Why Marketers Fear The Female Geek

[Ohio Joe]

So, there is this story making the rounds where Paul Dini on a podcast explains why execs do not want female viewers for their super hero shows. There’s a link in the resources below. But the gist of it is basically “Girls do not buy our merchandise.” Sounds horrible right? People are shocked! Yeah, well, it’s worse then you think.

Here is the reasoning, that drive execs and marketers to pro-actively exclude women from their audiences and to pro-actively encourage a culture in which women do not feel welcome.

This is why we can’t have nice things… or can we?

http://howtonotsuckatgamedesign.com/2013/12/marketers-fear-female-geek-2/

This is cross posted from Gaming. Check out the comments as well, these is some good stuff there.

[boston bean]

1. I suggest everyone give it a read! It was a really good article!

Thanks for posting, Joe!

K&R.

[gollygee]

2. That was really interesting.

Thanks!

[ismnotwasm]

3. Excellent

Thanks for posting this!

[CrispyQ]

4. Great article.

Loved this:

In short: There never was a time in geek culture in which women had equal access. So why do we pretend, that they should have yielded equal returns but somehow failed to do it?

[Gothmog]

5. As the father of two female geeks, I was upset by this story

I hooked both daughters on Doctor Who and other series. This concept is really sad

[redqueen]

6. As the mom of two geek gamer girls, this gives me hope.

More and more people are starting to recognize this shit for what it is.

And fewer and fewer are going to keep thinking the way that first commenter does (was that not just absolutely precious?)

[riqster]

7. Friggin' awesome read.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

8. that was a great read! Now I'm all pissed off….

lol. kind of.

I wrote so many papers, starting in high school, on sexism in advertising. This was a terrific analysis.

The replies were great, too. I was glad to see that jerk "I didn't read the whole thing, but…sucks to be you, ladies" guy got the full wrath of the much smarter people on the board.

Loved this reply (well I loved a lot of them, but I'm not going to copy/paste them all )

Peeling
01/06/2014 at 6:15 pm
Yep, I can certainly tell you didn’t read the article.

I have a 6-year-old daughter. On weekend mornings we all sit in bed together and watch kids’ telly. According to the TV my daughter is supposed to be either grooming and cleaning up after urinating plastic babies, or painting her face with glittery crap that comes free with pairs of extortionately expensive shoes. In a (frighteningly) few years’ time, the same boy/girl marketing language the TV is trying to imprint on her will be used to steer her towards certain magazines, and those magazines won’t be discussing advances in science and technology, they’ll be discussing how best to lose weight, straighten hair and attract the attention of boys.

Marketing and the media is doing its damnedest to turn my wonderful, smart, funny, curious little girl into a creature obsessed with the acquisition of products designed for no purpose other than to make women more pleasing scenery for men. Marketing and the media wants to convince her that she should fit a certain profile – literally and figuratively – because that’s the most efficient way to get her to spend money. They don’t care that she loves Minecraft and Ghibli films and proper Lego and hiding from dragons in Skyrim. They don’t care that she wants to be a scientist and stop everyone dying when she grows up. She’s a girl, and they’ll do anything they can to shepherd her into adulthood as a good little female consumer.

This is not ‘separate but equal’. This is gender apartheid every bit as bullshit as the racial kind.

[redqueen]

10. That is fantastic.

I didn't see that one on the site, only read a little way into his well-deserved schooling. Thanks so much for posting it here.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

9. 286 Computer salesmen used to tell women they could sort their recipes.