Women Who (Don't) Develop Video Games by Microsoft Windows XP

Segueing from XBox 360 yesterday, it is hardly a secret that although computing attracts a real percentage of women, gaming does considerably worse than software in general.

Here is just a sampling of statistics from around the world:

• Women involved in software in the UK:
• In 1997, women made up 27% of those working in the IT sector; by 2003 that figure had dropped to 20%
• Women make up less than a quarter of computer science graduates in the UK
• The very worthwhile BoxesAndArrows software design site has a nicely structured list of authors; by extracting the author names and adding a "tick" beside every woman's name, I counted 29 women out of 123 individual authors - that's 24%
• On the Top 100 Technorati listing for Sun Microsystems, only 3 (Claire, Laura and Liane) were recognisably women's names (although about 12% of blog titles didn't have the author's name)
• One statistic quotes that less than 10% of computer game developers are women
  

Well, some folks are trying to change all that.

The Women in Game Development SIG over at IGDA has a number of interesting articles, including some positive ideas and projects that I recommend you take a look at. But I'd like to quote you some comments that leapt out me from a round-table of men and women:

• [Female] (Company) has a lot of women. Just seeing women there was encouraging. My boss was a female, and I was on majority female teams. Had a completely different mindset. I think it's really important to have mentors.
• [Male] IMO, I hire whoever fits the job, but we can have someone come in with no skills to fill unskilled positions. There are so many eager young men who will work ridiculous hours in ridiculous conditions, that it's not that we don't hire women. We just have 8 eager young guys ready to take the position now.
• [Female] I was quite popular when I wanted to work 14 hours a day. As soon as I said [I] wanted to have a life, I was out.
• [Female] I have noticed that women work in the HR of many companies. How empathic are they aren't they? Why is there no interest in bringing more women into those companies?
• [Male] My wife is on a committee...they pinpointed there's a loss at the post graduate levels of education. There are equal numbers of women and men at undergraduate levels, but that falls off in the graduate levels. Also, there is a better gender mix among the CA's (GDC conference associates) than among the general attendees.
• [Female] We need to give women role models. Icons.

Then there are some folks from around the web who share their experiences:

• Fatima Janine Gaio writes about the potential for women in software in Brazil, noting that too many women there accept low-paid and low-skill jobs. Diversity/Careers highlights the success of eight selected women in careers in computing who are very representative of the kinds of success that women have had.
• James Robertson's post from a while back attracted some insightful comments.

So after that look around and a bit of mulling over my own experiences, here's my not-so-deep view on this:

• most sociable folks don't want to order a computer around all day - they want to talk to people (at least some of the time), however software does attract folks (for the most part male) who are perfectly happy to tune in, turn off and just code
• open-source software folks are usually quite a bit more social, but they are also somewhat driven by ego experiences; few women would seek approbation based on the number of code commits they achieve in a week
  
• it is always hard to be a member of a minority; the statistics above show that women in software are in a minority, so they have a different experience of work than men; every minority has a different "culture" and (almostly unavoidably) that culture is not valued by the majority
  
• there are plenty of jobs in software that don't involve coding all day long (managing, leading, QA, documentation, UI design), and women are much better represented there, sometimes up to 50%
• at BearingPoint where I work, my impression is that we have a relatively high percentage of women, a good number of whom are strongdevelopers or technical team leads; this suggests that either:
• consulting roles (which involve a higher level of customer interaction, and generally a higher ratio of people-savvy folks) are more interesting to women
  
• the solid number of women working as successfull business analysts may also attract women to the more purely technical roles in the company
  
• there's some evidence that women developers work well when they gather into teams; at least one project with a larger number of women developers (and specifically with a women acting as technical team lead) was more successful according to several criteria: a) technical specifications that the team produced were brief but significantly above average in terms of clarity and utility; b) the team delivered very close to schedule; c) quality was above average
• conversely, men seem to seek out projects that involve a lot of new technology and they will also invest their personal time to read or go to extra-curricular sessions to learn about it; these projects tend to be higher risk and have less well-defined design and implementation patterns, so this may in part explain the difference in relative performance
  
• some women look to networking as a way to make supportive contacts or to find a mentor; with fewer women, it can be hard to find someone with the right kind of experience
  
• men in software are often more willing to work longer hours and sacrifice their work/life balance; both single men and married men who often rely on their wife to be at home more of the time); it's not a deliberate form of competition but clearly someone who works 11 hours a day is likely to be more productive (or at least, to appear to be) than someone who does 7.5

Inevitably any attempt at analysis of a topic like this is both contentious and highly subjective; I hope I've remained as objective as humanly possible in the above "analysis". Taking this further in terms of subjectivity however, my personal bottom line is very simplistic:

• speaking very generally: men and women tend to bring different strengths to the table and the best team will have a mix of both genders, however teams need a mix of personal styles (whether you subscribe to Meyers/Briggs personality types or Belbin roles) so simply mixing by gender is not going to create a super-team of developers
  
• regardless though of personality types, on any significant software project I think it would actually be dangerous to let the percentage of women fall below 15% (I pulled that figure out of the air but it feels right); a project needs balance and perspective at the high-level and in the details, and on the business and the technology sides - and you rarely get the balance right with a totally homogenous team
• managers who crave work slaves who will do 14 hour work days should be educated that this does not equal productivity and it certainly does not help with maintaining perspective among the multiple goals of a project; eliminating this mistaken view will attract people who want or need a better work/life balance and many of them would be women
• again speaking very generally: if you want someone who will work extra hours to "break in" a new technology, a man might be better suited, not by virtue of skill or intelligence but simply by interest; if you want someone who will keep their heads while all else are losing theirs and maintain perspective - you better (also) be interviewing women

Gentle reader, I welcome your comments on this tricky subject (which I've seen through my own eyes but through the insights of my wife who is a principal engineer in a highly technical software company that also has a good percentage of very effective women developers).