作者：Gina Jackson

3月8日是国际妇女节，这主要是为了庆祝女性在经济、政治和社会地位上所取得的成就。

其实还有一个国际男人节，那就是11月19日，这一传统始于1999年，主要是为了改进性别关系，强调男性对社会、家庭、婚姻和养育子女上的积极贡献。

那么这与游戏行业有何相干？

今年我们终于看到游戏用户中的女性占据半边天，但虽然有51%的人口是女性，47%的劳动力资源是女性，游戏行业中的女性从业者比例仍远远低于这些数据。

woman in video game industry(from linuxgamenews)

原因

没有足够的调查结果能够说明其中原因，但有不少轶事证据表明事实确实如此。

最近我们看到许多女性通过Twitter话题分享了她们在行业中看到的性别歧视现象。

我个人针对相对较小部分的样本调查也指出，缺乏培训和职业发展是女性工作者远离游戏行业的主因，但性别歧视毫无疑问也是一个因素。

因此，我很惊讶为何没有一家公司或贸易协会站出来，采取措施杜绝这种现象。

我真希望看到企业能够向员工保证，公司绝不姑息这种行为，会严肃对待此类现象，并且会为员工提供遭遇性别歧视时所应采取的对策。

也许有些公司确实在私下采取了相应措施，但我个人还是希望企业能够更加公开化地对待此事。

而我看到的唯一答复则是，游戏行业的性别歧视现象并没有比其他行业更甚。无论正确与否，这些女性所描述的经历都太让人难以接受了。

区别对待

对于那些打算雇佣更多女性的游戏公司而言，只有22%员工是通过广告找到工作，所以这些公司最好多向自己所处的圈子之外投放广告，这样才有望吸引到更多求职者。

据谷歌数据显示，女性只有在拥有雇主所要求的80-90%的技能之后才能得到新职位或获得提升，而男性却只要符合50%的技能即可。

虽然这并非绝对真理，但不可否认的是，女性在求职的时候，都必须清楚自己能够胜任该项工作。

女性求职者在自己的资料中通常也会使用非常不同的措辞，经常使用“我们”而不是“我”。不幸的，她们必须轻描淡写地表述个人成就，因为夸夸其谈在招聘过程中并不是很受欢迎的特点。

女性在行业人口中仅占比6%，在大会或媒体中出现的女性数量就更少了。如果你想列举一些励志的女性偶像，那真不是一件易事。这并不是说她们不存在，而是因为你真的很少在公开场合听闻她们的情况。

许多行业会议采用一种民主方式挑战演讲者，但这也还是要取决于演讲者“自夸”本领或产品/服务卖点。

虽然这乍一看像是一种将流程公开化的简单做法，但并没有给予女性足够的发声机会。

女性应该抓住一切能够利用的机会，我们也应该找到解决行业这一问题的方法。不论如何，行业会议都是一个分享和获取信息的绝佳途径。

好处

那么为何应该鼓励女性融入行业，并给予她们额外关照？我曾听过这样的说法，只要她们足够优秀就自然会获得成功。但必须承认的是，我们生活在一个父权社会，这并不是一种批判，而是一种事实。

商业领域是由男人打造的天下，其中的运行规则十分适用于男性。

相反，儿童保育院及幼儿园主要由女性经营，很显然这一行多以女性为主导，但并不合适男性。

所以，鼓励女性采取一些与其天性存在出入的工作方式，并确保人人都尊重这些行为差异，正是创造一个包容性、平衡性工作环境的重要步骤。

一个更能反映用户群特点的工作团队，可以引进不同的游戏开发方式，并输入不同的游戏体验。

这并不意味着女性只能为女性制作游戏，而男性只能制作男性游戏。而是要借此让我们制作出新游戏，想出新理念，让这个行业变得更强大更有弹性。

这对手机和平板电脑游戏来说尤为重要。这些游戏的准入门槛更低，并且拥有大批不当自己是游戏玩家的用户。

手机游戏让我们有机会探索和试验针对男女老少的全新游戏理念及题材，性别更为平衡的工作团队有助于强化这种创新性以及广泛吸引力。（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）

If half of all gamers are female, why do women only make up 6% of the games industry?

Women in Games’s Jackson on finding a balance

by Gina Jackson

Gina Jackson is the CEO of Women in Games Jobs, an organisation that works to recruit, retain and support the progression of women in the games industry.

Today is International Women’s Day, an event that started in the early 1900s as a celebration of women’s economic, political and social achievements.

And in case you’re wondering, there is an International Men’s Day on 19 November, created in 1999 to improve gender relations and highlight positive male role models aimed particularly at contributions to community, family, marriage and childcare.

So how does this fit with games?

Well, this year we have finally seen equality in the games audience with 50 percent of players now being women. But although 51 percent of the population is female, and 47 percent of the workforce, the games industry falls well short of these figures.

Just 6 percent of our industry is female – a shockingly low figure made even worse by the fact that numbers have fallen significantly since 2000, when women made up 16 percent of the workforce. So what has caused this almighty drop, and what can we do about it?

The why

There isn’t a huge amount of research showing the reasons why, but there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence.

We recently saw many women take to Twitter with the #1reasonwhy hashtag, for instance, bravely sharing their shocking accounts of sexism within the industry.

My own research with a relatively small sample that shows that the lack of training and career development have been the primary reasons why women have left games, but sexism also undoubtedly plays a part.

As such, I was shocked that I didn’t see a single company or trade association come out and take action based on what was revealed in #1reasonwhy.

I’d wanted to see companies assure their staff that this kind of behaviour won’t be tolerated, that they would take any complaint seriously and to advise their staff on what they should do should they experienced sexism.

Maybe this has happened privately, but I personally wanted to see more public action.

The only response I saw was the view that the games industry isn’t any more sexist than any other industry. Whether that’s true or not, the experiences many of these women described simply aren’t acceptable.

Splitting the differences

For those companies looking to employ more women, it’s worth noting that only 22 percent of all employees got their jobs through adverts, so advertising your roles at least gives those outside your usual circles a chance to apply.

And according to Google, women apply for new roles or promotions when they have 80-90 percent of the skills required, whereas men tend to apply with only 50 percent.

Although this isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, if a woman applies for a role, the chances are that she knows she can do the job.

Women will also use very different language in their profiles, often speaking about ‘we’ instead of ‘I’. Unfortunately, downplaying personal achievements as being boastful isn’t seen as a particularly attractive trait in the recruitment process.

Even though women make up just 6 percent of the industry we see even fewer women speaking at conferences or appearing in print. If you try and name inspirational women it’s not easy. It’s not that they don’t exist, it’s just that you rarely hear about them publicly.

Many conferences employ a democratic way of getting speakers with a call for talks; but again, this relies either on a boastful nature or a product/service to sell.

Although this may at first appear to be an easy way of making the process open to all it often doesn’t result in giving women the voice that I think we need to encourage.

Women need to take the opportunities made available to them and we need to find solutions that provide the best results for our industry. After all, conferences are a great way of sharing information and being inspired.

The benefits

So why should women be encouraged and treated differently? I have often heard that if they were good enough they would succeed. Well, we live in a patriarchal society; that’s not a criticism, it’s simply a fact.

The business environment has been created by men, and that obviously works really well for men.

Conversely, childcare and kindergartens are mainly run by women, and it’s clear that they work well for women, often to the detriment of men.

So, encouraging women to act differently than they may do naturally and making sure everyone appreciates the differences in behaviour is one important step towards creating a more inclusive and balanced workforce.

A workforce more reflective of our audience will enable games to be developed in different ways and have different input based on diverse experiences.

This doesn’t mean women can only make games for women and men for men of course, but should enable us to create new games, have new ideas and make an industry that is stronger and more resilient.

And this is particularly important for mobile and tablet games. These games have a low barrier of entry, and an audience made up of many who wouldn’t consider themselves as gamers.

Mobile games give all of us an opportunity to explore and experiment with radical new games ideas and genres for old and young, men and women alike. A more balanced workforce will only serve to further heighten this creativity and broad appeal.（source：pocketgamer）