips.
Teaching and nursing are two fields that were once male dominated that became female dominated. In the US before the early 1900s nursing was a male-only field. Today it is 78% women. In the US during the 1800s teaching switched from male dominated to female dominated.
A few seconds on Google will show there have been significant studies about why women are less prevalent in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) professions. Your theory is interesting, but it doesn't look like it matches the research.
Almost every industry has it.
Construction always has been (and probably always will be) a male dominated field. Politics is male dominated. And when it comes to programming, mathematics related fields are male dominated.
Also, it varies by location and by time in history. Sometimes it flips.
Teaching and nursing are two fields that were once male dominated that became female dominated. In the US before the early 1900s nursing was a male-only field. Today it is 78% women. In the US during the 1800s teaching switched from male dominated to female dominated.
A few seconds on Google will show there have been significant studies about why women are less prevalent in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) professions. Your theory is interesting, but it doesn't look like it matches the research.
In many ways, it is more interesting to approach the question of 'why' a gender imbalance exists in computer science (and related fields) by attempting to posit a solution to said gender imbalance.
Over the last few decades we have made great strides on a number of fronts, across the developed world. Sexual discrimination in the workplace is illegal, and employers are increasingly vigilant against such. Equal access to education has been a huge success - more women than men now both attend and graduate from university. And while there still exists a sizable salary gap between men and women, it has reduced over time, and it doesn't strike me as noticeably worse in STEM fields.
Yet engineering departments are still almost entirely male-dominated - clearly some vital spark is missing from the equation.
Is the subconscious reinforcement of traditional gender roles prevalent throughout primary and secondary education to blame for discouraging girls from pursuing math and science? Are many women intimidated by the thought of entering into a field where they will be outnumbered 20-to-1 by their male colleauges? Is there actually a culture of sexism in engineering fields, perpetuated by the male professors/colleagues who are unused to working with, or perhaps resentful of, female colleagues?
Over the last few decades we have made great strides on a number of fronts, across the developed world. Sexual discrimination in the workplace is illegal, and employers are increasingly vigilant against such. Equal access to education has been a huge success - more women than men now both attend and graduate from university. And while there still exists a sizable salary gap between men and women, it has reduced over time, and it doesn't strike me as noticeably worse in STEM fields.
Yet engineering departments are still almost entirely male-dominated - clearly some vital spark is missing from the equation.
Is the subconscious reinforcement of traditional gender roles prevalent throughout primary and secondary education to blame for discouraging girls from pursuing math and science? Are many women intimidated by the thought of entering into a field where they will be outnumbered 20-to-1 by their male colleauges? Is there actually a culture of sexism in engineering fields, perpetuated by the male professors/colleagues who are unused to working with, or perhaps resentful of, female colleagues?
Interesting bit of history: programming was originally a very female-dominated field.
We can speculate all day but in the end the historical reasons are largely irrelevant IMHO. What's more interesting is, what's being done to address the problem? At what point will we consider the problem addressed?
We can speculate all day but in the end the historical reasons are largely irrelevant IMHO. What's more interesting is, what's being done to address the problem? At what point will we consider the problem addressed?
Author
The thing is, I don't see a solution other than for more women to just become interested in games and computers in general.
What's more interesting is, what's being done to address the problem? At what point will we consider the problem addressed?
Ada Byron and others, of course. These people were some of the greatest programmers ever, and I have utmost respect for them.
programming was originally a very female-dominated field.
Far beyond that. Programming computers was originally a largely manual task, in the early days. Most corporations and academic institutions had armies of women who shouldered that work.
Just an observation from my uni (graduated 2011), was that more than 50% of the students were, in fact, female. However, when it came to graduating that percentage was well below 20% female. I don't know if this was due to a focused recruitment drive among women going on at the time, but it's an interesting observation non-the-less. I remember far more women than boys being the top mathematic students in my pre-uni years, so the interest must at least be there.
I don't really think this has anything to do with school or industry. It starts even earlier than this at childhood. Girls and boys get bought different toys and get introduced to different cartoons by their parents.
Also as aside when I graduated uni I did a games programming degree and none of the women on the degree went into games programming but, they did go into other IT fields. When I asked a couple of them why they mentioned things like long term job prospects, pay prospects, mortgages and family. On the otherhand when I asked the blokes on the course they said they didn't care about money they just wanted to make games. I no longer work in games I worki in financial software and the number of female programmers is still tiny but, the majority of buisness analysists and buisness managers are ex female programmers.
Also as aside when I graduated uni I did a games programming degree and none of the women on the degree went into games programming but, they did go into other IT fields. When I asked a couple of them why they mentioned things like long term job prospects, pay prospects, mortgages and family. On the otherhand when I asked the blokes on the course they said they didn't care about money they just wanted to make games. I no longer work in games I worki in financial software and the number of female programmers is still tiny but, the majority of buisness analysists and buisness managers are ex female programmers.
It may come as a shock to some, but men and women are different.
There is a genetic element to this - a lot of the notable differences come about as a result of hormones throughout their lives (such as testosterone, oestrogen, progesterone), in the womb (where brain development can be affected), throughout their lives, puberty etc. You can get 'in between sexes' where the the chromosomes are XX or XY but the hormones for one reason or another are not in their normal ratios, for instance due to drugs the pregnant mother is exposed to.
There is also an environmental element to this - male and female children tend to be brought up differently.
The relative importance of the genetic and environmental effects in determining the phenotype (how the individual appears, behaves etc) is a topic of much debate.
The end result though, is that men and women, boys and girls, as well as looking different, also behave differently, tend (on average) to have different interests, and find some things more important than others. There are some scientifically well established differences in abilities / interests between the sexes (statistically on average .. there is overlap between the groups in different areas in various individuals).
To then ignore all this, and insinuate that the reason for more males / females in a particular career / interest must be due to 'employer bias' or equivalent, is perhaps a little shortsighted.
But, is this a problem?
If there were equal numbers of women to men that wanted to work in the field and had equal ability, then I agree, there would be an argument that discrimination was a problem. But are there equal numbers of both sexes that want to work in this field, and are the abilities equal? How can you be sure that the reason for lack of women is not primarily that they are (on average) 'not interested' in the particular jobs?
There is a genetic element to this - a lot of the notable differences come about as a result of hormones throughout their lives (such as testosterone, oestrogen, progesterone), in the womb (where brain development can be affected), throughout their lives, puberty etc. You can get 'in between sexes' where the the chromosomes are XX or XY but the hormones for one reason or another are not in their normal ratios, for instance due to drugs the pregnant mother is exposed to.
There is also an environmental element to this - male and female children tend to be brought up differently.
The relative importance of the genetic and environmental effects in determining the phenotype (how the individual appears, behaves etc) is a topic of much debate.
The end result though, is that men and women, boys and girls, as well as looking different, also behave differently, tend (on average) to have different interests, and find some things more important than others. There are some scientifically well established differences in abilities / interests between the sexes (statistically on average .. there is overlap between the groups in different areas in various individuals).
To then ignore all this, and insinuate that the reason for more males / females in a particular career / interest must be due to 'employer bias' or equivalent, is perhaps a little shortsighted.
What's more interesting is, what's being done to address the problem?
But, is this a problem?
If there were equal numbers of women to men that wanted to work in the field and had equal ability, then I agree, there would be an argument that discrimination was a problem. But are there equal numbers of both sexes that want to work in this field, and are the abilities equal? How can you be sure that the reason for lack of women is not primarily that they are (on average) 'not interested' in the particular jobs?
Its funny because in my last web development job I was the only guy on the team and now that I think about it every web development job I applied for I was either interviewed by a woman or two women, perhaps JavaScript is more appealing to women than men
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