Changing the Game: Cultivating Female Talent in AAA Studios

[Music] welcome to changing the game cultivating female talent in triple-a studios i'm victoria setian senior producer at avalanche studios so why are we here well in 2019 the gaming audience is almost 50 female but only 22 of game developers are women it's important to have more of our audience reflected in our development teams and keep in mind of that 22 percent even fewer of those female developers are in leadership roles which is extra important to note because according to the study by merida l johns companies that have the best records for promoting women outstrip their competition on every measure of profitability in other words your company will be more lucrative so how do we make this happen well it's easier to de-bias organization's

practices and procedures than to de-bias mindsets which brings us to this talk we'll cover three areas the first is adjusting outreach methodologies the second retaining and fostering female talent and the third is developing that talent into leadership this talk is largely research based and references will be provided and before we begin here's a little bit more about me and what brought me here today i'm a lifelong gamer a comic book enthusiast and on my weekends i'm an armenian folk dancer i've also worked in triple a for a while in creative and production roles most recently just cause 4 and its dlc as i mentioned before i work for abilene studios as a senior producer let's take a look at how avalanche is doing on the road to 50 50. avalanche has three offices stockholm malmo in sweden and new york city in the united states we haven't solved the problem yet but we are taking steps to change things change is a process and i'm proud to be

a female developer at avalanche studios group the fact that avalanche is supportive of this talk and showing these numbers demonstrates their commitment to improving female diversity starting with a fun fact uh the design documents of just cause four refer to our player as she and her another fun fact two years ago i couldn't have given this talk in 2018 i was promoted senior producer that day the studio manager called me aside to congratulate me on being the first female developer to become part of the leadership group in the history of the new york studio so change is happening but it can be slow so let's kick this off and see how we can get to 50 50. one reach out to younger female audiences the end goal is increasing our female talent pool and getting more resumes and it starts with adjusting our outreach methodologies one of the primary reasons women are underrepresented in technology is schools don't encourage girls to

pursue tech careers remember that phrase we always use when we were kids what am i going to be when i grow up well kids start thinking seriously about their careers in middle school which is also when girls begin losing interest in stem they continue to lose interest as they go through high school which is when many outreach programs begin so action items like i said i am a producer so this talk will end each section with action items that you can start making change today so the actions here are start outreach efforts with middle schools and educate girls on the various roles in the industry on top of our poor timing girls don't think of game development as a possible career path because they don't know what it means to work in games and the sort of positions available to them how could they we're not educating them young enough on the potential careers in games for the record these are about nine to twelve-year-old girls we're talking about and even during this young age range

they consider factors like gendered expectations and even family planning as they wonder what they're going to be when they grow up female representation in games so we've educated girls that games is the career path and the types of roles available to them now let's show them that they have a voice and a medium and they exist in the games themselves it's a well-trained topic at this point so i'm not going to hang too long here you may be familiar with the actress gina davis she's been in incredible movies like fellaini louise really with her own my personal favorite beetlejuice she's also the founder of the gina davis institute on gender and media there's a ton of great research at the institute site that goes further into the importance of seeing yourself reflected in media and the motto of her institute is if she can see it she can be it these are the women of avalanche studios i did a poll asking what characters and games you identify with that when you play as these characters you see yourself reflected back

and when i look at this slide it fills me with joy because i see my colleagues and friends staring back at me but it also makes me a little sad because quite a few women felt they didn't have a character they identify with so the action here is keep it up there's still so many types of female characters we haven't seen yet so many my colleagues that aren't represented give them a voice combat unconscious bias so now that we're showing young girls there's jobs for them in the industry and we see them as exemplified by all these great characters let's help them get in the door of our studios by combating unconscious bias unconscious bias is attitudes are stereotypes that affect our understanding actions and decisions in an unconscious manner these biases which encompass both favorable and unfavorable assessments are activated involuntarily and without an individual's awareness or intentional control the critical

takeaway of the study is women were less likely to believe they belonged in a particular job when the advertisement used masculine wording and they rated masculine jobs as less appealing the image here from the study is an example of one job ad done in two ways with masculine wording and feminine wording it's also important to note that feminine wording had no impact on the amount of male applicants you'll get the same amount of male applicants but you'll get an increased amount of female applicants at avalanche we are taking strides to address unconscious bias by training our hiring staff on best practices on biases and reviewing job postings for masculine wording this is due to an initiative started by a lead male developer who wanted to root out implicit bias wording in our job descriptions visible presence of female developers now that we've got these women in the door let's restart from step one but this time incorporate our female developers in our practices it's not enough to show that there are women here but we also need to highlight

women in senior and leadership roles to show two important things one women are part of this industry and two it's possible to get to the top some of the ways you can apply this research and thinking is include women in your outreach efforts have them join for school visits and recruitment offsites in your press events marketing materials and conventions let's see more women on the e3 big stages and big presentations where lots of young women can see them if you're posting team photos on your social media or website make sure it includes at least 50 female developers and include developers of all levels to show girls the full breadth of the career ladder when i was working in los angeles i volunteered with wiggy and girl scouts of america on a game design patch teaching middle school girls about how to make a game and all the various roles in the industry from qa to audio it was hosted by a panel of women in various roles in the industry and all over the career ladder and at avalanche we have school visits to the

studio where we explain the different roles in game development we have off-site recruitment sessions that include female members of the dev team and we work with game design schools on figuring out how to admit more women the actions here are include more women in off-site recruitment marketing press and games and make women in senior and leadership roles more visible part two retaining and fostering female talent okay we've got more women in the industry but our work has only just begun one internal support networks internal support networks are internal groups within your studio that encourage people to connect learn from each other and grow involvement is elective group settings are valuable because we support each other we can be sounding boards learn from each other host workshops or sometimes just ask questions that our male colleagues wouldn't be able to help us with it's great if you can get women in senior roles involved to give access to role models within the network

all three avalanche offices have women's meetup groups and dedicated slack channels in our new york office we have a bi-monthly dedicated meeting where we've twice hosted our respect and assertiveness in the workplace workshop actions create internal support networks for female employees two mentorship according to 48 of women the number one top barrier in tech is lack of workplace mentorship and that's sad there's many ways to mentor including education identifying skills listening offering guidance career planning and if your mailing want to mentor go for it research shows that a mentor's level not gender impacts career advancement throughout my career i've been fortunate to have mentorship primarily from men they've helped me in various ways sending me books and literature helping me plan my career path in aspirations to helping my voice be heard by senior management

mentor or recommend mentorships now we've got all these excellent ways of supporting our female developers they're going to take on the world right oh three master suppression techniques and strategies well that sounds scary so what are master suppression techniques master suppression techniques are strategies people or groups of people can use to dominate or humiliate others in a subtle indirect way in the 1940s norwegian psychologist and philosopher ingeld nissan first published research on master suppression techniques decades later in the 1970s norwegian social psychologist barrett ass did further work on the framework establishing that they are used in specific combinations and situations in regards to women there are five techniques and thanks to the institute of gender equality in sweden research was conducted on how to combat these techniques using counter strategies i also want to give a quick shout out for those who don't know

avalanche was founded in sweden so it's pretty great to see that the gender equality in sweden made such excellent strides in this area i'm quickly going to give an overview of each master suppression technique and its counter strategy the first is making invisible it's acting like what the speaker's saying isn't important or valuable by drawing attention away this can be done by interrupting or doing more subtle things like making noises with your chair or being on your phone lack of gestures or response the counter strategy is called take place stay calm and self-assured and highlight the unacceptable behavior hey do you mind putting your phone away next is ridicule mocking and laughing at the other person infantilizing or otherwise degrading them an example something like this is the phrase hysterical women or silly girls i remember shipping a project it had taken a lot of

time and energy and effort and we shipped successfully the game did very very well and shortly after i was called in a meeting with a room full of all of my peers and there were two male executives in the room and one male executive decided to call attention to the effort that i put into the project and the other male executive turned to me and patted me on the head i didn't know what master suppression techniques were and i certainly didn't know the counter strategy for what to do in the moment while i was being ridiculed by someone in leadership the counter strategy is question stay calm and ask why would you say that or in my case what did you mean by that withhold information not getting access to meetings documents news invitations etc

the counter strategy is require cards on the table point out the pattern and why it's necessary to have this information to do your job request that if you can't attend something to please reschedule double bind whatever you do you are wrong if you're direct you're a if you're a good listener you're too passive the counter strategy here is called change the pattern recognize what your priorities are and what's important to you then clarify the rules for example maybe you can't stay late you have to pick up your kids or you have some errand to run so clarify the rules say hey i need to pick up my kids but i know that this is due tomorrow at two o'clock and you'll have it by the time that you've asked for it so you're clarifying that you understand what the rules are and that you're working within the bounds of your constraints keep blame or sometimes put to shame someone making you feel bad for something that's not your fault

an example applicable to the workplace is getting a task that's too big for the timeline and the woman blames herself for not completing it in time even though that's an impossible scenario the counter strategy is intellectualized this is one of the more difficult counter strategies because it's mostly internal try to become aware of these feelings of guilt and objectively take a look at them and ask yourself why do i feel guilty try to put yourself in other people's shoes how would they look at the situation take it a step further back and see if there's something that maybe happened before that's making you feel guilt or shame about the current event i just want to point out that most people who use master suppression techniques are not consciously trying to be destructive or hurtful remember what we said about implicit bias earlier these are generally subconscious maneuvers so it's really important to give people the benefit of the doubt when employing a counter strategy and even the research goes into that as well so if you or the women on your team are

trying to employ a counter strategy i encourage you to please come from a calm and neutral place we are all human and we all make mistakes the actions here are understand master suppression techniques only by learning about these can we become aware of them and educate women on counter strategies be a champion you don't have to commit to being a mentor or running a whole internal support network to make an impact the opportunities to be a champion are endless and typically spontaneous we learned about the concept of being a champion in the workshop of our women's group that i mentioned earlier in the presentation for example if you see a woman getting interrupted say hey i think tori was going to say something what's up tori tori we haven't heard from you yet what are your thoughts or remember those master suppression techniques and counter strategies we just talked about well some of those counter strategies actually require having somebody as a sounding board to talk to be that sounding board or teach a female colleague about what master depression

techniques even are and introduce them to the concept of counter strategies if maybe you don't think you're up to the task of mentorship but you see someone who might be a really good mentor approach the topic with them and then connect them if they're open to it with the person who could be the mentee the action is be a champion part three developing talent into leadership we've empowered our female developers with support systems mentoring them and educating them now how do we get them into leadership roles one sponsorship so real quick what is sponsorship sponsorship is a program high performing women need to be identified by senior and executive team members these senior team members then need to seek out opportunities for these women and then advocate for them highlight their qualifications and why they'd be a great fit for the opportunity help them climb the ladder it's also really important to note that this is dedicated work it needs to be tracked and followed up on to ensure that steps are being taken to

help move these women through the sponsorship program as you move up within an organization it's important to have the sponsorship of someone who has enough leverage in the organization to make things happen otherwise it won't be effective in most senior level jobs you need sponsorship to make it to the very top this action is probably pretty clear start a sponsorship program shift leadership framework for this section i will be referencing the fantastic paper from the harvard business review women rising the unseen barriers becoming a leader involves much more than being put in a leadership role acquiring new skills and adapting one style to the requirements of that role it involves a fundamental identity shift organizations inadvertently undermine the process when they advise women to proactively seek leadership roles without also addressing policies and practices that communicate a mismatch between how women are seen and the qualities and experiences people tend to associate with leaders

these women make it into leadership roles then essentially get pushed off a cliff into a framework where it's difficult for women to succeed it's like getting dealt a hand of cards and realizing everyone is playing a different game these policies and practices that require shift are due to something called second generation gender bias powerful but subtle and often invisible barriers for women that arise from cultural assumptions and organizational structures practices and patterns of interaction that inadvertently benefit men while putting women at a disadvantage so why does this happen well the lack of women in leadership positions means women climbing the career ladder have no one to model who has dealt with the same barriers as them and if they model themselves after men they're more likely to run into these invisible barriers some jobs are inherently geared towards men because they require flexibility that a mother might not have such as extensive travel or consistently long hours or undervaluing skills typically

exhibited by women such as building a team or avoiding a crisis soft skills this leads to the double bind master suppression technique where whatever you do if you're a woman you are wrong if you're direct you're a so how can organizations help research states that mentoring and leadership programs are necessary but not enough i'm going to repeat that statement because i think it's really important research states that mentoring and leadership programs are necessary but not enough there are critical additional steps that must be taken to level the playing field first second generation gender bias education teach both men and women about these biases so they become more visible and can begin being addressed craft safe spaces for leadership identity women should be able to focus on the job not overthink these invisible barriers a coaching relationship a women's leadership program a support

group of peers in which women can interpret messages is critical to their leadership identity anchor development and leadership purpose focusing on purpose can also lead women to take up activities that are critical to their success it allows them to look past what might make them uncomfortable or insecure and engage in building new skills in a way that feels authentic to them imposter syndrome research shows that imposter syndrome is highest and high achieving women so that means women in these leadership roles so what is imposter syndrome it's women who experience the imposter phenomenon maintain a strong belief that they are not intelligent in fact they are convinced that they have fooled anyone who thinks otherwise the action here is understand imposter syndrome because this is largely something internal that women have to overcome however peers can help by being aware of its existence and if you see someone who might be struggling with imposter syndrome connect them to a mentor an internal support network send them literature send them a book be a champion

family leave and parenthood earlier we discussed how girls as young as nine are considering having a family and raising kids when they begin thinking about careers and the reality is society is teaching them they should be in a 2018 survey conducted by the center for american progress mothers were 40 more likely than fathers to report that they had personally felt the negative impact of child care issues on their careers women are still doing the heavy lifting when it comes to child care the graphs here are from women's work mothers children and the global child care crisis they illustrate the difference between time spent on child care by men and women sweden ranks the best it also has the least difference in weeks in a year spent on unpaid child care for men and women but even the best-ranked country still skews towards female caregivers and the u.s it's one of the only countries in the world that doesn't have mandatory paid parental leave unsurprisingly this is having an impact

on the careers of women and their career trajectory so you can see here even if women have access to flexible work arrangements they're not necessarily going to use those flexible work arrangements according to the paper breaking gender barriers and where this graph is from having a policy and allowing women to use it without penalty are two different matters researchers call this the flexibility stigma and it arises because women are effectively punished if they take advantage of flexible work options to raise children and work simultaneously or take a time out from tenure to have children the moral here is that it is not enough to simply offer flexible options the options must be exercisable without consequence real quick let's take a deeper look at the government offerings of sweden and the united states both because that's where the different avalanche offices are based but also because sweden did so well in the rankings in sweden both parents receive 480 days that's 16 months of paid parental leave at roughly 80 of their salary the days

don't expire until the child turns eight in the u.s maternity leave is three months and it's unpaid for fathers you get one month also unpaid so you may be wondering what we can do on an organizational level if this might be a government issue well our new york office has taken a cue from the culture of our swedish counterparts via our flexibility policy at any time we may see a colleague let us know they have to go help their child or work from home due to child care related responsibilities there is no guilt if you have to leave early to take care of your child avalanche trusts you're going to do what you have to do some colleagues have also made specific arrangements to work from home on certain days this is equally important for both parents consider if a father goes to take care of a sick child so that the mother can continue working for the day versus the traditional vice versa scenario the actions here are pay for parental leave for both male and female employees paternity leave is just as important as maternity leave support a flexible work policy

and create a culture that normalizes child care these are critical for female leaders as their responsibilities increase in the workplace they do as well at home okay we've made it through all three parts so i'm quickly going to summarize what we spoke about today according to the paper breaking the glass ceiling companies that have been successful in breaking down barriers have programs with the following characteristics in common they are specific to the organization they are inclusive they address preconceptions and stereotypes they track progress they are comprehensive and they have ceo support this is pamholf ceo of avalanche studios group diversity of perspectives and experiences make both our games and workplace better as an industry we can and must do much more to empower and inspire those who identify as women to consider a career in gaming only by

doing so on every level will we as game developers start to reflect the diversity of the global player demographic thank you pam here is a quick overview of all of the action items we have discussed today if there's one takeaway from this talk i hope it's the slide that you screen cap or take a picture of be a champion is there any one of these that you can bring back to your organization maybe more than one after watching this talk if someone asks you what's the point of a talk like this or is this even a real problem consider this system justification research has demonstrated that injunctification people's tendency to defend the status quo via considering whatever currently is as natural and desirable and the way that things ought to be is an individual level process that can account at least in part for women's continued under representation in male-dominated areas just because things are the status quo doesn't mean they're okay and remember that quote from the start of the talk

about how companies that have women in leadership ranks outstrip their competition on every measure of profitability there's no reason why we shouldn't be trying to change things so if someone asks you about this talk tell them yes this is important and i'm really glad you asked me let's have a conversation about it change the conversation by having the conversation change the game and maybe one day we can go from this to this thank you [Music] you