Women Now 22% of Game Industry Workforce, Nearly Doubled Since 2009

Recent research suggests men still dominate the industry: 76% of respondents identified as male; 22% identified as female. The other 2% listed themselves as male-to-female transgender, male-to female transgender or “other.” Developers generally love working in games, however crunch time and long hours still exist.
Workers change jobs frequently, but most love their jobs and are in a career that is their passion - but crunch time and the desire to have more work/life balance still exists, according to a survey of more than 2,200 developers in the industry

[punkandlizard]

Good feature you're bringing to the gaming table.

[mikeslemonade]

sigh.. society and its double standards. If your a woman your chances of getting hired by a gaming company is probably a lot higher.

[Ogygian]

To be fair it probably helps the social life in studios, creating a better environment for all. No "the girl" situations and some female employees (the one's who don't care much for the attention) probably feel more comfortable.

Though I wish SJW's would stop complaining for a moment about raw figures and instead look at changes, because otherwise they only end up creating momentum which inevitably overshoots its original target of making things "fairer" ("faster, faster, equality, faster oops...overshot the target there...guess the shoe's on the other foot now...meh you deserve it as revenge!").

Every year we hear the same thing "sexism in X industry is a problem" which both assumes active discrimination is still a huge problem often with nothing more than anecdotal evidence for support and plays like a broken record. When a mechanic is fixing your car, you don't constantly yell at them that it needs fixing unless they stop working on it.

So I'd say this is good news for the working environment at games studios and also for the glimmer of hope that one day people will stop yapping on about social "justice" as they see evidence of it being worked toward.

I might add that a vast amount of Western Philosophy discusses what justice actually is and the circumstance of its implementation; the fact that so many take it as a given in modern society is mind-boggling (in some ways many people today have simply replaced Christianity with a new faith in "equality" for the sake of itself, and not only to the degree that it maximises utility).

[Agent2009]

I'm glad kitchens at my favourite developer's studios are filled with women, cause that's where they fit!

That's a horrible joke, but I thought someone will cheer up at this.

[RIPSKATEDESTROY]

I am also still waiting for Agent...

[neil363]

Very interesting article with some decent stats to look over. Nice one.

[nevin1]

I'm not clicking the link but does it mentions minorities?

[Gh05t]

Not in these statistics that I saw.

[Ogygian]

The problem with looking at minorities is that they often come from the same socioeconomic background, unlike women who are equally spread among rich and poor and in various regions of the country.

For example, if we assume that all game designers come from middle-income households, we would expect minorities to be under-represented naturally, given that they are often polarised at the poorer end of the spectrum (probably due in the USA to the institutionalised racism which prevented social mobility for all for much of the 20th century).

This under-representation will be fair for the time being, but in the future things will even out as socioeconomic osmosis takes place (where poor become richer and vice versa).
But my main point is that figures on women are more useful for zealots who want to create a culturally equal society and figures on minorities are useful for people who want to implement communism.

People who want a fair society would surely opt for statistics measuring hiring rates among applications with similar skill from people of varying gender or race to check whether genuine discrimination is taking place, and not just appearing to be due to misunderstanding of statistics on the part of the observer. My original point was just that SJW's seem to be focusing more on Cultural Marxism than Communism at the moment.

[KonsoruMasuta]

Good, now they have people who actually have some knowledge on how breast move. Maybe we can finally get some realistic jiggle physics.

This is progress, ladies and gentlemen.

[MNGamer-N]

Cooking, cleaning and doing the dishes for gamers everywhere. =)

[marloc_x]

I hope your woman catches that post..HaHa! Can you say, "dry spell"?

[rextraordinaire]

Hey! Finaly some positivity for a change! Cool! :D

[DVAcme]

Excellent news, we need more diversity and female representation and perspective in gaming :) The saddest part of all this is not so much that lack of females in the industry is not a problem with the industry itself, but with the tech industry as a whole. There's a stigma that the scientific and mathematical fields are not feminine, so women don't bother studying them, which is a damn shame. I'd love to see a superstar female game creator to the level of, say, Gail Simone in comics or Kathryn Bigelow in film.

[Ogygian]

Correction: *we need more diversity and female represenation so much as it improves the quality of games

This takes into account different perspectives and meritocratic hiring. Diversity is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. I'm sure this particular increase has largely been for the best.

[ShaunCameron]

That's because the tech industry doesn't pander to those who just simply can't hang, hence STEM courses being one of the few courses that didn't get dumbed down in the face of society's rabid obsession with trying to making everything equal for everyone.

[modesign]

dev studios will no longer be sausage fests

[ShaunCameron]

Yeah. Just like the present education system.

[stavrami-mk2]

More puntang in the workplace is a good thing

[Zero-One]

how?

[stavrami-mk2]

something to look at

[Scumdog]

That's good to see right there, i say get'em girls, & maybe when women start to hold greater positions of power and influence & in higher frequency - over the look, feel, & meaning behind these games we love in this industry we all fuel, we may end up discovering the missing spark, the very essence of what will restore our now mostly - stale, robotic & vampirically...? hollow videogames today.

[Whitefire]

Yes, only women can provide the missing spark from gaming (which isn't missing)! Clearly it's just been men the whole time ruining it for everyone, stop it men.

[Utalkin2me]

Maybe the increase in woman in gaming is the reason why we have "hollow" video games today. See that can go both ways.

[sonic989]

i dont care about who works but i care if i noticed something different with my games , then i might decide if its a good idea or a bad idea

[Scumdog]

@ Utalkin2me That's very true...however i strongly doubt it is the reason, i believe we all all know the problem but, "You can clean around the wound but if you want it to heal, it just takes time. And you can call up to the moon But if you want something to change, You gotta change your life, and take your time. It just takes time.... Future Islands - Balance

[hano]

Most of them are working as doll jobs as reception, community managers, marketers and producers.

Because actual software engineering, design and art takes real skills and effort to develop that most women don't want to invest.

Then they cry about their wages.

[ShaunCameron]

Let's not forget Human Resources. In other words, most women are just there so the company doesn't get accused of discrimination.