Introduction to the gender problematic in games and IT

17Mar09

 

This is the introduction to my dissertation, which discusses the academic context of the rest of my essay as well as establishing some key points in the gender problematic as pertaining to IT and games.

Both the computer and videogames appear to be contested sites, appropriated and dominated by men. Only 22% of computer science graduates in 2000 were women, women (as well as ethnic and religious minorities) associate negative affect with computer use to a greater degree than white males do and are more anxious when engaging with videogames. Finally, only 8-10% of the programmers and designers in the videogame industry are female. (Lemons & Parzinger 2007, p3; Jackson et al 2001, p366-367; Kafai et al 2008, pXX; Brown et al, p803-804; Kerr 2006, p92; Kerr 2003, p2-3; Krotoski 2004, p12-13)

While the computer is not perceived as gendered, computer mastery is culturally constructed as a male domain. Within educational institutions, the computer is associated with mathematics and science, thus acquiring “some of the traditional qualities of differentiated interest amongst boys and girls” (Giddens et al 1994, p218). Some argue that the computer is a “product of masculine intent and masculine desire”, a “logical machine” in “opposition to the emotion and intuition that’s most often associated with women in our culture” (an essentialist notion that will be discussed later) that is cast as masculine. The computer is thus established as masculine in the sense that it represents “the negation of the feminine”.  (Jenkins & Cassel 1998, p159-160; Giddens et al 1994, p224)

Notions of masculinity and femininity are defined and reinforced by the dominant gender regime of a given society. A gender regime is a “cluster of practices, ideological and material, which in a given social context, acts to construct various images of masculinity and femininity and thereby to consolidate forms of gender inequality” (Giddens et al 1994, p8). The related term gender schema is defined as “gender lenses that are embedded in the discourse and social practices of the culture”, which “predispose the individual to construct a self-identity that is consistent with these lenses”. I find the two terms to overlap, and will use gender regime as a general term to denote the dominant construction of masculinity and femininity within the societal discourse. (Lemons & Parzinger 2007, p2)

It is not just gender that is constructed according to dominant discourse, but also notions of rationality. Within feminism, there is an ongoing critique of rationality as an expression of the male dominance of Western intellectual culture. “Universalizing, instrumental reason” is a privileged expression of male attitudes towards the world, with the dichotomization of gender roles leading to the construction of femininity as irrational and the rational subject as male.

This concept is complimented by androcentrism, which casts the male perspective as opposed to “the other”, establishing the male perspective as the standard, while other perspectives are branded as “deviations from the standard, as well as an inferior departure”. Furthermore, meaning and significance is constructed in relation to the male perspective rather than their objective terms, “with women defined either in terms of their domestic duties, their reproductive functions, or their sexual prowess”. (Lemons & Parzinger 2007, p3) The general privileging of the male perspective will be referred to as androcentrism, while hegemonic notions of rationality and the proper processing and organization of information will be referred to as male reason.

Both notions of gender regimes and androcentrism are important in order to understand how computer technology and videogames are construed as male domains and masculine sites of mastery. The hacker culture of the 1980s, which gave rise to the first game developers, was predominantly male and espoused particularly masculine ideals. While women used computers as “tools”, the hackers treated the computer as “a medium for expression”; “an artist’s material whose internal aesthetic must be protected” (Lockheed 1985, p115-116; Kerr 2006, p13). Even now, women straying into the still predominantly male IT industry are treated to double standards:

“While a man’s success is usually attributed to skill, a woman’s success on the identical task is usually attributed to luck; conversely, men’s failure is attributed to bad luck while women’s failure is attributed to low ability” (Lemons & Parzinger 2007, p3)

The first videogames came out of a highly masculine culture, which it can be argued shaped the development of videogame genres and mechanic conventions through their fascination with “science-fiction, Tolkienesque-fantasy and pinball”. The computer games industry and the surrounding game culture remained highly masculine, a site showing a “consistent pattern of male technocratic privilege”. (Kerr 2006, p19, p13-14; Giddens et al 1994, p221; Kafai et al 2008, p22)

Developers often rely on so-called I-Methodology, whereby they essentially design products that appeal to themselves and the audience that share their taste. Since the number of women working in the industry is so low, “masculine fantasies” are allowed to dominate design discussions while female players are stereotyped and generally ignored unless they enjoy the established conventions of videogames. (Kerr 2006, p97; Green & Adam 2001, p243-245, p254-256; Kerr 2003 p15)

Kerr also cites several researchers arguing that many games privilege masculine subject positions, and that the themes, packaging and advertising of games also alienate both females and less macho males. (Kerr 2006, p111; Giddens et al 1994, p220; Kerr 2003 p15; Kerr 2006, p98-101) Turkle’s observations of children learning programming in school reveal tendencies towards what Turkle saw as gender-differentiated modes of mastery, which she called “hard” and “soft” mastery. Hard masters were “overwhelmingly” male, “imposing their will over the machine by implementing a structured, linear plan”, while females tended to be soft masters, relating to the “formal system of the computer as a language for communication rather than a set of rigid rules”.

The hard master “thinks in terms of global abstractions”, while the soft master “works on a problem by arranging and rearranging these symbols”. The former approach is privileged as “computer expertise”, while the latter is culturally constructed as inferior. While Wajcman criticizes Turkle’s hard/soft mastery dichotomy and her essentialist suggestion that these forms of mastery were cognitive style differences linked to sex, Turkle’s two categories overlap roughly with a concept from cognitive theory called field-dependence/independence. Field-dependence/independence describes a sliding scale between two different modes of conceptual organization and modelling pertaining to working memory and learning. (Giddens et al 1994, p221-222; Witkin 1977)

Studies suggest that there is a difference in how males and females approach games, with boys generally outperforming girls in tasks pertaining to videogames or tasks that are explicitly framed as games. (Brown et al; Green & Adam 2001, p110) Statistically, males are also more field-independent than women and there appears to be a relationship between the skills privileged in many male-oriented videogames and preferred field-independent learning styles and information organization. The traits associated with field-independence also correspond closely to androcentric notions of reason, while field-dependence appears to exhibit many of the traits commonly associated with femininity. Most importantly: Witkin does not suggest that cognitive style linked to sex, focusing instead on cultural factors such as gender regimes. (Witkin 1977)

This essay will explore the relationship between androcentric computer culture and videogames; gender and cognitive style; as well as the gendered subject positions that result from the thematic and structural conventions in games aimed at the core gaming audience. The essay will also discuss the subversion of traditional game design patterns as well as the design process of a gender-inclusive videogame incorporating these amended design patterns.

Filed under: Cognitive theory, Field-dependence/independence, Gender and IT, Gender-inclusive game design   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: Cognitive theory, feminism, Game design, sociology