The Guildhall at SMU recently revealed that nearly 20 percent of their incoming class is female. This statistic is significant, given that the game industry as a whole is estimated to be only five percent female.
“We are extremely pleased that the January 2010 cohort has a higher ratio of women in the mix,” said Peter Raad, founder and executive director of The Guildhall at SMU. “There has been a disparity between the number of men versus women in the video game industry far too long and we believe this increase represents a growing trend of more women seeking a career in game development.”
“Typically, the increased level of a team’s diversity translates into more interesting gameplay,” noted Raad. “Our living laboratory of 120 full-time resident students proves that every day.”
1 Comments
February 18, 2010
This is great news, really. Women are such a great resource that is way underutilized in the software development field. I have worked with a number of women programmers and they are usually as good or better than their mail counterparts. And that includes me.
We need to get rid of the stereotype that girls aren't good in the hard sciences. Recent studies[1] have indicated that they are noticeably better than boys in logic and computational comprehension.
I have always found that people who are better than I in software development are the people I want around me. One can learn so much from others, regardless of gender. The two things I love most in the computer field is hacking code and learning new ways of hacking code. More women means more people to learn with.
[1] I can't find the URL offhand but feel free to Google away