why do women only make up 5% of game developers?
TRANSCRIPT
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HKU Sr. Lecturer & Researcher Core Programming Instructor in Games and Interaction Design In the process of starting a PhD in CS at Utrecht University !I have a Masters of the Sciences with a focus on HCI and games from NYU School of Engineering where I am also a researcher & adjunct professor. !I have an BA in Literature. I dropped out of CS because I felt really uncomfortable working in the labs alone at night. !But that’s ok because now I am both a professional artist & a programmer! (Conveniently for me, I never stopped coding!)
We invented programming: the mirco processor the compiler cobalt the OS natural language processing the spanning tree protocol COBOL and on and on and on….
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Credits… Programming (Ada Lovelace) The first widely used computer language (Jean E. Sammet) First generative programming system (Betty Holberton) Helped develop Basic (Sister Mary Keller) First computerized telephone switching system that used a computer to monitor incoming calls. We still use it today. (Erna Schneider Hoover) Natural language processing for search engines still used today by Google (Karen Sparck Jones) The microcomputer / AKA ARM - the small chips in everything (Sophie Wilson) Spanning Tree Protocol (without this? No internet) Radia Perlman – mother of the internet The term bug and the COBOL language – Grace Hooper The operating system (Mary Allen Wilkes) Anita Borg – Pioneering advocate for women in the field !Programming, The Mircorprocessor, The Compiler, Cobalt, the OS, Natural Language Processing, The Spanning Tree Protocol, COBOL and on and on and on
As long as computing was seen as secretarial & had little financial benefit, society was fine with letting women invent, run and innovate in the field.
Because it became associated with typing and secretarial duties, programming was even considered
women’s work
April, 1967 issue of Cosmopolitan, "The Computer Girls“
If it doesn't sound like woman's work -- well, it just is.... "
So, why are women not choosing CSThe personal computer and all of the advertising that went right along with it
It was an expensive item so it was targeted at the family bread winner. The advertising took sexism to a new level. It created the impression that
computers were not for women.
This advertising tactic worked. Men started buying computers. It ramped up to an extreme in console gaming in the 90’s. Gaming was depicted as something only little boys or men did. The ads are either male dominated or disturbingly misogynistic.
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In almost every ad in Cosmo, every ditzy blonde movie, every TV show like The Big Bang Theory, every game like GTA, every account of online bullying, every image, every ad, every product from our mainstream media
If you want to create healthy developer communities that include women, you have to start with the cultural battle for hearts and minds.
Encourage kindness. Tell women to share their story. Mentor. Treat others how you’d like to be treated verse how you are treated. Trust. Be open. Answer emails from young women. Talk publicly. Volunteer. Just don’t wait for someone to fix it for you or give you money to fix it.
Groups with greater diversity solve complex problems better and faster than do homogenous groups, and the presence of women in a group is more likely to increase the collective intelligence. National Center for Women in Information Technology
Companies with the highest representation of women in their management teams have a 34% higher return on investment than do those with few or no women. National Center for Women in Information Technology
If you’ve taken nothing else away from this talk take this one fact.
Computing is too powerful of an economic reality to exclude women, queers, the trans community and people of color.