this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2023
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Almost 50% of the gamers are women... I was wondering why the Summer Game Fest didn't have any on stage.
I don’t mean to dismiss you but I think a more relevant statistic would be for people in game development since it’s mostly creators, not consumers on scene.
With that said, I don’t think the ratio will be that different for developers and gamers, so maybe this was a pointless comment :D
Mm.. it's a bit different. I'm a female game dev working in one of my country's bigger studios, and I'm one of two women who touches code (aka, software engineer/developer). Out of the whole company of ~300 people, there are only ~50 women. Most of those are artists, designers, QA, production, audio, HR , or other higher ups in the company.
It's no secret that they're desperately trying to get more female engineers on board, but there's just a huge shortage of tech talent where I live, and a lot of women are driven off from game dev because of the reactions and treatment that are so typical of the environment. Even getting here, everything has been very male-dominated through my entire career; women in tech just aren't as common for countless reasons.
I'd love to see statistics for some of the really big companies, actually.
My personal experience going to a school in that field (now 20 years ago), back then, there were practically no girls there. Our school had 5 years, and in the first year, of 5 classes, only 2 had any girls at all. By the end, I think of the 2 classes finishing, there were only a handful girls in about 50-60 people. So I think it is still no wonder there are so few female engineers around.
I honestly don't know why so few girls choose a tech career. At least where I live, there is nothing preventing them from doing it. The only thing I could imagine is the "social norm" or peer pressure from their friends in middle school, to just choose a more social or non-tech school later on.
It's the sexism, honestly. I cannot tell you how many times I've been passed over, talked over, belittled, and mocked for being a woman in tech. I have a lot of support from half of the industry, but from the other... well. I've been told to make sure I stay behind the man because he should always be walking into a room first. I've been ignored by coworkers. I've been screamed at by my boss in a way he only ever did to women. I've been seated in a boss's office for him to leer at me whilst lecturing me over nothing because he wanted to stare.
That, and then the pay gap... It's unsurprising. There's so much sexism in the industry and there's even more for someone young trying to get into it - both with the social pressure, as you mentioned, to do something else, and the general rude bollocks of 'girls can't code'. I'm so proud of all the young female devs I see starting to get into tech.
Man that sucks. :(