Uh, I'm a little weirded out here.

Okay, now -- you make a point that discrimination against women, particularly in the gaming industry, is bad. Good, I agree. Yet you manage to make it sound like women mostly bring strange, badly defined qualities like "organizing parties" and "less likely to work overtime" -- that these things are the primary reason women should be included.

Frankly, it comes off like the junior edition of "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus". If anything, you seem to make a case for women and men being fundamentally different in ways that go far beyond that little Y chromosome -- it's just that unlike that disgusting little turd of a fraud John Gray, you're not an asshole about it, ie. you don't claim that men are active and women are passive. That's good, of course, but you still manage to make it sound like there's this vast, uncrossable chasm between the sexes and that the traits you assign to men and women are set in stone and cannot be changed -- certainly not on a general level, even if some individual cases differ.

Is this really what you're trying to say? I'd hope not, but that's how it reads. To me, anyway.

OK. I think you misunderstood me. Let's see. I think what I am trying to say is that all humans are individuals. By having an industry which pretty much only uses half of the world's potential seems wasteful to me. Granted I could have written in a more serius tone, and could have been less general on female characteristics, but this was hardly meant to be scientific study on the matter.

I reckon I have to read what I've written again and edit it if it comes across that way. Perhaps it would be worthwhile for me to write something on some of the female games people I've worked with, to give you an idea why I wouldn't mind more of them joinging the industry.

Only ulterior motive I've had is that I'd like to see the number of women CVs on my inbox to increase.

MENTAL NOTE: Must not write about important things when tired. You will be misunderstood.

Frankly, I'm with Mikki here. I am not an artist or a designer, but if I were, I would *not* send my CV to someone who says "Hey, you woman! Send a CV to us, we need more females!" (instead of saying "Hey, you artist! Send a CV, we need more artists!").

And really, the idea that the presence of women will lead to gentler working conditions and more agreeable, soft behaviour in conflict situations is just another way of advocating the idea that women inherently are / should be gentle and soft-spoken, and more interested in everyone's well-being than getting actual results.

(Not that those would necessarily be bad things in anyone's personality. But if you want things gentle, soft-spoken and healthy, please start the change from yourself and who you already have hired, and not try to push the responsibility about those things to me. :))

Sigh.

Never thought anyone would read it that way, though I understand what you are getting at. I've always hired people based on their ability, nothing else, rest assured on that.

But enough of this. Blogsville is full of bitter fighting over such issues, and I don't think it is achieving anything. My industry is full of managers who don't want to hire any people because they are women. If I actually bother to read CVs regardless of the gender of the person who sent it, and that makes me the bad guy, so be it. I can live with that.

Apologies to readers who were offended, put it down to me expressing myself badly late at night after a meeting with a chauvanistic manager.

"Perhaps it would be worthwhile for me to write something on some of the female games people I've worked with, to give you an idea why I wouldn't mind more of them joinging the industry."

Well, the above more or less convinces me that I did not misunderstand you. See, right now, regardless of your motives, you're not talking about trying to create a more equal and less prejudiced industry (though I obviously know you well enough to be certain that you would never be opposed to that) or giving women more opportunities to work in an industry stuffed to the gills with men. In fact, you're doing the exact opposite -- giving women certain traits and qualities that I don't think are accurate or fair. Instead of concentrating on their ability to do the job, you're talking about specific (and imaginary, if you ask me) female traits that improve the atmosphere. I realize that you have not suggested (and would not suggest) that these women aren't capable of doing their jobs, but it seems fairly obvious that the primary reason why the games industry needs more women has everything to do with these transformative qualities you ascribe to women.

I find that a fairly sexist attitude, to be honest. I don't think the process is really any different from what the aforementioned "doctor" Gray is doing -- it's just that the qualities you are using aren't offensive the way the ones he likes to use are. (Also, you aren't an asshole the way he is, which is an obvious bonus.)

Anyway -- okay, so you're not opposed to more women joining the industry, and that's cool. No one should be, for obvious reasons. But why does that even need to be said? Why do you need to qualify that with explanations? It seems to me -- again, I may be wrong -- that you're operating from the base assumption that you need to justify or explain this opinion. Or, to put it more bluntly, instead of eschewing the chauvinistic mindset many people in the industry unfortunately cling to, you're doing more or less the same thing -- while you aren't opposed to women joining the industry or doubting their capabilities to do the job, you're still espousing an attitude that women are inherently different from men and are better or worse at some things. Like organizing parties, or working overtime.

Gah. I don't mean to provoke a serious argument here or anything, but I think this is a fairly important point to make. Particularly if you really aren't aware of what kind of an attitude you're getting across here.

Dragon - I do think women and men are different. For example, I used to have a determined belief that men can be 'changed' by a woman in a relationship. A lot of women have this belief and that's why I think many of them (us) get into relationships with men who are perhaps a bit on the rougher side - in hope to be able to tame them etc. Lots of teenage girls fall for that 'dangerous guy'. I'm not saying a man cannot be convinced to do things differently - but there are many women out there who are falling for the guy who's on the wild side and not even realizing why they fall for those types -- (because they want to tame them).

Now that I am married to a wonderful man (whom I adore and love) and have to find that balance between the sexes it is really interesting to see how different and yet the same two people can think about things. Communication is definitely a way to close that gap that sometimes appears.

Men are men and women and women. I now believe both sexes have strengths and weaknesses, some of which are shared by the other sex -- but some things are different.
And I do believe some of those differences can be utilized - for example at a workplace.
I know this is a touchy subject and lots of women don't like to be reminded that we are different from men - but I know that women can use their own strength, and many many times find ways to gain strength over men... so it's not always a bad thing!

P.S. I don't think Western women nowadays have much to complain about - just read about life of women during the Medieval times... those were strong women.

OK Mikki, you are right about me being too general on gender qualities (mainly for the sake of argument). Instead I should have talked about the individuals who I have worked with having certain qualities. Also, referring to past experience with teams of different make-ups of people might have been enlightening. In my work, several individuals have contributed towards the end result in massively positive way. These people happened to be female.

As what promted me to write this? A Staff meeting where things were said based on gender by people who should know better. After having the argument with a person over this, I just thought 'If we've had a woman in that room he would not have had the guts to say all that'. Yes, I argued the point but I personally but I felt I never should have needed to have the argument at all.

Perhaps years in the industry with a problem in this area and living in a society that is anything but equal have worn me down, and maybe even warped my own view as well. This is why saying I am not opposed to women joining the industry is important to me -it is not the rule.

fire.biol.wwu.edu/trent/trent/Ychromosome.NYT.pdf

Dragon,

for what it's worth, I am not offended. I just disagree.

You say you have positive experiences about female coworkers in the industry. Think of this: what qualities does a person have to have to enter an industry that is not welcoming to his/her gender? Could it be that these qualities, instead of the gender itself, is behind the positive mentality you have observed? That the women that currently are in your industry are a selected subpopulation, not random sample? That males selected similarly would show the same qualities?

As an example of a same kind of a phenomenon, in my experience male nurses are often *excellent* nurses: brisk, outspoken, calm under stress. I *don't*, however, think this is because males in general are like that, or that getting more males to become nurses would increase the prevalence of these qualities in the health-care population. I think it's because a man needs quite a lot of self-assurance to decide to become a nurse in the first place, and gains more defending his choice of occupation later.

So I agree with Mikki still. I feel that trying to make females somehow "better" than males, or feeling the need to *explain* by secondary qualities why an industry should be equally friendly to both sexes, is just discrimination disguised as worship. I'd rather have the straighforward macho-bastardly version of discrimination; it's easier to argue against without feeling guilty when bashing perfectly well-meaning persons. :)

Janka,

Fair enough. As I said earlier, Mikki had a good point. Each of my workers is indeed an individual, be it men or women, and their qualities in my experience are not exclusive of either gender in general. (Again, I think this is a discussion I'd rather have face to face, log entries like this would have to be written with far more time in my hands). I could have gone on about good qualities of the male members of my team equally well -It is quite upsetting to me if anyone thought I valued anyone on my team over others on anything else except merit. True, I've made that mistake from time to time, but so has probably every manger throughout the human history.

I am going to be a little bit arrogant here, and say that without being in this industry full-time, it is difficult to judge my reactions with aboslute accuracy. Sometimes situations like I described in comments above really bring me down and the 'old boys' network frustrates me -I probably wrote this more as thinking process how would I spin this to high-up managers with whom I have to justify each one of my hires, and it always seems to be harder with women. And no argument like yours is going to cut it, even if it should. I do love my work, and would prefer to have access to as many good people as possible.

Still, my original point stands. I'd like the gender-balance of my industry to be more even. And on this one even you cannot argue me down Janka, as it is purely subjective view. :)

Oh, I would definitely want to see the gender balance of the game industry to be more even, too. There's no question on that. Just I want it to be more even because it being more even would tell it was more open-minded, not because it would be in any way better then. :)

I think it was in the movie Little Women where someone said that "arguing that women should be allowed to vote because they are good is faulty logic; men don't vote because they are good, but because they are human beings", or something like that. It's the same idea in play here.

And I did not mean to imply that you value your co-workers more or less because of their sex, and I'm sorry if I gave that impression. What you seem to do is to go into the opposite direction - valuing their sex in general more because of the qualities of the individuals in the sample.

I should probably have taken this to my own log, instead of writing long rants here. :)

I am all for being more than my gender but I have to say, my experience is that working atmosphere is different when there are 10 men and a woman and when there are 8 men and 3 women. Then again, the most dreadful working experience I've personally had was when it was more like 10 girls and a guy. Now, it seems to me that this is not due to the qualities of the women so much as to the men acting differently when there are at least some women around (one freaky woman doesn't seem to necessarily qualify). No I don't think that all-male environment is necessarily "macho asshole" (like all-female is not necessarily "bitchy asshole") but I have found that heterosocial communities work for me. I think that it's possible to discuss the differencies between men and women for example in a certain group (rather than "all men/women") without falling into gender essentialism. Don't feel bad, Dragon, I still like you ;)