gaming
There's this article on BBC about women being insufficiently involved in the gaming industry. It's got a comments section which won't let me actually post a comment, so I'm posting here what I tried to write there, because apparently I'm sufficiently annoyed by the whole thing to do so.
I find it interesting that this article focuses entirely on console games. My own experiences as a gamer began with Dungeons & Dragons as the only girl in the group at age 8, and even then I experienced none of the highly-flaunted discrimination against girls in gaming. Now in my thirties I still play RPGs when I get the chance and participate in the MMORPG City of Heroes, where no one is in the least surprised that there's a woman at the keyboard. Perhaps if the media would stop insisting women are marginalized in gaming people would stop thinking it--I doubt the gaming industry is failing women any more than the personal care industry is failing men. The truth is, I think we're pretty much all getting out of it what we want to.
That's a bit sweeping and generalized, but then, so was their article. I suspect I've got quite a lot more to say on the topic, and maybe I'll revisit it sometime soon here.
I find it interesting that this article focuses entirely on console games. My own experiences as a gamer began with Dungeons & Dragons as the only girl in the group at age 8, and even then I experienced none of the highly-flaunted discrimination against girls in gaming. Now in my thirties I still play RPGs when I get the chance and participate in the MMORPG City of Heroes, where no one is in the least surprised that there's a woman at the keyboard. Perhaps if the media would stop insisting women are marginalized in gaming people would stop thinking it--I doubt the gaming industry is failing women any more than the personal care industry is failing men. The truth is, I think we're pretty much all getting out of it what we want to.
That's a bit sweeping and generalized, but then, so was their article. I suspect I've got quite a lot more to say on the topic, and maybe I'll revisit it sometime soon here.