Reality Panic

Hmmm, well, working in Japan in the video game industry I would say that while there are more women in the industry here it's still low. Where as it might be 1 in 15 in the U.S. it's like maybe 1 in 7 or 1 in 8 here. Still pretty much all men.

There are other issues as well. At least in Japan there are still sex role issues. Women are generally out by 30 whether it's because they choose to leave or are pushed. I'm sure it's a little of both.

And, although it seems like more women play video games in Japan than in America it's still a relatively small percentage of women. If you walk up to ten random young women and ask them if they play videos games I'd guess you'd only get 1 yes answer.

In fact, I believe the number of women playing has severely dropped in the last 3 years. I've heard several possible reasons. PS2 being the biggest market the PS2 is too manly looking. Looks like a stereo component. Whether or not that is really an influence I don't know. They did finally come out with a pink PS2 here and it sold out where as the other 3 colors they came out with didn't. No idea if they were female buyers.

Another issue I've heard of is net fees, especially net fees for cell phones are eating up all their disposable income. Young Japanese women now often spend $100 to $200 a month on cell phone fees. Sending a single photo from a cell phone costs $1 The average young Japanese woman sends 10 e-mails a day from her phone and those add up as well.

It's an interesting post/question. I imagine there's a thesis paper in here somewhere...

One observation is that "Asia" is a pretty big place to make generalizations about -- the acceptance / reality of female game developers probably is much different in Thailand or Hong Kong, for instance, than it is in Japan. But I wonder if differences attributable to cultural acceptance of women as game designers or programmers are as big as the differences within individual companies? There are some game companies in the US that defy the usual statistics.

The problem I have with the makeup analogy (aside from simply questioning the accuracy of its assumption that mostly women populate the cosmetics industry) is that it's not drawing comparison to an information/entertainment industry. There are few (if any) female-dominated media generes to compare to, of course. Perhaps a better analogy would be to.... romance novels. Those are mostly written by women if pen names are any indication (though no guarantees of that, either). Anyhow, if more men wrote romance novels would more men read them? How would their content differ? (The mind reels.)
Fortunately games have a wide possibility space. Industry reluctance aside, there is room for some games to stay exactly as they are now, and for others to diversify. Now let's figure out how to get economic reality to catch up with the creative possibility.