Sony Meeting and the Lack of Women

Just because the industry is unequal in terms of gender doesn't mean it's unfair. Point me to a case were Women were purposefully excluded in a press conference or job promotion. You can't honestly expect the industry to be 50/50 in terms of equal gender representation. It's just nonsensical. Life is unequal, but that doesn't mean that Women don't have the same privileges as Men (well, at least in the First world). If anything, Women were hired in the past exclusively because of their gender to promote these video games. They were called booth babes, but with how much the industry has grown today they have been rid of.

Women, if you want to see more Female heads in the industry do something about it. Learn C++, go to school, start modding, anything that might help you in your way up because all this talk won't get you anywhere.

Please tell me this isn't actually a thing. Who gives a fuck?

There needs to be more women in positions of power so that there can be more women at these kinds of conferences. I guess the question is how that happens. I guess they could start their own studio but that does take money and influence which if they already had that, they probably wouldn't be start a new studio in the first place. So its a tough question honestly, but i don't think sony is necessarily responsible for putting women on stage especially if they don't have anything to do with the game.

@sweep said:

So we can all get angry about feminists aaaarggggh!!!

I don't see this so much as an issue with Sony specifically. I don't think it would come as a shock to anyone to say that there's something of a glass ceiling for non-white (also non-Japanese I guess) and female developers in the industry and this "meeting" was somewhat representative of that. And to be fair this is true of most entertainment industries (and industries in general I guess).

I think it's worth pointing these issues out and discussing them. That said, that Elizabeth DeLoria comment is pretty hysterical given that I can't recall Nintendo ever bringing out a woman in the industry to present anything ever at a major press conference. I'm largely down with this whole feminist-gamer movement, but that response seemed pretty unreasonable.

lol.

@likeassur said:

At the event planning stage nothing, they couldn't magic female developers out of nowhere, and I think some people think that's what their critics are asking them to do, but that's not really the issue. As is usually the case with these kind of things, people are saying "This is not problem, it's not worth talking about", when the larger issue is that this is in the context of and representative of a larger problem. The lack of female devs is far from a problem just to do with Sony, and I think we should be careful not to just attack them any more than anyone else with a lack of female devs, but in an age when we're becoming increasingly aware of people in the games industry who aren't just the traditional audience and developers, I think it's worth looking at what this may reflect.

Oh my... This is getting out of hand. What if there were female employees who were offered the chance to give a presentation either;

a) Didn't want to.

b) Couldn't assist to the event.

c) Other reason.

We don't know the actual reasons why there were no female presenters, but it's probably not Sony being evil or something.

I spent some time on a post and it didn't send. So if this doesn't work, I'm done.

Elizabeth Deloria's big issue is that the career choices of women do not reflect her gender ideology.

There is an under representation of women in software development. We're told this is 'a problem'.

There is an under representation of women in the sanitation industry. Is this a problem?

There is an under representation of women in construction. Is this a problem?

There is an under representation of men in nursing. Is this a problem?

There is an under representation of men in college graduation numbers. Problem?

See, the difference between equality and gender ideology is that equality believes everyone is free to make their own decisions independent of their gender. Gender ideology believes that if their preferred gender isn't receiving the majority of what they consider prestigious positions, independent of their merit, then there is 'a problem'. Even though women make up the majority of college graduates, if they're not choosing STEM fields, there is 'a problem'. Elizabeth Deloria is unhappy with the choices women have made.

Don't believe in gender ideology, kids. Believe in equality.

This is so dumb.

But this is legitimately not a problem. How is it sexist that women aren't as common is video game development? Isn't that simply just their career decision? Women aren't being turned down for video game development jobs because they're female.. this is literally a non issue.. not many women do construction either. Is it sexist? No it's not sexist.. just not as many women decide to go down that career path as men.

This whole sexism issue is getting out of hand, and everything is being called sexist whether it's sexist or not, and it's getting dumb. Sexism is awful, but for the love of god, call out sexism when sexism is an actual issue.

Playstation Kitchen

I'd play that. I loved Pizza Tycoon.

You CAN close it.... just saying. A.k.a this shit will turn ugly sooner or later so...

The games industry is a male dominated one. Get over it.

I saw no dogs at that thing. Call PETA !

To be fair, having no women at all is still probably more respectful than Nintendo's 3DS chain gang of women.

Oh God.

Clearly the (white) man is keeping a brother down (and not talking). Racists!

Probably? Certainly. That was really, really bad.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuck offfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff.

Professor Layton and The Lack of Women

@funkydupe said:

I hear somethin' sayin'! Hoo! Hah!

I see this kind of reasoning a lot, and I'm worried it actually ignores what the other side of the argument is saying. If you don't think there's discrimination in the games industry, then you're actually flying in the face of what many inside the industry have said. Last year there was an outpouring of women and men in gaming who told stories of their personal experiences and observances of discrimination against women in their field, and many of these people were respected, experienced and knowledgeable members of the industry. If you want to say that all these people are wrong or lying, you need a pretty spectacular argument, especially if you're outside of the games industry.

The other problem is, okay, there are few women taking up jobs in the games industry, the next obvious question is why? I get that men and women on average may be biologically suited to different tasks, but the degree to which the industry is male-dominated seems to go way beyond that. It seems that societal expectations and influences divide things into "Jobs for women" and "Jobs for men" and push the genders towards one or the other, and this is inherently sexist.

We must also remember that not only are women in the industry affected by stuff like this, but that so are the audience. The games industry has gotten insular and exclusive and I don't think it's good for anyone. The games industry targeting its games to men means fewer women in the industry, and fewer women in the industry mean less games targeted at men. Both of these things mean less diversity in games, and that affects us all.

Twist ending: Kaz Harai was a woman all along.

Christ. I really dislike some people when I hear about crap like this. It's hard to take people trying to fight for this crap seriously when you have nut jobs crying over the dumbest stuff and making something out of nothing. It's like they want affirmative action for women now.

Internet!

I'm not denying the fact that there is sexism in the industry. Every industry has a degree of sexism. But situations like this one simply aren't an example of the industry being sexist, it's just as simple as none of the developers who spoke were women. If a trustworthy developer comes out and says she was denied the right to speak at the event because she was a female, sure. But just because no female developers were speaking at the event doesn't automatically mean it's sexist.

And I feel we've for some reason gotten to a point in this industry where we feel the need to call everything sexist whether it is actually sexist or not, and it takes away from the actual cases of sexism because people are tired of consistently hearing "SEXIST!!" over the smallest little thing that you need to dig DEEP and grasp at a lot of straws to even say it's sexist.

God I love you sometimes. Great post!

/suicide

Yup, because ratios and probability totally make a company racist.

*loud fart noise accompanied by a wanking motion*

This isn't sexism.

@krullban: The thing is, I think phrases like "There is some degree of sexism in every industry" gloss over the fact that not all industries have the same degree of sexism, and that video games in particular are a very male-dominated space. I'm not saying that the event itself was sexist, I'm not even sure sexism is the ideal word to use here, but the event did seem reflective of a problem within the industry that feels like it really shouldn't be a problem for any respected industry in the year 2013.

There was a reason none of the developers who spoke there were women; because there's a lack of women in the industry, and I don't think that's coincidence or comes from a place of complete equality and fairness. At the very least it's something we should think about thoroughly before dismissing. We have an industry where the vast majority of respected people in the within it are men, where almost all big games are aimed at men, and where women are not only in a minority in gaming community, but receive inexcusable abuse because of it. I don't think you have to dig very deep or clutch at straws to find the problems here.

More people than ever are calling out gender inequality in the industry, but that's because it's a topic that we need to look at seriously and has been largely ignored in the past, and I think it's important to keep bringing it up because there's an overwhelming number of people who want to give knee-jerk dismissals to these problems or even outright attack the people who try to highlight inequality to begin with. Whether people are tired of it or not, we need to discuss this like adults, and be aware that smaller issues with equality may be representative of larger ones. Thanks for discussing this with me civilly though, I've had a lot of arguments along these lines that haven't gone so well.

So wait a minute. Those tweets from Elizabeth are definitely for real then?

WTH! I saw them first in the satire thread of KaosAngel and wasn't sure.

What a great thread. Can't wait for Patrick's follow up article!

But I don't really agree that it's a problem that not as many women as men are in the industry. There are many industries that are dominated by one gender, and I don't necessarily think that's an issue of inequality, more so of an issue of how the different sexes think, and the career paths they choose to pursue. If a women wants to become a video game developer, I doubt there will be any higher up pulling them down and telling them they aren't allowed. It's just that not as many women even try or even want to get into the industry as men.

More and more women are getting into the industry, and there will likely be a change at some point where it's equal or close in terms of the numbers of developers. But as it stands right now, more men are in the industry, because more men have been interested in getting into the industry than women.

I'm not saying this is something that really should be bitched about, but playing Devil's advocate, isn't it more of a criticism of the corporate structure than of Sony itself? Like, I'm really sorry that the lead designer of Diablo III or the CEO of Ubisoft isn't a female. Because there totally should be women in those positions, but its not Sony's fault that those positions are males. So should Sony have the female concept artist for Infamous 3 up there on stage during their hardware unveiling? And even if they did, that's just kowtowing to feminists and Klepek and do we really want that?

why are people saying this is a problem? if their was a woman who owned a devilment company that was worth showing then she would of been at the conference. simples

I'm not sure what my Friday nights have to do with sexism.

Kotaku is the Daily Mail of gaming journalism. Please don't take anything they say seriously.

@Ravenlight Jesus Christ did they really make an acronym for the word girl?

@ravenlight said:

Isn't that gender discrimination?

I agree, this is a point I didn't even think of.

@sweep said:

I thrive in the chaos.

It's clearly not because women don't go into hard sciences or engineering for college.

It's always the industry's fault.