Sex-Ed and the Boy's Only Club

With the digital world taking over the real world, one has to wonder if women, and girls, are going to have a more prominent role in this "new" world than they have in the past. One way to find out if they have so far is to look at the representation of women in the "digital workforce" and what affect that may have on girls becoming more involved. I recently read an article on women working as video game designers. Video games have become very popular among both boys and girls. The article even states that females make up 40% of the gaming community. However, women only make up about 11% of the video game designers. I feel that this has a major affect on how women are portrayed within these video games. I work at a gambling arcade and I watc the different slot machines, which are just like video games only with money as points, and I see first-hand how this lack of women in the field affects the portrayal of women. Almost all of the women in games are dressed in risque clothing, with big breasts, tiny frames, almost Barbie-like. In fact, one of the games has a Barbie-like female remove clothing and bounces her breasts if you win. This type of sexual portrayal is in many different types of video games, as can be seen in games such as Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto. The most worrisome aspect of this is that young girls make up 40% of the video game players, and they are constantly exposed to this male and media inspired idea of how a woman should look to be considered "sexy". Just as in High School, boys have pictures of supermodels and swimsuit editions of Sports Illustrated magazines and girls try to force themselves to look like those almost impossible images. And with the lack of women in the field to prevent it from happening, will girls ever be safe from "pretty girl" propoganda? The article does shed some hope on this question. The end of the article talks about more girls being interested in App design and social network game design. If this happens, the door may open for more females to enter all types of game design. This may help girls enter the "boys only club" and change it from being misoginistic to female-friendly. The article can be found at http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-08-05/business/sc-biz-0806-women-gamers-20100805_1_international-game-developers-association-game-development-gaming-world