Gender and Games - J Prescott and J Bogg

The reading concerned with gender and games this week was that of J Prescott and J Bogg. Segregation in a Male-Dominated Industry: Women.

From reading this whole article I discovered how unproportional and under represented women are within the games industry. However occupational segregation is illegal throughout the EU and the UK,  although it clearly happens throughout the Games Design industry. Both horizontal and vertical segregation  occurs within this male-dominated industry, the females employed are underrepresented across the whole of the industry within all job types, as well as the managerial roles from these jobs. There is around 9000 employees currently in the games games industry and which 4% of those are women.  6.9% of those are in the creation and development of the game other than the typical administration and marketing, which many people believe is more suited for women. So all of that adds up to 24.84 women out of 9000 that are heavily involved in the development process withing a computer games design company. This is quite a small number of influential roles women occupy to the development process of games. Many of these companies claim to be gender neutral companies which is what the law wants to enforce, however these companies can sometimes be known as gender-blind companies or do not act upon their gender inequalities.

Under-representation:
The under-representation of the women in the games industry has resulted in a stereotypical female character in the game world, mainly because the characters are designed by men the stereotypical character are either one of 3 things:

1. Helpless female
2. Sex kitten

Girl power figure

Women attitudes:

Within a male dominated industry the job opportunities for women can be minimal, however when a women is employed into this masculine game world, the women can adopt masculine behaviour just to fit into the workplace. This could be trying to take interest in male activities etc...

454 women in the games industry were given a questionnaire and from this questionnaire the majority of participants tended to be young, single or living with a partner, childless and spent most of their leisure time playing computer games. This is definite evidence that the modern games industry has effected the younger generation than the older.

Traits from both genders by Schein:

Feminine: Warmth, kindness, selflessness and sympathy.
Masculine: Aggression, forcefulness, rationality, competitiveness, decisiveness, strength, self confidence and independence.
                                                                                                               (Schein, 1973)


A larger number of females in the workplace would create a more welcoming environment because of the above traits BUT it could easily create a female-dominated area and sub fields. This area of the industry could also get quite aggressive.