Women Gamers

Remove all ads!

Sounds like a few of us agree, but I don't know where NonSequitur got

My point was (two-fold) that gender differences are very real and, if a men in general can perform a job better, there's nothing wrong with most of the field being men. On the other hand, we don't understand gender differences enough to know if men will be better, worse, or just as good, in general, as women. That's the problem. If we could say, "85% of female applicants for position X will do the job better than 85% of male applicants because of gender differences Y and Z", then the problem would be almost solved, but until that time, we're all in the crapper.

The optimum society is one where everyone does the job in which they can most contribute to society's good. Partnership does not mean equality on all issues, and absolute equality on all issues would leave society in quite a quandry. Good luck to the human race.

 

My option for that is set specific criteria, don't put gender on the list. If the person meets those, great. If not, bye. If the criteria seem to favour one gender over another, that hurts. But we need someone to do the job more than that person needs to get that particular job. No tweaking, no quotas and we'll be fine. And strangle employers who pay more or less to people in the same job depending on the gender, or promote them faster.

 

Fair call, NOG - and there are particular tasks for which men or women are better-suited than the other. However, that should never be the determining factor by itself; if someone can do a job, they can do a job, regardless of their gender (or indeed any other factors). Of course, aside from capability, the other factor is someone actually wanting the job; certain professions attract men or women in greater numbers. I won't speculate on the causes, but I'd go out on a limb and guess that a majority of software programmers are male.

Getting back to the original topic; some game genres are becoming somewhat more gender-neutral, but others (especially FPS) will always be heavily on the male side. I think that it's something programmers should be conscious of, but that it hardly warrants activism unless it's promoting excessively misogynistic images and concepts.

I have no issue with a "Women's Gaming" group - they're a minority, they're not the ones catered to by most games, and they may have different takes on in-game action than the average male gamer. More power to them. There are plenty of chauvinis... I mean, very male-oriented online groups anyway, and while the ones I'm familiar with aren't hostile to women gamers, there are no female members.

The stereotypical "chainmail thong" and push-up breastplate are a bit unnecessary, IMO, but it's just a game, and so long as it's seen as such, is not a huge problem.

Aha! Another closet communist on SP reveals their true colours!

Just kidding, NOG - it's 9:30 on Friday morning and I needed a laugh...