News Wanted: Female Game Coders

[GreatOldOne]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/05...l_Game_Coders/

[Almightyrastus]

There is truly very little that is finer than a female geek

[Cheap Mod Wannabe]

I cannot imagine a 21st century female teenager answering "I want to be a programmer when I grow up." ALthough I don't have nothing against it.

[LAGMonkey]

Its like this in many of the major "male" dominated areas of industry. My person experiance is in Engineering and there are very very few women about to ease my eyes
But what this could end up doing is discriminate against males who are not allowed on the course as a woman has taken there place. Dont get me wrong i want more women to get into these sorts of areas but it should be on merit and ability and not that your one type of gender (my feelings are the same for men being allowed on courses as there arnt many of them about.)

Another consideration is if the women actually WANT to go into these areas or not. You can advatise a course till your blue in the face and if no one want to do it then they wont. Its a matter of getting ppl interested.

Note:: my views about discrimination go for all geneders and races, if youve got the talent to do a course then you should be allowed to do it. if you havent then learn a bit more and dont call foul.

[Flibblebot]

Don't know why, but computers seem to go hand-in-hand with cars and power tools - they seem to be a predominantly male interest.
What I don't get is what the problem really is: if women aren't interested in computers, don't get upset about it; it's just one of those things. And those women that are interested, great - welcome to the club

[Master Ninja]

I just got my Bachelor's degree in computer science, and I will vouch that this isn't even about gaming. Enrollment at my school has remained steady for the past few years, but the male/female ratio is becoming incredibly skewed. My department has been trying to attract women into computing for years, to the point where they visited my Ethics of Computing class for ideas.

It's easy to say that the decline in numbers is because women aren't interested in programming, but that's not the whole story. A large factor is the intimidation of entering such a male-dominated field. Schools who have started women-only sections of their classes have reported a significant increase in the number of enrollment, which suggests that a lot of women are interested in programming when the social stigma of it is eliminated. The fact that 50% of the population is discouraged from entering a field that requires high productivity is ridiculous. For a woman to enter computer science, she may first have to accept the fact that she will be one of the only women at the school or company. That's not something a lot of men can relate to.

Frankly, even 50 years after the modern women's movement, society is still pushing young men and women into stereotypical gender roles; men do technical work and women do administration. While there is certainly a reason for that (women are much better at multitasking and men excel at performing focused tasks), people who try to break that mold are subtly discouraged from doing so. I've seen this happen as early as the beginnings of high school. Remember when the boys took Shop Class and the girls took Home Economics? It's still happening today.

LAGMonkey -> Good point; the idea of male/female quotas, both in school and work, is a forced solution. It only cures the symptom (gender imbalance) of a much larger problem (society encouraging outdated gender stereotypes). This is especially evident in places where objectively, the job is performed better by men. Firefighters, for example, should be held to the same level of expectation regardless of gender. If they aren't and women have lower requirements due to their different physiology, then it's just as sexist as discriminating against them. Equality of the genders is a two-way street, but that's a topic for another thread.

[LAGMonkey]

I totaly agree with you Ninja, and at its current rate (women not wanting to be forced into a class with only men in it) the problem will only continue to get worse. All female classes is a fine idea and if the resources/enthusiasum is there then they should be run. I can understand that women wont want to go into a large room of men (cos were all looking at her ).

I remember reading that here in the UK school advisers are pushing women toward gender specific job and therefore the path that they need to take in order to get them. This is unacceptable, to be honest, however it does work both ways in pushing men into jobs that they may not be suited to, etc.

Equality hasnt reached the human population just yet and its likely to oscilate from being biast towards women, and then towards men (at least thats what im starting to see) and back again untill everyone has had enough.

[Nath]

There are definitely very few women in the industry....but it's not like it's doing anything bad for the whole game production industry is it? People should just let others do what they want to do....not worry about the ratio being skewed. There are women interested in it though....even my mum is a java programmer...

[Henchman:crg]

Does it really matter?
All that is important is that people are choosing a career that they will hopefully enjoy, shouldn't make any difference on what sex you are, just on how good you are at the work you do (providing a particular sex is not discouraged from entering a career path).

There are jobs where gender is important, but most jobs should not have these issues.

[LAGMonkey]

it shouldnt matter but people who dont actually know about the job decide to make statistics about it. These statistics then show "X" and then some other person sees "X" and decides that its not fair (as they may have an interest in "X" or want to look like they care to the people who "X" affects). They then decided to do somthing about it and change the problem and we all end up talking about it.

[RTT]

I'm a firsthand wittness of this. Here at staffs uni, which isnt far from derby (random fact ), we're split into 3 campuses. This campus (stafford) deals with engineering and computing so you can guess the male:female ratio. AFAIK, out of 1200 ish people in halls, about 15 are female... and they aren't anything to do with engineering or computing!

[Jumeira_Johnny]

All the female programmers I know never studied anything computer related. Which is why they were hired. Software is supposed to be user friendly. And guys that are geeks and have years of software coding behind them, know little about the comsumer market. So what better way then to take the consumer, with no geeky preconceptions, and teach them to write software? I know at least 15 women that ended up as sofware coders in this way.

[DeX]

We have about 13 women on our Computer Science course here in Cardiff (and about 100 blokes). All of those that I've spoken to seem to dislike the actual programming parts of the course and prefer the design and business sides. I'm the opposite: I like to get stuck down in a good bit of code and work at it until I find a solution. That's where I think the difference between a lot of male programmers and a lot of female programmers is. The feeling of acheivment you get after solving some technical problem is what I call Technophoria but the females on our course don't seem to be able to experience this. Having said that, most of the blokes on my course also seem to find the programming as a chore too. All of this doesn't mean that they're not good programmers but I think the difference is that men are able to get more satisfaction out of it than women.