"Women and wargaming" Topic

Old… but still interesting…

"A few days ago—spurred by a recent PAXsims readers poll that showed that an astonishing 99% of our readers are men—I posted a few thoughts on gender and national security gaming. My argument, I thought, was fairly unremarkable: Women are underrepresented in professional national security gaming; this is due to a variety of reasons (gender socialization, male preponderance in the military, underrepresentation of women within hobby wargaming, and so forth); and increasing the number of women in this area was a good idea, since—among other things—it brings more brainpower and bodies and expertise to address important issues in serious gaming.

As part of that argument, I pointed to the massive gender imbalance within the wargaming hobby, which is probably 95% or more male too. Since hobby gaming can help to develop professionally-relevant skills, and thus be an asset for those who go on in national security analysis (or, for that matter, teaching), wouldn't it be a good idea to try to encourage more women to participate here too?

I then suggested a few obvious things that might help…."
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Amicalement
Armand

He seems to be missing the obvious.

ON HIS OWN WEBSITE, where one would think there are ZERO barriers to entry, 99% of the readers are men.

If women might be reluctant to be 'the only woman' (or one of only a few) in the club, in the game store, or at your house with the guys, you would think that A WEBSITE would be the easiest place for a woman to gain entry to the hobby.

He then goes on to blame the wargaming hobby for the reason why HIS WEBSITE can't attract women.

He then (in his original article) makes a number of suggestions for improvement, NONE OF WHICH INVOLVE HIS WEBSITE. He wants universities and conferences to make changes (even though he earlier says that most of his readership comes from the wargaming hobby).

He then suggests featuring women at wargaming events, to put them in panel discussions and so forth. That's cart before the horse, isn't it? As he already admits, there is a vanishingly small number of women in the hobby.

He says: "Welcome women and girl gamers into your hobby gaming community. More positive role models and female wargamers will also help to reduce the barriers to entry to later generations of female and girl gamers." How could the hobby community be more welcoming than it already is? It's online, it's anonymous for goodness sake, most of the hobby forums are actively moderated to prevent harassment, what more can be done, really?

And finally, why all the hand-wringing? Do the traditionally female hobby communities similarly anguish about the lack of male participants? Not all differences between men and women are evidence of societal injustices.

Bill, as regards that last paragraph, you missed the memo. Effective with I think the Carter Administration, any time any ethnicity/"gender"/whatever is under-represented in a group or activity relative to its share in the overall population, it's because the straight white males have been insufficiently inclusive, and must take immediate steps to favor said group, while apologizing for past misconduct. Naturally, none of this applies in reverse.

Where have you been for the past 40 years?

any time any ethnicity/"gender"/whatever is under-represented in a group or activity relative to its share in the overall population, it's because the straight white males have been insufficiently inclusive, and must take immediate steps to favor said group, while apologizing for past misconduct.

You mean like the Klan, and the Westboro Baptist Church have done ?

Robert, you forgot to drench your comment with sarcasm
I remember when Sears was being slammed inna study, for a dearth of women in the Tools and Lawn and Garden departments of the retail stores. Someone finally did another study, the reason was, "Women just were not interested in Tools or Lawn and Garden". Wonder how much those studies cost in time and money?
The question is, what would draw women, aside from their husbands, boyfriends, or fathers?

I understand his point, and I'm fine with having more women in wargaming, though I don't particularly agree with his approach, either. As Bill noted, the article leaned in the direction of "You lot, go fix things, so I can have a more representative mix on my website."

Yes, to some degree gaming groups are heirs to gender specific social groups, like the ladies' quilting group at my grandmother's church or the gentlemen's clubs of Victorian England.

And, I see things are changing, with women becoming a significant factor in the painting side of the hobby. While I don't see ladies building up Napoleon's Grande Armee, the Army of the Potomac, or a panzer grenadier division for gaming purposes, I do see them participating in RPGs, and more recently in skirmish scale games. It may be trite, but things do take time.

I once came across a website run by two ladies in the UK which, in addition to discussing figures and games, rated the restrooms at places they gamed. Got it! Women's priorities may sometimes differ from mine.

While I agree that websites offer the potential for anonymity, it isn't complete. We can all make a pretty good guess at the gender of folks with handles like "Editor in Chief Bill" or "robert piepenbrink" (no offense intended): "Tango01" or "Grelber," less so. Drilling down to a level below that, wasn't it Charles Dickens who read George Elliott's novels and realized they were written by a female, despite the masculine pen name?

I once ran a Pig Wars (Dark Ages) game at a convention, which had a female participant. I politely offered to give her a female figure to represent her, and she politely declined. Whether this was because she didn't want to put me to any trouble, she couldn't conceive of female Viking warriors, she thought I'd fish out some highly sexualized babe in chain mail bikini figure, or some other reason, I don't know.

Being "welcoming" is something that comes down to each of us, and sometimes we are going to need some clues as to just what is called for. Will I loan you some figures so you can try out a set of rules? Sure. Share my painting tips? No problem. Let you win the game? Dream on!

Grelber

I would guess that a cat convention would be about 99% women. And not because men are excluded. I imagine that how most men feel about cats is how most women feel about wargames. Nothing diabolical going on here. It may come to a shock to a few here, but men and women are different.

USAF pilot – why would you think that cats are a 'female thing' ? Cats are notorious for being completely impersonal in their likes and dislikes, the sex of the human they own has no influence on them at all.

I like cats and have done for years; some people are cat people, others are not. Obviously you are not.

Frankly, I'd rather attend a cat convention than a wargaming show.

A cat convention would likely be less malodorous.

Dude!…

Amicalement
Armand

What, there are no "dog people" here?

Every now and then I travel in BATB circles--the old Linda Hamilton/Ron Perlman TV show. Males are always under-represented--one in five, maybe, on an average? A cousin who kayaks reports something similar but not quite as drastic. But one of the nice things about both is that no one feels entitled to lecture the participants about not doing enough to encourage male participation.

If you're being serious, von Schwartz, I think you'd have to redesign either women or wargaming. RPGs seem to attract both sexes in relatively equal numbers, but in HMGS conventions, even the relatively few women we do attract seem to me to be disproportionately interested in fantasy or RPGs. The closer we get to core HMGS--actual historical miniatures wargaming--the more heavily male the events are.

If equal numbers are the priority, I'd say organize a fantasy miniatures convention with a lot of skirmishing and/or role-playing. If historical miniatures wargaming is the objective, than I think we should make welcome any woman who wishes to join, but accept that relatively few will.

Sometimes the same people who want to "celebrate diversity" have a lot of trouble with different people enjoying different things.

There's a BATB convention circle ? Would that involve mostly playing chess, reading poetry and looking lovingly at an unobtainable object of affection ?

There's a lot of splits – most people really interested in soccer in the UK are men. More men than women go to Death Metal gigs. For that matter more men than women go to Dylan gigs. Attendees at railway modelling conventions are nearly all male. I once went to Duxford Aviation Museum when there was a Bus Spotters convention on (really!) – nary a female in sight. Incidentally that was a great place to pick up 1/72nd scale military vehicles for great prices – all the people selling Bus Models had some military stuff, but all heavily discounted as the Bus People just didn't find tanks and aircraft all that interesting. Weird, huh ?

I imagine that how most men feel about cats is how most women feel about wargames.

Most women feel that wargames are delicious but tricky to not overcook?

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

I like mine with white sauce

I have a serious question. Are activities enjoyed mostly by one gender allowed any more? Or Is it only ok to have fully gender diverse activities? I have zero issue with women gamers and actively encourage them, but why do I need to apologize for being male and enjoy gaming as an activity for women to enjoy games? Do we need to do a gender check on all activities and enforce full gender equality? What about non-binary people?

Since it's a serious question.

Do we need to do a gender check on all activities and enforce full gender equality?

This question highlights the fundamental flaw in the discussion.

We can have empirical information about gender participation. Four of seven participants in my last game day were female. Observation. We could even throw some math at it and call it 57.1%

We can also have estimated statistical information about something like the USA population, 50.8% female (2010 Census) or the world population, 50.8% female (coincidentally) (2016 WHO Report). Whatever the reason for the estimates, both are provided by a well-documented process, so their fitness for a purpose can be evaluated.

This is scientific evidence. Not science (necessarily, the estimation methods could, but don't have to, be). But information that is useful within a scientific context. There are lots of methods of scientific comparison.

X observation should be within A of B statistic. That is also a comparison. But not a scientific, mathematical, or empirical one. It has the word "should" in it. Science and math do "is", not "should". "Should" comes from another basis, for example philosophy or morality.

We can certainly inform science with and use math for evaluation of non-scientific or mathematical concepts. In the above, a type of mathematical comparison is embedded within the non-mathematical comparison framework.

So if we are to care about the comparison, we should care about the rationale for the "should" part, independent of what math or science is embedded within its context. Until the foundation for the comparison is established, the rest is irrelevant, and a distraction within a discussion.

I am at a loss to establish a rationale for a "should" relationship between the percentage of women observed at WargmeEvent X should be within A of B statistic.

In fact, it sounds a little ridiculous on the surface, since we are constraining the event, X. If X is more than A over the required amount and event Y is more than A under, but (X+Y)/2 is within A, are we still OK? Are we selling carbon credits here? This is a common problem with comparing a large population with a small one.

In a scientific context, when we make such a comparison where the small population is a subset of the larger one (make sure we have the right stats), we also make assertions about them being IID – independent identically distributed variables. This has to do with the characteristics of the selection process.

The selection process is the real interesting discussion here. How do we go from the population of statistic B to the population of event X? Voluntary participation based on awareness might be one process. That's a mess. That's why it is interesting.