How could you have gone to the lengths to look up her CV and academic career and so completely miss the point of all the research that she's done?
Plus, three the four professional organizations she claims on her CV are sexist, discriminatory and exclusionary - yet if anybody ever suggested to her that there should be an organization for "Men in the Sciences and Engineering" what do you suppose her reaction would be?
The organizations that she has listed are not exclusionary in the least they focus on helping women into technical careers and welcome ANYONE that has an interest in that area. There are a number of male researchers that are participants in the exact same organizations that do the similar research and aren't looked down on in any way and in fact have helped to advance the field as a whole.
As a personal friend of the author I can tell you that I'm positive she thinks that would be a good club. Any time that people can get together and share common interests and network with each other is a boon to the community and the company that they work for, whether the groups break down by gender lines, socio-economic lines, leisure interest lines or what have you.
As to being a sexist paper it focuses around creating gender equanimity and fair and equal working conditions. It's easy to find statistics about how the gender breakdown beginning at lower middle management begins to become heavily skewed in favor of males. This research and most research like it is simply trying to help foster equal or proportionally equal to the population at large representations in the workforce at all levels. How is that sexist? The same research is being done on race, religion, etc. It's about having fair representations not about putting one group in power over another.
As to the fact that this comment was rated as insightful I'm very disappointed that anyone could miss the bigoted and ad hominem attack that it constitutes.
I personally enjoy MMO's( Currently owned by WoW) FPS's like Doom, Halo, UT etc. Platformers cause they're just awesome:) DDR. Fighting games like Mortal Kombat and Super Smash Brothers.
Overall its not the genere as much as the quality of the gaming experience that matters to me.
I think it's great that this is getting press. It's not just a simple "shove girls in and girl games come out" issue.
As several other posters mentioned there aren't many female programmers out there. And the few that are out there aren't interested in video games. In order to get women into these areas, at least in the US, would take an overhaul of the education system. Get the girls into Math. Get them into Science. Get them into technology. But do it at an early age and make sure they stay interested. If you run searchs in ACM and IEEE libraries there are plethora of articles on this topic and the topics of games in the educational system. Even if you do a good Google search you can find them.
Now most of the research was done on the previous generation of female programmers and maybe we'll see that change in the future. But for the moment the easiest way to get women to buy more video games is to market to them. The TV ads I've been seeing lately are a start but there needs to be more. Put them in fashion magazines, put them on Lifetime, put them everywhere just so long as women are seeing them. And just don't put men in the ads either. I'm sure showing one girl playing isn't going to drive away the male customers.
Companies can get all the female game designers and programmers they want but if the female purchasers don't know the games exist they aren't going to buy them.
There are a lot of reasons that girls haven't been getting into video games. Over all it is a boy's club, they're the only people in it (or the majority at least).
Girl's won't get into making games unless they are interested in them in the first place. Young girls won't become interested in video games until they realize they exist. Look at the marketing. It's all targeted to boys. By the time girl's even become aware of video games it's all ready been branded as a boy's thing. Change the advertising for ANY game to include both boys and girls and there will be a huge difference in the number of sales.
Personally I don't want to see more insipid "girl games" give me blood and guts anyday.
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The organizations that she has listed are not exclusionary in the least they focus on helping women into technical careers and welcome ANYONE that has an interest in that area. There are a number of male researchers that are participants in the exact same organizations that do the similar research and aren't looked down on in any way and in fact have helped to advance the field as a whole.
As a personal friend of the author I can tell you that I'm positive she thinks that would be a good club. Any time that people can get together and share common interests and network with each other is a boon to the community and the company that they work for, whether the groups break down by gender lines, socio-economic lines, leisure interest lines or what have you.
As to being a sexist paper it focuses around creating gender equanimity and fair and equal working conditions. It's easy to find statistics about how the gender breakdown beginning at lower middle management begins to become heavily skewed in favor of males. This research and most research like it is simply trying to help foster equal or proportionally equal to the population at large representations in the workforce at all levels. How is that sexist? The same research is being done on race, religion, etc. It's about having fair representations not about putting one group in power over another.
As to the fact that this comment was rated as insightful I'm very disappointed that anyone could miss the bigoted and ad hominem attack that it constitutes.
I'm kinda disappointed with the responses so far.
:) DDR. Fighting games like Mortal Kombat and Super Smash Brothers.
I personally enjoy MMO's( Currently owned by WoW) FPS's like Doom, Halo, UT etc. Platformers cause they're just awesome
Overall its not the genere as much as the quality of the gaming experience that matters to me.
I think it's great that this is getting press. It's not just a simple "shove girls in and girl games come out" issue.
As several other posters mentioned there aren't many female programmers out there. And the few that are out there aren't interested in video games. In order to get women into these areas, at least in the US, would take an overhaul of the education system. Get the girls into Math. Get them into Science. Get them into technology. But do it at an early age and make sure they stay interested. If you run searchs in ACM and IEEE libraries there are plethora of articles on this topic and the topics of games in the educational system. Even if you do a good Google search you can find them.
Now most of the research was done on the previous generation of female programmers and maybe we'll see that change in the future. But for the moment the easiest way to get women to buy more video games is to market to them. The TV ads I've been seeing lately are a start but there needs to be more. Put them in fashion magazines, put them on Lifetime, put them everywhere just so long as women are seeing them. And just don't put men in the ads either. I'm sure showing one girl playing isn't going to drive away the male customers.
Companies can get all the female game designers and programmers they want but if the female purchasers don't know the games exist they aren't going to buy them.
There are a lot of reasons that girls haven't been getting into video games. Over all it is a boy's club, they're the only people in it (or the majority at least).
Girl's won't get into making games unless they are interested in them in the first place. Young girls won't become interested in video games until they realize they exist. Look at the marketing. It's all targeted to boys. By the time girl's even become aware of video games it's all ready been branded as a boy's thing. Change the advertising for ANY game to include both boys and girls and there will be a huge difference in the number of sales.
Personally I don't want to see more insipid "girl games" give me blood and guts anyday.