Yeah, I remember out of my graduating class for Computer Science at uni, there were 4 women and 100+ men.

In the United States, there is a serious lack of Asian-Americans in politics. Is this because the environment is inherently biased or unfair? That Asian-America communities are simply "unwelcome" in politics? While I can not speak for every case, evidence suggests the real issue is that there are not enough Asian-Americans putting themselves on the voting ballots.

One should not expect to be voted into office if they never get their name on the ballot. One can not expect to find work and footing in any industry if they never fill out and submit their resumes.

The ratio was way lower for me. This is why Kim Swift's blog post was so smart. Women in this industry should become more visible; show that this is a viable career path.

Surprise, surprise, tech industry suffers yet exact same problem. I would point out the hostile culture they both have and seems like want to sustain because dude, bashing iFanboys/Androidnerds is just do much fun and the drama is worse than any reality-tv can offer for far more pettier things.
No, seriously, while it's wrong to call that as sexism, I find it odd, why people keep wondering why there is so few women in both industries. People who want a nice place to work won't look the technology related industries simply because of the attitude the resonate via industry professionals, journalists and the end-customers.

There isn't really going to be one single cause of a lack of women in the industry. It's probably a combination of a number of things. Do women not get into technology because they feel like its a hostile environment or has it become a hostile environment because there are no women in it? I feel like even at Secondary School (Middle School, for Americans) there weren't many girls getting into IT or Computing, at least not the more technical stuff like programming. At Uni there must have been a less than 5% ratio of girls in my Computer Science class.

If we want to get more girls into this stuff in general I think it needs to come from encouragement at a younger age. Though I feel their might just be something different between men and women that makes it naturally less appealing. Whether that something is part of the social structure of schools or an actual biological difference, I don't know.

I find truth in her argument. Although some studies have shown some differences between women and men salaries in the industry, I do think that the problem would be less if there were more women in aspiring to work at games. I have a small videogame company, and finding women to work with us has always been a challenge.

Damn it chicken, would you stop arguing with that egg about who came first!

I once saw a very clear reason for women to not work in IT:

The work is harder than most want to bear.

You think I am kidding?

Well, once I worked in a office with 40+ programmers, 5 were female (yay!) and the company was very pro-female (for example the CEO would every week have a private meeting with ALL women of the company and ask their concerns and whatnot).

One client (not big, a huge-pharma) liked a project that the company was making for iPhone, only that iPhones were against their company policy, their workers had to use Blackberry.

In mid-project thus, stuff changed for Blackberry, pressure quickly built up, people started to cram very long hours to meet deadlines, and milestones were shown frequently to the client, meaning that any bug slipped it would also see, the client was so interested in the project, that sometimes it asked for programmers to be shipped from the company to meet with the president (yes, ever thought as coder you might be shipped to see the president of a huge-pharma?) so he could talk personally with them about the project.

Result: a resounding success, good case story, and lots of rewards to everyone (including the client that had a sudden 20% profit increase in one of its departments).

well, almost everyone.

the women involved in the project just could not handle the pressure midway, and quit. The CEO really liked them, because they were geniuses and good team-players, but even offering lots of stuff to them did not worked, they said that they were in the wrong career, and quit.

I tracked them on LinkedIn, they really changed careers, went away from IT, although seemly one could not resist and now is working in a bank (but in a much easier to work department, probably for less pay).

I don't care who codes my games so long as i can save anywhere and there are no random encounters.

I would really like to read "more" comments from women.
Otherwise this feels like men discussing whether trans-vaginal ultrasound are a good idea...

Maybe the ratio is lower in the states, but when I graduated from CS, in Spain, the ratio was approximately 60% men:40% women, or maybe 70:30. At my former job, almost half of the office staff (I'm talking about 100+ people) were women. And certainly some of the most hard-working, talented and competent programmers I've worked with, were women. To me, hiring a man before a woman when both have the same CV and experience, is sexist.

Of course, discrediting those confessing their experiences on #1ReasonWhy and say they're wrong, sounds to me like an EA PR maneuver, excusing themselves for not hiring more women. I wonder what would happen if now, suddenly, they receive an avalanch of job appliances from women. Are they going to hire them all? After all, the only reason they talk about is that there's not enough female candidates, that they're eager to find women willing to work for them.

They can keep saying sexism is not the cause. I still believe the #1ReasonWhy reasons, some of them coming first hand from friends of mine.

Sexism exists -just take a look at any forum or comment thread. I don't know how many times I've been looking for information on something technical -and forums are my friend for that- and scanned over a post about how someone's girlfriend is such an idiot with her tech that he has to nerf her phone or talk to her like a child. But you have to get the job before you can be a victim of gender prejudice there.

There is an obvious lack of women actually competing for these positions, so we should probably acknowledge that the gaming industry isn't actively trying to filter us out. I wish this article had addressed the cyclical nature of the problem without calling valid issues like sexism "a cop out". That's backlash at it's finest.

There are fewer women with the skills/experience to work in this field because women are typically not encouraged to pursue technical careers of this type because... well, because sexism. Little girls traditionally get play kitchens, toy babies and sexualized fashion dolls to play with and then go to college and perpetuate the stereotypes they've grown into. Maybe the next generation or two will have more female techies who can hold their own -since even ten year old girls now have smartphones.

This article seems to be out-of-sync with the actual discussion it's trying to address. Sexism contributes to the problem at all levels of the industry, though I imagine it's much better at a larger (and thus more accountable) company like EA. I don't think I've even seen people claim that women aren't ALLOWED in the industry, but that they tend to face discouragement during their education due to social conventions and assumptions, and discomfort during their careers due to old (but slowly dying) biases and behaviors ingrained in the industry. I think that it would be best for everyone if women went for it anyway, rather than letting historical inertia get in their way, but to dismiss the issue seems like sleight-of-hand propoganda, even though well-intentioned. You can still acknowledge something unfortunate while kicking that unfortunate thing into the history books where it belongs.

If her point is that there is no sexism in *hiring practices* then that may very well be accurate but I don't think that's the point that things like #1reasonwhy are trying to address.

I believe that there is a point to this article, not only because I think that this industry is less women-unfriendly as it appears but also because I used to work in one of the most sexist jobs there is:
Before I became a developer I used to be a musician. Now in an orchestra you don't have such a thing as job interviews. Instead new applicants have to play short concerts in front of the whole orchestra and everyone gets to vote whether someone gets the job or not.
Several decades ago there used to be only men in these orchestras (at least here in Germany) and there still are a lot of musicians who seriously dislike the idea of working with women. Just look at the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra - if I am not mistaken they still have no more than 1 woman employed!
I heard a lot of "reasons" from my colleagues, e.g. "women get pregnant all the time and we have to fill in for them" etc.

My point is however: There are so many women applying for positions in orchestras that sooner or later people had to vote for women, and now the ration of women to men is about 1 to 1, it will probably even change to the other extreme so that there are more women than men.

Unfortunately that does not really solve anything, because that still leaves us with the question whether so few women go into IT for some genetic reason or because they were taught as kids not to like technical stuff.

By the way: "You can't do that if your team all looks and acts and thinks the same."
So all men look and think alike? ;-) I wouldn't say that about women, please don't say it about men.

Finally, we get some real truth in this argument.

Good job to Gabrielle Toledano.

My perception of EA's HR and employee treatment has continued to decline over the years.

Having the chief of HR insist that the problem cited by developers doesn't actually exist isn't helping that image.

Anyone that thinks sexism is involved has never had to hire an engineer. I don't care who you are. I don't care about your gender. I don't care about your extra-curricular activities. I don't care about your personal choices. I don't care about any of those non-work related things.

Are you a great engineer? Can you get along with my team and collaborate? Are you going to get up every morning and genuinely enjoy working with my existing team and contribute meaningfully every day? Great! You're hired!

Is there sexism? You bet. Is there racism? Yup. Does it apply to engineering? Are you kidding me? We can't afford to have sexism or racism!

I think if we look at what is happening in our player base we can see why people discount the games industry as a boys club. We have a fighting tournament hosted by a major corporation (and recorded for a video site) show us how a lowlife can harass and verbally abuse a young lady for days without anyone stepping in, stopping it or throwing him out. We have sites like http://whywasibanned.com/ and http://fatuglyorslutty.com that document the vile hate-filled things that our players say and type on a daily bases. We need to start removing the privilege of voice chat or the ability to type in public forums to these abusive players. I rarely play multiplayer anymore because of the foul language and blatant threats of violence. I can't imagine what the a female gamer has to put up with. My GT is gender neutral and I get horrible types of messages when I log into my XBLA. Even the Steam forums are infested with trolls. As an industry we may need to start training our players that this type of behavior is unacceptable. Permabans may be needed in some advanced cases but for the most part removing the ability for those players to communicate will foster a more family like atmosphere. This will let everyone feel more comfortable with gaming culture as a safe place to have fun. If both men and women are more comfortable gaming together without fear of harassment, violence or stalking, the thought of becoming a games programmer or artist may become a valid desirable option for more young women.
Just my five cents.

Although I already dropped a line on the Forbes article, but I think I thought of a better one.

From the article:
"So if you like to play games, wouldn’t it be fun to make them?"

Fun...?
Yes, HR Person.
Fun is the word you are looking for.
I'll just go back to sharpening up the graphics on Level 3.
Salt the fries.

To get back on focus with what the article conveys, yes, it is a cop-out to completely blame sexism, but sexism still may be part of the reason why there aren't more women in the game industry.

A parallel study may be the construction industry. Why do you see almost no women doing the physical labor jobs?

How about waste management? Auto mechanic?

Its all due to a combination of historical, cultural, social, and mechanical (males have more muscle mass are naturally built to be better at heavy physical labor) reasons. Its no secret that male brains are typically geared more toward dry logical/mathematical endeavors (a.k.a. programming)

I know everyone hates generalizations, but exceptions do not invalidate generalizations, no matter how indignant someone may become.

It seems this conversation became specific to the programming side of the gaming industry. Even though the title of the article just generalizes "industry", the term "engineer" come ups a lot. But what about the industry as a whole?

PR, HR, marketing, sales, graphic design, sketch artists, are all a part of the game industry, and each of those positions I mentioned would require a specific talent set vs PR/HR in a different industry so its not like they are generic job titles that can be unrelated to the gaming industry. I'm sure there are a lot more women in the gaming industry than people realize when you look outside of programming/engineering.

Isn't the answer obvious? Less women are interested in the gaming industry than men. Why are we as a society so obsessed with equality that we want to force issues like this? If few women want to enter the gaming industry, so bet it; let them do what they want.

A creative director at one of my former jobs once called an all-hands meeting in order to welcome our new receptionist. Part of his welcome speech was a joke that compared her work to prostitution.

A creative director at a company that I didn't work with, but had close contratual ties to, once made his female producer so angry with his direct remarks during a party that she left at once.

A high-ranking manager at one of my jobs once said women are supposed to have pretty butts rather than "pretty IQ", and trying to have both of these is just pretentious.

Another manager I worked with would hold it against a female candidate if she seemed "too girly" to him at the interview.

In literally every job I've had there's always been at least one guy with the hobby of trying to test everybody else's tolerance to crassitude. You probably know that kind of person: one who keeps sending goatse links and compares female programmers to guinea pigs.

So that's one side of the picture. But there's another one.

When I was in school, girls always seemed better at math. In terms of grades and general understanding, there was always a girl at the top, and not a boy (well, there was also me, but I didn't really have any pastime options except for studying, so I don't think I count). All of my math teachers were female - there are generally very few male teachers in Poland - and they never seemed to favour anyone on the grounds of gender.

After graduation from our equivalent of highschool, one of those girls who were good at math went on to study architecture. Another chose chemistry but then resigned. All other girls chose either mathematics or some purely non-engineering faculty such as journalism.

One faculty at my university taught both mathematics and computer science: same lectures, same workshops, same professors, and largely overlapping curriculae. Still, math students were mostly women and chose such occupations as accounting or market analysis. Computer science students were mostly men. They would naturally become programmers.

I studied information technology at the electronics faculty next door. There were 180 students in my year. Exactly six of those were female. They all had above-average grades, by the way.

So that's another side of the picture. But there's more.

The company I work for has a large QA department. The testers seem like the most mixed and varied group of all. Women are a minority, but a visible one. A tester's job is neither well paid nor stable (most people are temporary employees), so I guess a significant portion of these people are driven by their enthusiasm for the subject matter.

And it shows. We have recently offered junior designer assignments to two of them. We knew they were good candidates, not because they're skilled (they're not, yet), but because they've put significant effort into letting us know just how much interest they had in this kind of job. Now that they've got a chance, they're learning quickly and making progress faster than we anticipated. Oh, and yes, they're both male.

How about female candidates, then? I honestly have no idea. They never said anything, and I don't have the time to conduct a survey or an exam. In my experience, the number one problem with discovering talented female designers is that, on average, women don't speak up, whereas men speak all the time. I know for a fact there are women interested in game design out there, because I've met a few. Pity all of them already had other careers. The women at my workplace don't seem interested at all. A statistical anomaly, perhaps - but statistical anomalies are unlikely by definition. I'd rather keep looking for a better explanation.

So, is it because women are too shy, or because men are too loud? Is it a culture problem? Is it anybody's fault at all? Who knows? I'm no sociologist, so let's just assume it's a bit of everything.

And that's the third side of this picture, making it a somewhat non-euclidean construct. Let's stop here before we all get eaten by a grue.

The point is, it's a complicated issue and you can spin it in every direction you want. Blame it on men, women, sexism, feminism, tradition, hipsters, or whatever. Either way, it's going to feel quite comfortable, but it won't get you anywhere.

Or, you could pick a different route. Try and think about something that you - and you specifically - can do to make the industry a better workplace. If you're a young woman thinking about her future career, then go ahead and give engineering a try. It's fun and the pay is good. If you're a young aspiring male developer - design a game for your girlfriend. Create opportunity for her to become interested. If you're a man in the industry - try and keep some of those jokes for yourself. They do sound better in your head. If you're a woman in the industry - try and forgive your teammates, as they don't really mean it most of the time. And if you're in a position where you can actually choose your teammates, regardless of your gender, then for once stop looking for the most skilled labour, and give a chance to those with a surplus of enthusiasm.

YOU are your coworkers' workplace.

How about someone does a major study on the possibility of working in the video games industry with the subject control group being females ages 10-18? Ask them what they think. Let's not assume that they even want to do this. Ask them and get clear picture of the real situation. More data is always a good thing.

A problem of appeal.

Most games when I grew up weren't interesting to girls (mario zelda megaman etc.) as more games become appealing to young girls/women, the more will be interested in the industry.

I have done some open editing because I think it was wrong of me to use such words as dumb and silly. But the comments in reply to my original comments wouldn't make sense if I cut them out so I just made some open edits. Again, Sorry for my over wrought approach.}

The premise of the article is silly [I am changing it to I disagree with the premise of the article]. "Before we can address the lack of women in the game industry we have to agree that the problem isn't sexism in the game industry but the lack of a pool of females to hire from." Then, she tells us that the reason there aren't enough in the applicant pool is because of sexism. This is just dumb [Strike that sentence with the word dumb entirely] . All she is doing is attempting to ingratiate herself with the male audience she is attempting to connect with. I am an african american and I have some of the same kind of issues to contend with as women described here. I understand how uncomfortable it is to have a conversation with white folks where you are asking them to hire more minorities but blaming them at the same time for the lack of people of color in the business. But the truth is that you have to be willing to put it all on the table if you expect to be successful in the long run. You can't blow smoke up people's asses [redact peoples asses] when trying to get them to be proactive in hiring minorities and women. Recruitment of women into the gaming industry is done by starting a dialogue with the people you are trying to attract. The game development industry has a great head start because kids are already sold on gaming and you can have their attention if you want it. But if you want those female children to think about preparing for a career in games you have to have companies and people who recognize that the industry is pretty much male dominated and they have recognize that they have to change in there approach. Which brings us directly back to the point in question here. It is really dumb to [cut this phrase with dumb and just add: "We shouldn't"] pretend that there is no gender problem within the game development industry. The first step is recognizing what is missing: women and minorities--just like the multitude of other male dominated industries and businesses. The second step is figuring out why they are missing. If you are in denial about what role your particular male dominated business and industry has in the lack of women and minorities then forget any possible success in addressing it. All you have to do is to blame everybody else for the lack of a significant female applicant pool. Then you can go on your merry way of doing nothing about it on your end. So we can thank Gabrielle Toledano for letting us off the hook. Sorry Gabby, but what you are leading off with here is dumb, dumb, dumb. [Strike the part with dumbx3 and replace with I disagree with what Gabrielle lead off with here.]

@Kaitlyn Kincaid

You are wasting your time responding to Maurício Gomes. His points are even sillier than Gabrielle's. I think you are right about what you have been saying in the comments here. It is just hard for people to hear the truth. People would rather be spoon fed with pats on their back like Gabrielle is doing here. Nobody likes to swallow the truth whole because it gets caught in your throat. You end up with a lot of people being immediately defensive. You have to get by the emotional response of people who have been just told that they are guilty or even at fault before you can get them on board with your ultimate point--which is you want their buy in and their honest effort to address the lack women in the industry. Which is all that Gabrielle is trying to do here. Hers is more of a strategy than anything else.

People, this isn't rocket science. If female employees truly do provide more workplace value, then eventually companies will figure out how to hire them as a competitive advantage. This is what happens at social gaming and casual gaming companies, where their audience highly skews female, and it works well for them.

But most commenters here are talking about AAA console games, where the product audience highly skews male, and so having more female employees may not be a big benefit. So it doesn't happen. As simple as that.

Every time an article on this topic comes out, everybody trots out the same old tired arguments that everyone has heard a hundred times. While I applaud the public debate on an important topic, it mostly only serves to show just how dumb some commenters are.

I work at a college in the IT department. Our computer science major is the second highest enrollment major, just below Engineering. The CS program is somewhere in the high 40% of women. I've asked a lot of them about going into the game industry and generally their answers have nothing to do with sexism. Most responses have to do with going for PhD's so they can further the science or become professors. A lot of them just never considered the game industry as a worth wile pursuit. If they do want to go into industry they typically want to work for Google or Microsoft.

Its not like the game industry hasn't tried at our school though. The first year I was there MS Game Studios came and did a long pitch to the CS majors. During the jobs fair we usually have Blizzard, Riot Games, and a few other bigger game companies there looking for people. Riot games employs more than a few of our students, a few of which are women.

From my perspective the game industry just needs to do a better job at selling a career in games to women. There is a small stigma of sexism but it is overshadowed by the sheer lack of the games industry looking like a viable, sustainable career.

I've worked as a professional in the gastronomy for over 6 years before I joined the games industry. Hell, I really miss working with women.

Well, being treated as an equal can be somewhat of a problem for some women. There's no girl bonus in a male dominated industry. Not, if all are expected to be professional. Especially in such a high risk industry.

You know what I find really messing with my noodle. If we are saying we need women in the industry because they bring something to the industry that men can't. That's sexism...

We need good developers in the industry, their gender is irrelevant. If you're hiring someone based on their gender that is no less sexist than excluding someone based on their gender.

I don't understand why anybody would want to attract people who have no real passion to work in the games industry. Because if you are passionate about it, you're there.

At last! A woman in the game industry that looks straight into the camera when taking a pic instead of looking left/right/up/down! :D

While Toledano is right that sexism isn't the only factor at work, I shudder at her week analysis. Anything that looks at only one factor is going to miss the whole story. This is complex and interwoven, and a statement like "i'ts not the sexism dummy!" is just misleading. How about a look at the research? While it's true less women than men apply (duh), it is also true that women leave tech jobs at higher rate than men. That is about the sexism, and also the glass ceiling. And also because of family. But you can weed out the family issue by comparing those numbers to other industries - and we still come up short in comparison. Again, it's multi-faceted. But please don't try to biol it down to one thing - you do a disservice to a complex and important problem that simply needs to be addressed in a complex and directed way.

Question, why do we always have to concentrate on the game industry, as if it's the only technological industry dominated mainly by men? The reason movies, music, theater and other art forms have no shortage of women should be very obvious, those are "traditionally" not male-exclusive art forms. Video games started in technology, which has always been male dominated for socio-cultural reasons.

Yes, we're slowly changing that. Yes, more women are getting into these fields by their own choice, because many are being introduced at a younger age. Do we really have to keep harping on this fact as if it's a completely stagnant issue?

@Brion Foulke

I put the part of Gabrielle's comment that I found silly in quotes at the very beginning of my first comment. I don't think can and/or need to be any more specific than that. And regarding having to swallow difficult truths about why there aren't more women in the game development industry--especially the technical or STEM side of it--yes, I do think it is tough for men to swallow the truth of the lack female hires in this area. Because IMHO it is because the applicant pool of women is really small. I don't disagree with this position, but what I don't agree is that we have to all play a charade and pretend that the pool is limited because women don't recognize the obvious opportunities that Gabrielle sees from her special and unique vantage point in HR. Rather, I think that women are limited from the get go due to societal constraints on women entering in the STEM fields. Like I suggested to @Jay Anne (consider that suggestion of mine equates with a two by four :)) you have to dig a little deeper than just reading this small(but very effective and well done) article and find out what Gabrielle is really talking about. Take a look at the referenced Forbes article and the New York Times article referenced by Forbes. I think that Gabrielle is well aware of the barriers women face in making a steadfast decision to buck the male dominated road to techincal/STEM based careers.

I think that she is just minimizing the difficulties women face in gaining traction in careers that require engineering/programming education, training and experience. I think she is minimizing such barriers as they exist today in the gaming industry. And as I have now said a number of times, I think she is using this this tactic in order to ingratiate herself with the huge numbers of males that she has to make convince that females hires are a good thing for everybody involved.

I probably shouldn't have stated my disagreement with Gabrielle's premise by being so flippant and using the word dumb and the word silly. It took away from my argument and provided little effective words of wisdom. My apologizes to Ms. Toldenda.

Hm.. she has a point , really has far more to do with the fact that ,gaming heavily relies on technology computers mathematicians programmings , (Things traditionally consider and only for the white/ masculine in American-Western Culture) So that default in the culture gonna get less woman focusing on gaming major ,Combine that with fact general culture demonizes gamers and blames it for ever social ill on earth or it consider "Childish"
The skilled middle class female professional who has over come the computer gender bias are more likely to work at intel then work in games . Think it has very little to do with the actual games to be honest . If one turns on television you'll easily find very large female audiences for some of the worse female character imaginable (Kim karadashin) Glossy glamor mags , Cat fight bitches ,about sex ,money and shallow fashion obsessed bimbos and reality tv . Nothing particular Healthy about them ,but being objective they do form entertainment for a very large audience that is predominately woman.
We are too focused on the content rather than literally what barriers (social ) are in the way of getting someone into a careers .One can say the same thing about race (I am African American , )But technical careers are traditionally consider the domain of the white middle class , if your in school you express intrest in computer someone will go "Your acting white". Meaning your less likely to get someone to pursue those career opportunities due to fear of being kicked out there peer groups.Not to mention it very hard to get into the gaming industry and be successful.

@Brion Foulke

I did my best to explain what I meant. I have no idea where you are getting the feeling that I made a "dangerous" assumption. If my position is some how making you or anybody else feeling scared and afraid then we are all in a lot of trouble. Race and gender in the workplace is a subject that does cause a lot of hotly contested discussions. The very nature of the issues are polarizing. However, that doesn't mean we are required to temper what we say because of worries about the reactions of people who may not like or agree with what is said. That is the point I was making. I think Gabrielle can hold whatever beliefs she wants, but I get to do the same as well. It is pretty obvious to me that what she had to say was pretty effective on you. I think she accomplished exactly what she intended.

@Steve "I have no idea where you are getting the feeling that I made a "dangerous" assumption. If my position is some how making you or anybody else feeling scared and afraid then we are all in a lot of trouble."

By "dangerous assumption" I didn't mean that I was feeling "scared and afraid." I meant that you are probably wrong. I think you are making assumptions about Gabrielle in order to protect your own biased notions.

My 2 cents: As a woman in this industry I have never experienced sexism in my career. Maybe I got lucky, after all I'm in the casual game development. I'm just wondering why there is gotta be an equal number of females and males in the industry? Many women don't want to be in our industry coz 1. they don't consider it serious 2. it's too "geeky" for many. Or at least it has been until few years ago when "geeky" became very fashionable. And I believe we do witness more females coming to our industry. Look at the programmers classes - there are many more females, def the same applies to more traditionally "female-accepted" careers as writers and artists. So while sexism probably exist (def in the games themselves which is more likely the response to the society needs), it exists only to some extent and can't be 100% blamed for the lack of females in our industry. There are many more industries where the split between males and females uneven and I think it's only natural, not everything needs to be forced to be equalized.