Child Of Light - What Do Women Want?

[Asdraguuhl]

The term STEM is mentioned several times but I didn't know what it was so I asked professor Google, who knows everything .

Regarding STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and women, there is an interesting observation on my side:

I work in the space industry and I am mainly working in international European projects. I am therefore regularly in contact with people from other European companies and I have noticed that in Northern European countries (e.g. Sweden, Germany, Netherlands) there are less female engineers than there are in Southern European countries (e.g. Italy, Spain, France).

To me it is quite a surprising observation since the emancipation of women and modern liberal ideas is typically thought to have started earlier in Northern Europe so I would therefore assume (in comparison) a less traditional gender distribution in the workplace in those countries.

Some time ago I saw an interesting Norwegian documentary that adressess this apparently contradicting issue: http://vimeo.com/19707588

 

[lostforever]

I can't find the article now but it was reported that the Indian space agency had more female engineers than Nasa did and Indian isn't know as a female friendly nation compared to US...

 

[GothicGothicness]

The term STEM is mentioned several times but I didn't know what it was so I asked professor Google, who knows everything .

Regarding STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and women, there is an interesting observation on my side:

I work in the space industry and I am mainly working in international European projects. I am therefore regularly in contact with people from other European companies and I have noticed that in Northern European countries (e.g. Sweden, Germany, Netherlands) there are less female engineers than there are in Southern European countries (e.g. Italy, Spain, France).

To me it is quite a surprising observation since the emancipation of women and modern liberal ideas is typically thought to have started earlier in Northern Europe so I would therefore assume (in comparison) a less traditional gender distribution in the workplace in those countries.

Some time ago I saw an interesting Norwegian documentary that adressess this apparently contradicting issue: http://vimeo.com/19707588

This is spot on, those kind of educations here were almost empty of women, though now there are some more. I do not really know the reason for it, maybe it is about what most women finds interesting... or maybe it is some kind of social agreement that these jobs are not as suitable for women as for men. In finance and law now though the men are in the minority in the educations.... where you never saw women in those sectors before.

 

[DArtagnan]

I think it's a bit of a silly question, really. I mean, I'm a man - and I don't want what "men" want necessarily. I want what I like - which will depend on my personality and subjective preferences.

As for anecdotal evidence, I can say that I had girlfriend who played WoW with me for 3 years - and she was most definitely more addicted than I was. We played for several hours every single day with pretty much no exceptions. I quit the game several times - and I tried getting her out of it along with me, but she refused. I thought it was doing major damage to our real lives - but she felt differently. So, I got dragged back into it more than once, until I finally stopped for good. My own fault, for sure, but I would never have played it that much if it wasn't for my partner and the fact that it was something we shared.

But, in her case, it was mostly because of the social interaction - where I'd say the actual game and the competitive aspect were the primary reasons I played. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy the social aspect, it was just not as important to me as it was to her.

I felt I needed a point to play - something to achieve that I could strive for. For her, it was enough to simply be online and picking flowers - just having fun.

It took me a while to understand that there was no achievement worth much effort - so maybe she had a better take on it than I did.

Anyway, the point is that I don't think there's a simple answer to what anyone wants - and to lump half the population together because of their sex is stupid.

 

[Turjan]

I work in the space industry and I am mainly working in international European projects. I am therefore regularly in contact with people from other European companies and I have noticed that in Northern European countries (e.g. Sweden, Germany, Netherlands) there are less female engineers than there are in Southern European countries (e.g. Italy, Spain, France).

One factoid that surprised me in this regard came up when I read in the news that Iran wanted to limit access of women to university studies in fields like chemistry and engineering. So far so fitting expectations, right? My surprise came when I was looking at the numbers of people getting degrees in chemistry and engineering in Iran, and both fields were absolutely dominated by women. They had the highest percentage of female graduates in these fields in the world. That was - unexpected.

So, it's often a good idea to check one's "gut feelings" in this regard.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

It's also a good idea to make sure one accounts for all confounding variables. In Western society, men are dropping out of all academic fields at college. So in this case the relatively high prorata of female students is probably more a telltale sign of the general disengagement of men from the academic world, not of women suddenly generated a keen inclination to partake in such fields. In Iran as well there are probably other confounding variables, it could be that attaining higher education simply is not valued in such a society.

 

[Turjan]

It's also a good idea to make sure one accounts for all confounding variables. In Western society, men are dropping out of all academic fields at college.

Yup, men in comparison suck in high-school and lose in the competition with women for better college places. The universities already discuss the potential necessity of affirmative action programs for white men to compensate for their worse grades.

In Iran as well there are probably other confounding variables, it could be that attaining higher education simply is not valued in such a society.

Quite the opposite, actually. It's a mistake to conflate Iran with Arab society. Education is highly valuated, and education also allows for certain freedoms women in Iranian society usually don't have.

 

[GothicGothicness]

Well, in general Iranian people are really smart not to mention beautiful, we have so many iranian people coming here and in higher education they are killing, a lot of them are becoming doctors, engineers and so on. It's also very strange if you compare them to other demographic groups who is coming to Sweden you'll see that the majority have no problems in integrating with the sociecty… they as a group even have higher income than the native swedish group in some research.

 

[Morrandir]

What Myrthos and Dart said. I don't think it's more difficult to understand women than to understand men.

And yes, it may be that females have other (gaming) interests than males. Same goes for persons of different age, culture or education. I don't see a reason why we need to discuss the differences between female and male gamers in particular. We just need to let everyone play what and how he/she wants to play.

What is a problem though is that the community has sexist tendencies. We need to work against this tendency and others that "are symptoms of hate and ignorance" (well said, @Aubrielle). The question I'm always asking in this context is, what I as a nox-sexist (or whatever) male gamer can actually do to work against these tendencies.

 

[Pladio]

Morrandir, I think part of the point is that most games are made by males, so it ends up being male-dominated worlds with little to no roles for women unless for eye-candy.

So, yes, girls can play whatever they want, but many games they would want to play are just not available.

For example, in Gothic, girls would have to play as a guy with a ponytail.

In the Witcher, they'd have to play a guy with long grey hair.

Many games force the main character to be a guy. Lords of Xulima is another recent example.

I don't usually like playing as women as it's hard for me to immerse myself into the game that way.

I understand that from a woman's point of view too.

 

[Morrandir]

Morrandir, I think part of the point is that most games are made by males, so it ends up being male-dominated worlds with little to no roles for women unless for eye-candy.

While I see that this is a problem I think that games first and foremost are made by persons who want to make money. And so they make products with the best cost-benefit ratio. As males currently buy more games than females it's totally understandable that games are rather made for males. You will simply make more money from it. That's not a gender specific thing, but applies to other consumers attributes as well. For example take a look at localization. If you speak a language which doesn't provide a big enough market, you ost likely wont get a game localized in this language. So (if you aren't multilingual) you're excluded from playing the game.
So the games aren't made for males because the publishers/developers are sexist, but because they want to make money. That's just how it works.

Although I wish it was different, I don't think there's anything we can do to really change this as long we're living in capitalism. What we can do in gaming communities is to treat everybody with respect independet from gender or whatever. It would be a shame if we lose female gamers who would like to play current games and take part in the communities but are driven away by assholes.

 

[Carnifex]

I don't know much about making games, I do know two people that are involved in the industry. The thing that occurs to me, however, is that if I were creating a game and even ONE woman were to buy it, I'd try to make it at least appealing to her. IMO, there should always be a female protagonist to play if wanted, why not? I'd be definitely trying to make money, so why not be inclusive and not exclusive.

 

[Pladio]

Well, that's a different point

I completely understand the business point of view too.

 

[DArtagnan]

As a developer subject to publisher discretion, you can't play around with development resources - and if there was one single female gamer in the audience, you can be assured that 99% of all existing publishers would ignore her. Why? Because it's a business - not a developer playground.

If you want that problem to go away, you have to support the business part going away.

If we're going to talk about how business is corrupting the human race, I'll gladly go on and on about how big a deal that is, and how tiny a part of the problem the entertainment industry represents in the overall tragedy of what we call the society of the world.

 

[Morrandir]

Exactly. We have quite the save thing going on with medical research and the pharmacy industry. That's a real problem.