Institutional and cultural problems lead to gender imbalance in industry

Women in games companies:The imbalance of women working in the games industry and participating and playing in games and gaming events was highlighted at the recent CGames06 conference at DIT's Aungier Street campus.

In one of the most intriguing sessions, academic Dr Aphra Kerr looked at the absence of women in many games companies "in Ireland, the US and UK" in addition to public gaming events and the social aspect of game play. This, she said, also pointed to significant broader concerns about the industry as well.

In a recent British skills census, 38 per cent of people involved in the audiovisual industry were woman with the highest figure in cable and satellite television; only 8 per cent work in games.

Of that 8 per cent, many work in marketing and public relations rather than on programming, art and design.

In the US, a ballpark figure suggested that only 10 per cent of women work in the games industry out of a direct workforce of 30,000 people.

So why the dearth of women gamers, programmers and designers? Dr Kerr, of NUI Maynooth, suggested that some of it had to do with work practices and management issues in the processing of developing games for console, PC and online multi-player where people are expected to work twice the average legal working week in Europe coming up to deadline or "crunchtime".

Dr Kerr acknowledged that this sort of working ethic is not unique to the games industry. The difference probably is that it is accepted industry practice. As a result, it is almost scheduled in and expected of the workforce, leaving employees little choice but to agree to it. This raises significant concerns on the work/family balance front, which may explain the absence of women, and indeed men, over a certain age who want to have a family life outside the industry.

The issue of marketing and advertising games was raised as a sort of institutionalised sexism that doesn't endear women to playing games or getting involved in the gaming community. A recent advertisement for a Nintendo platform had the tagline "for men only". The original Xbox's oversized controller was also highlighted as something that was clearly not designed with women in mind.

So what can be done to address the imbalance of women in the games industry and counter some of the institutionalised gender and cultural problems prevalent within it?

Speaking to The Irish Times, Dr Kerr said: "We need to think about the culture, structures and representations within the industry, the games they produce and the people who have to play with the games and what they think about gender as they play with these characters.

"For instance, Lara Croft is a great character to play but her representation is often not that appealing to most women.

"Changing these things will not be easy. It's not just about more women going into the industry or changing the representations of female characters, it's about changing attitudes and developing an awareness that people play and like games other than the core number of genres that are heavily advertised and indulge in male heterosexual fantasies.

"It's also about addressing it at the educational level. You need to look at it at different levels, the structural and macro level. Education, the industry, marketing and PR will play a key role. Ultimately we need to be designing more for diversity."