On Feminism
There is a huge problem with Women in technology, and there is a huge problem with how women are viewed as a social construct. “As featured in a thirty-year-old children’s book titled I’m Glad I’m a Boy! I’m Glad I’m a Girl!, the gender distinction “boys invent things and girls use things that boys invent” remains uncomfortably true today.” We wanted to break that narrative, not because of moral reasons but because “Computing salaries are high, jobs plentiful, and entrepreneurship opportunities unbounded.” It is estimated that “900,000 jobs are unfilled,” in the technology field. 1.)
We see women being employed in careers as a major issue in society. And with more and more jobs moving into the tech sphere, we need to be sure that the gender gap in technology lowers. And as people involved in the media industry we thought it would be great to identify members of the community that we could invest in for future projects.
When we dealt with women groups in the technology space. Very few to none of the groups we dealt with covered creating technology products from an entrepreneurship angle. Many groups focused exclusively on education, often charging a premium for their service, when more detailed information was made for free online. Many were not accredited but charged similar fees, we consider this predatory.
Many focused on awareness, this is a troubling issue as it is not always as effective as would appear. “Awareness campaigns often propagate a descriptive norm that violence behavior is prevalent in the community, perhaps licensing violent behavior rather than activating behavior to reduce Gender Based Violence” 2.) This point is very important to make in current the debate that is currently going on in GamerGate. We feel that gender-based violence awareness is the easiest subject to focus on from a fundraising perspective, but does not always accomplish long term goals of ending gender segregation.
We also found that no group wanted to focus on revenue generation outside of donations. We feel this is really important to break the gender divide. If women are to form companies or to be seen an asset in the creation of projects they have to be able to generate income through their work. We understand the dangers of capitalism, but we are unable to advocate bloody revolution to cause a socialist revolution. Especially as video games are a luxury.
Our focus was simply on this, raise money so any women could start a career in a media space. We chose video games because crowding funding was well established, and that women were underrepresented. We choose to give them a team so that we could make sure their project was made, and lower the entry skill cap. If the person was able to make the game on their own they should have used existing services that are free and already exists (And thus would not require money be given to charity)
We did not want to fund existing developers as there are already multiple groups in Canada that have similar objectives. Including but not limited to the Canadian Media Fund which gives over $500,000 to media project, or the OMDC which has a stream directly for interactive media. We wanted to focus on people that wouldn’t have the opportunity to make a game under normal circumstance and give them the support regardless of age or experience. This was to inspire women to get into the field but also served a greater purpose.
We wanted focus on showing that women were welcomed in the gaming community. We felt that one of the largest issues was imposter syndrome. That women as a whole didn’t feel like they were welcome in the community or that they were developers. This has come up time and time again. By focusing on a game that was to be created and allowing the community to pick it, support it and make mods for the game, it would show the world that women were welcome in the gaming community. As a way of subverting the gamer stereotype that is presented so unfairly.
We felt this would work and we did research and we found that the majority of funding for the project would come from men not women, as they were the majority of the hardcore gamers and the most willing to take risks. /v/ the board on 4chan where the majority of our donation came from, which eventually moved to 8chan, is one of the largest communal board for discussing video games. We consider their approval of the project, an excellent step in reducing the gender gap in video games.
You have to understand that there are two genders involved with the gender divide in technology. Women that don’t feel welcome, and Men who feel like they are being blamed for all the problem in the industry. Women need a way of entering the industry, Men need a way of supporting them, which isn’t shut up and not engage beside being a source of revenue. As you aggressive attack men, or gamers, you create animosity in the group, which is released as threat through the extreme member of the group against visible member of the female community. The continual escalation against GamerGate makes this problem worst not better as they do have a valid concern that are being ignored. By ignoring that problem and focusing only on the harassment, you escalate the problem and are using the same strategies that have been used to silence minority views for so long.
We are ecstatic that we got to walk into what was at one point was referred to as the Church of Misogyny, and have them quote feminist authors, ask for video on feminist developers and give money to support a woman that they have never seen. That is the issue we wanted the project carry, that women are welcome even among the most gaming-centric communities.
We are extremely concerned with this concept that painting online communities as hate groups helps. Destroying 4chan or 8chan or any of the online communities will not end the hatred or solve the gender divide any more than making people aware of the problem. Destroying Gamergate will not end the hatred. Pushing more female developers into the industry, and working with the community to support their games will, which is which what we attempted to do.
The gender divide is not a neverending conflict, it is one both genders can solve together for the benefit of both parties.
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Margolis, Jane, and Allan Fisher. “Women out of the Loop.” Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2002. 2. Print.
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Elizabeth Levy Paluck and Laurie Ball. Social norms marketing aimed at gender based violence: A literature review and critical assessment: Conducted for the International Rescue Committee May 2010
