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强调女性地位并非解决行业性别比例失衡的良策

发布时间:2012-03-08 14:58:21 Tags:,,

作者:Leigh Alexander

Game Developer Magazine发布的过去10年的数据显示,行业中女性的薪水是男性的80%到90%,情况与数学和科学等其他领域相似。尽管所做的工作相同,但女性的薪水比男性要低,而且所取得的成就也不及男性。

Mare Sheppard-right(from indiegames.com)

Mare Sheppard-right(from indiegames.com)

来自Metanet的Mare Sheppard表示:“这就是人们所说的性别歧视。随着我们逐渐长大并意识到性别职责,就会渐渐产生一种想法,某些领域的工作并不适合某些类型的人,人们往往会根据身体特征而非天赋才能下此结论。”

造成这种情况的另一大原因是刻板印象,这是自动产生、具有误导性,并且根深蒂固的想法。她说道:“在我们的文化中,刻板印象导致我们认为女性与男性是不同的。这种不适合或不属于的感觉使得许多女性远离游戏开发及其他类似领域。”

Sheppard说道,其他人与女性同事进行眼神交流,或与她握手的可能性要小于男性同事,尤其在团队中只有一名女性的时候。在交谈中,人们会更频繁地打断她的发言,更频繁地质疑她的程序员身份。“这种情况本不应当发生,但却是事实。”

“其他人曾经告诉我,是我多虑了,我带有偏见而且只是在寻找支持自己偏见的证据。”尽管这确实算是种性别歧视,但它已经如此根深蒂固,使得这种冒犯往往是无意的,因而很多人并没有为此道歉。

她说道:“社会已经在许多方面表现出对我们的偏见,尽管我们很容易看到其他人的偏见行为,却很难意识到自己的不当做法。”

刻板也影响了女性对其他同类的看法,女性往往会抱怨称,她们放弃游戏展会的原因是“没有其他女性参与”,即便Sheppard指出该展会确实有女性参与,她所得到的也是像“那些女性可能是其他人的女朋友”这样的回应。就连女性都会轻视自己的同类。

Sheppard说道:“我努力寻找并改变自己的偏见。”去年,她决定展开行动。当Hand Eye Society的Jim Munroe提议成立针对女性的组织并邀请她参与时,她最初否决了这种想法,她对这种特殊组织成立过程中可能面临的障碍感到害怕。

但是Munroe不断鼓励她,让她看到组织能够解决游戏开发行业中女性偏见的可能性。

Sheppard想知道要发展到何种程度才能真正庆祝行业的“女性化”,而不是单个女性在行业内所取得的成就。她说道:“我们需要将关注点放在游戏上。”

Sheppard害怕如果女性游戏孵化器的想法吸引了大量的媒体关注,其他独立开发者会仇视参与者,因为他们需要更加努力的工作才能够获得同样的媒体关注度。如果这项计划的目标只是将参与者带领到行业中,那么这就有违高产优产的基本工作原则。

Sheppard补充道:“女性权益计划只会吸引那些特别看重自己女性角色的人,对这些人来说,性别可能是个性、生活和认知的重要组成部分。这意味着该计划事实上并无法对所有女性开放,因为某些女性并不是很看重自己的性别身份,她们能够适应在性别差异较大的团队中工作。”

“性别歧视和多样性不足的问题一直在我脑海中,我也意识到如果要等待最佳时机的话,最后可能只能一直等下去。最终,我决定了,如果我反对只有女性的组织也无关紧要,因为这完全不是适合我的东西。”她意识到,只有能够对所有人产生吸引力的想法才是有价值的。于是,她与Munroe配合组建首个孵化项目,并担任顾问。

Difference Engine Initiative(简称DEI)计划的意图是为有兴趣从事游戏开发的女性提供意见和答疑,将她们训练成新的游戏开发者,并使她们融入开发社区。从总体上看,结果还是令人满意的:有12名女性在这种支持性环境下学会了制作自己的首款游戏。

但是最终,Sheppard表示她认识到DEI这样的计划并不足以解决游戏行业中的系统性偏见。

Sheppard说道:“游戏倡议计划中的这些女性让我们更接近于性别分层,我们将开发者群体分成游戏开发者和‘女性游戏开发者’,这使得两性开发者分离开来,更强调了女性开发者的不同,排斥一个性别,同时让另一个性别享受特权。”

她说道:“在这个计划中,她惊讶地看到许多人差别对待男性,而且低估了他们的潜在贡献,她们只愿意接受来自其他女性的帮助和支持。”她看到某些参与者觉得男性不应当参与计划,即便他是个男女平等主义者。

还有些人似乎并不理解倡议计划的目标。她说道:“DEI的目标是成为创造性空间,人们可以挑战自我,提升他们的能力,在温暖和充满激励性的环境中学习。”

“但是相反,很多人将其视为与行业不同的独立组织,认为在这里建立关系比学习更加重要。”

经历过歧视的人往往会凭自己的情绪去做出判断,即便许多错误想法是源于自身的刻板印象和偏见。

Sheppard说道:“妇性组织不应当拒绝男性的帮助,完全不应当存在性别化组织,这是至关重要的。”她认为,出现不平等的情况会让组织的目标渐行渐远。在这样的情况下,个人仍然会根据自己对他人的理解偏见而形成刻板印象,这可能导致长期的消极结果。

她说道:“它并没有解决男女性不平等的问题,我们需要将文化改变得更具包容性而不是排外性。如果我们想要实现多样化,那么我们就需要有种恰当的性别多样化方法。”

如果游戏行业能够更具多样化,我们就可以看到更多的游戏甚至更具创造性的产品。多样化可以衍生出新想法,产生更多的原创性,产生更多新想法。

那么,要如何实现多样化呢?并不只是简单地吸收更多女性,实现整个游戏行业多样化是个复杂的问题,还需要进行更多的对话和探讨。但是依Shepard的观点来看,强调劣势、性别或其他另类特征会让人们感觉良好,但却不是种解决问题的有效方法。

她说道:“我们并非处在男女双方对立的战争中。我们有着共同的目标。低估另一半人类群体的价值、贡献和实力是不公平的做法。如果双方能够有更好的理解,情况或许会有所改善。”(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

GDC 2012: Sheppard on the problem with ‘women in games’ initiatives

Leigh Alexander

The last ten years of statistics published by Game Developer Magazine show that women in the industry earn about 80 to 90 percent of what men do, a similar gap as seen in other fields like math and science. Women are likely being paid less than men for the same work, and aren’t reaching the same levels of success.

“When people talk about the gender gap, this is what they mean,” says Metanet’s Mare Sheppard. “As we grow and become aware of gender roles, the idea emerges that certain areas of interests are not open to certain types of people, based on physical characteristics and without regard for aptitude.”

Another reason for the underrepresentation is pervasive stereotypes, which are automatic, misleading and often ingrained. Stereotyping “underscores the feeling echoed throughout our culture that women are abnormal, unusual and different,” she says. “This feeling that they don’t fit or don’t belong keeps many women from entering game development and similar fields.”

Sheppard says people are less likely to make eye contact with her or to shake her hand than they would be to engage with her male colleagues, especially in groups of people where she’s the only woman. People interrupt her more frequently in conversations and express doubt that she’s a programmer. “This certainly doesn’t happen at all times or with all people, but it happens a lot.”

“I’ve been told I’m overthinking it, I’m making it up, I’m biased and I’m just looking to support… my bias, [that people] are ‘just socially awkward.’” And while it’s true sexism is so ingrained it often is unintentional or unconscious, that doesn’t excuse it. Even people who feel that discussions of inequality problems and innate bias don’t apply to them succumb to behaving based on stereotypes.

“Socialization has biased us all in some way, and while it’s easy for us to see each other’s biases, we’re reluctant to see them in ourselves,” she says.

Stereotypes affect how women perceive other women as well; women frequently complain that they abandon game events because “there are no women” there, and even when Sheppard points out that there were women in attendance, she gets a response like “well, that was somebody’s girlfriend.” Even women can be reductive of and dismissive of one another.

“I make an effort to be aware of and try to correct for my own bias,” says Sheppard. Last year she decided it was time to take action. When the Hand Eye Society’s Jim Munroe proposed a group for women and asked for her involvement, she initially declined, hesitant to contribute to further segregations and barriers through the formation of a perceived special interest group.

But Munroe encouraged her to see the possible initiative as an opportunity for outreach and to address the very real prejudices from both sides that keep women out of game development.

Some of Sheppard’s reservations came from wondering “to what degree would we be celebrating ‘womanhood’, instead of each woman’s achievements? …The focus really needs to be on the games,” she says.

And given that the idea of a women-focused games incubator generally draws so much media attention and celebration, Sheppard feared that the participants would be resented by other independent developers, who have had to work extremely hard to receive press attention and the same degree of celebration. If the goal of the program is to integrate the participants into the industry, this might actually be counter-productive.

And a women’s interest program “would attract women who identified strongly with a women-only focus and for whom gender was a very important part of their personalities, lives and identities,” Sheppard adds. “That means it truly wouldn’t be open to all women, since some women such as myself prefer to place less emphasis on gender and work within diverse groups.”

“The issues of sexism and lack of diversity had been on my mind for a while, and I realized that sometimes waiting for the perfect possibility leaves you waiting forever… ultimately I decided that it didn’t matter if I was opposed to a women-only group because it wasn’t about me at all.” If the idea appealed to anyone, she realized, then it would be worth it. So she signed on, co-led the first incubation session with Munroe, and was a mentor in the second.

The intention of the resulting program, the Difference Engine Initiative, was to de-mystify game development for interested women by giving them mentorship and training to incubate the ideas of new game makers and integrate them into the community. And overall, the result had some positive gains: 12 women learned to make their first game in a supportive environment.

But ultimately, Sheppard said she learned initiatives like the DEIs don’t do an adequate job of addressing or actually treating the systemic biases that have made the game industry’s culture less diverse and less healthy.

“These women in games initiatives push us closer to a gender-stratified industry, where we have game developers and ‘female game developers’… these designations separate us, emphasize our differences and marginalize one gender while privileging the other,” Sheppard says.

In the program she was disappointed to see many expressed a “discriminatory attitude towards men and a de-valuing of their potential contributions.. help and support was only acceptable when it came from other women,” she said. She saw some participants who felt that “a man should never be in an authoritative position in these sorts of initiatives, regardless of whether he’s a feminist.”

Others didn’t seem to understand the purpose of the initiative: “The DEI was designed as a creative space where people could challenge themselves, develop their abilities and learn alongside one another in a warm, encouraging environment,” Sheppard says.

“But instead, it was viewed as a support group underscored and necessitated by the reaction to an unequal social world, and where learning was secondary to the formation of bonds and relationships.”

People who have experienced injustice often have a tendency to identify themselves strongly by their anger, by a reaction to their injury, and by absolute rejection of a perceived perpetrator – even if many of those perceptions have to do with their own stereotyping and endemic biases.

“It’s vital to grow beyond simply rejecting men and instead to reject the constructs of gender entirely,” says Sheppard. She believes that in some cases, aims to target discrimination and inequality by favoring marginalized people can actually further it. In such cases, individuals are still allowing stereotypes to form the basis of their understanding of people, possibly to lasting negative consequences.

The real crux of why Sheppard disfavors women in games initiatives is that they address the symptoms of inequality in our culture without examining the cause. “We’re creating pressure release valves, band-aids, because it’s easier,” she asserts.

Such initiatives are exclusive by their nature, and they encourage segregation, and in Sheppard’s view form the wrong strategy in a fluid world where inclusion is the ultimate goal and constructs of gender need to be irrelevant, not emphasized.

“It doesn’t solve the problem that some people are not valued as highly as others,” she says. “We really need to change the culture that we live in an inclusive way rather than in an exclusive one. If we want to attract diversity, we need to take a diverse approach.”

If the games industry were more diverse, we’d see even larger games and even more creative products; diversity creates new ideas, furthers agility and originality, and creates opportunities for new ways of thinking, thoughts on which she elaborates in this Gamasutra blog post.

How to create more diversity on all fronts – not just including more women, but in terms of addressing the game industry’s widespread homogeny as a whole – is a complex problem, and the dialogue must continue to evolve. But in Shepard’s view, emphasizing disadvantages, gender or any other traits may make people feel good, but is not a healthy or helpful way to address the issue.

“We are not in a battle with men on one side and women on the other,” she says. “We are all in this together, and we share common goals. To discount the value and contributions and possibilities of half the human race is unfair. It would help if we understood one another better.” (Source: Gamasutra)


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