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INTEREST: Female Staff in CG Industry Discuss Gender Gap at SIGGRAPH Asia 2018


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kinghumanity



Joined: 03 Nov 2014
Posts: 365
PostPosted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 8:30 pm Reply with quote
The internet, especially the anime/game communities, are heavily male and rather indifferent when women raise complaints about issues that they face. Every time the issue of gender comes up, the online community quickly turns into a toxic cauldron of sewage.

The gender pay gap IS real.

Women DO face discrimination in the workforce, ranging from being taken less seriously than their male colleagues, to being pressured to quit after childbirth.

Sexual harassment IS real, and complaints by women generally ARE serious and honest.

A male-dominated culture and environment DOES make it very difficult for women to be heard and their perspectives taken seriously.

So please, guys, leave the misogyny behind. The sooner we as a community approach this issue like civilized adults and take womens' perspectives seriously, the better off both men and women are.
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AmpersandsUnited



Joined: 22 Mar 2012
Posts: 633
PostPosted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 8:56 pm Reply with quote
kinghumanity wrote:
So please, guys, leave the misogyny behind. The sooner we as a community approach this issue like civilized adults and take womens' perspectives seriously, the better off both men and women are.


Most of the issues you're talking about are not realistically possible to "fix". You can't fix the wage gap unless you purposely force women to go into higher paying fields and bar them from lower paying fields. ( i.e. when a woman goes to school to learn how to be a nurse, you force them to become a doctor instead since doctors make more money than nurses) But then you're explicitly removing women's free choice and agency by forcing them into positions against their will, which probably isn't what most activists would want. It's great people want more women in the CG programming field, but you can't force them to take that up as their career if they don't want to.
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kinghumanity



Joined: 03 Nov 2014
Posts: 365
PostPosted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 9:13 pm Reply with quote
AmpersandsUnited wrote:


Most of the issues you're talking about are not realistically possible to "fix". You can't fix the wage gap unless you purposely force women to go into higher paying fields and bar them from lower paying fields.


That's not true, and you're belittling women's legitimate complaints again. When a job is being done by women, it becomes less valued and is seen as less skilled.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-take-over-a-male-dominated-field-the-pay-drops.html

Transgender women lose income, while transgender men gain income.

https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/25/before-that-sex-change-think-about-your-next-paycheck/

Again, this is reality, even if it might make some people uncomfortable and defensive. Sexism exists throughout the workplace, and trying to pretend otherwise helps no one.
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SilverTalon01



Joined: 02 Apr 2012
Posts: 2401
PostPosted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 9:24 pm Reply with quote
AmpersandsUnited wrote:
Most of the issues you're talking about are not realistically possible to "fix". You can't fix the wage gap unless you purposely force women to go into higher paying fields and bar them from lower paying fields. ( i.e. when a woman goes to school to learn how to be a nurse, you force them to become a doctor instead since doctors make more money than nurses) But then you're explicitly removing women's free choice and agency by forcing them into positions against their will, which probably isn't what most activists would want. It's great people want more women in the CG programming field, but you can't force them to take that up as their career if they don't want to.


Well there is a pay gap, but part of the reason the topic often results in hostile disagreements is because the pay gap most often quoted seems to be the one you are alluding to which is not an apples to apples comparison of 'equal pay for equal work.' That pay gap can't ever be fixed unless people are forced into jobs because not every job itself is worth the same amount of money. The actual pay gap for equivalent jobs and equivalent experience is not very large.

However, there is the related issue of women being pressured out of male dominated fields (same happens to men in female dominated fields), many of which are higher paying fields. Removing biases and toxic atmospheres in those fields would probably result in more women wanting those jobs. Per your example, people shouldn't be pressured to be doctors instead of nurses, but higher paying jobs should be equally friendly to everyone who strives towards one.
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omegaproxy





PostPosted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 9:59 pm Reply with quote
I'm sick of these articles that has nothing to do with anime/manga.
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Frog-kun
ANN Reviewer


Joined: 10 Jun 2017
Posts: 118
PostPosted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 10:13 pm Reply with quote
omegaproxy wrote:
I'm sick of these articles that has nothing to do with anime/manga.


Polygon Pictures, one of the representative companies in this article, is an anime studio.

CG is a huge part of modern anime.
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ZodiacBeast



Joined: 26 Jan 2010
Posts: 142
PostPosted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 10:14 pm Reply with quote
omegaproxy wrote:
I'm sick of these articles that has nothing to do with anime/manga.

>Computer graphics
>Nothing to do with anime
That's a good one.
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GeorgeC



Joined: 22 Nov 2008
Posts: 795
PostPosted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 10:15 pm Reply with quote
I'm gonna have to agree with omegaproxy here.

What DOES this article have to with manga and anime?

You know, this is the sort of thing driving people AWAY from ANN.
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TheCanipaEffect



Joined: 27 Apr 2017
Posts: 52
PostPosted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 11:35 pm Reply with quote
GeorgeC wrote:
I'm gonna have to agree with omegaproxy here.

What DOES this article have to with manga and anime?

You know, this is the sort of thing driving people AWAY from ANN.


This is literally a panel from the "Computer Animation Festival" at SIGGRAPH Asia in Tokyo. Polygon Pictures is one of the largest anime studios today. Square Enix produces anime films as well as Japanese games (which ANN also covers). And Xiaoyang Mao is a university professor who studies CG animation.

CG animation is a huge part of anime production today and whilst it's not going to erase 2D works, it's still worth talking about these parts of the anime industry, even if it's not strictly covering 2D animation companies.
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capt_bunny



Joined: 31 May 2015
Posts: 364
PostPosted: Sat Mar 09, 2019 12:37 am Reply with quote
AmpersandsUnited wrote:
Most of the issues you're talking about are not realistically possible to "fix". You can't fix the wage gap unless you purposely force women to go into higher paying fields and bar them from lower paying fields. ( i.e. when a woman goes to school to learn how to be a nurse, you force them to become a doctor instead since doctors make more money than nurses) But then you're explicitly removing women's free choice and agency by forcing them into positions against their will, which probably isn't what most activists would want. It's great people want more women in the CG programming field, but you can't force them to take that up as their career if they don't want to.


Ironic that you say that when that's basically the opposite of the problem. Women WANT to the higher paying fields. The ironic is pointed out when you gave an example about nurses and doctors. Do you not remember when a Medical University on purposely failed the exams of the women? Many of the women were talking and mentioning that France has more women doctors than men. They always bring that example because they want to become doctors.

More women aren't forced at all. Those women want to choose that career but end up not choosing so because of how much they are rejected because of their gender. There was a youtube video I saw on a channel called "Rachel and Jun" talking about this issue and reading the tweets. One woman was saying "the manager told me he would hire me if I wasn't a woman" and that was in a tech company(I think??). Either way, a lot of women want these jobs. No one is forcing anyone.

The whole point of this article is that a lot of women in animation companies are heavily looked down and hardly get paid equally. A lot of women who end up allying for animation give up halfway because of this and that no one ends up hiring them anyway. There are so many female animators that are on their own. I am not saying that there aren't any men in these situations. But try to understand that if someone tells you there's a problem and if that problem has been said over and over for 10+ years (I am ONLY talking about animation. That's one over so many) then there is a problem. No one is screaming that one gender is worse than the other. Men have problems too but at least accept that women have more.

It's like hearing when someone tells me their problems. I don't tell them that I have it worse. Instead, I say sorry and listen. I know they are going through it tough and they know I have some tough problems too. But I am going to admit that they have it harder. That's what these articles are always saying. That both genders have it hard but you can't keep denying the problems women have. Why do you think there are women studies? Why is it that /barely/ women have rights out of over the hundred and thousands of years. Its sad that women are barely getting rights and it hasn't even been over 200 years and we are what? In 2000's+? So small compared to that number.

Forgive me that I made a huge rant on this.... I am not trying to tear you down. I am not trying to be rude (sorry to the mods if it does seem like it). This is what I firmly believe and obviously only you can change your mind. Just some food for thought if you will.
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Frog-kun
ANN Reviewer


Joined: 10 Jun 2017
Posts: 118
PostPosted: Sat Mar 09, 2019 1:21 am Reply with quote
I have to say, I have covered many stories on this site about industry people speaking up about issues that affect them (including women's issues), but this is the first time I've seen an article about the experiences of industry people dismissed as "irrelevant." Even though almost every modern anime has CG, the bias against it is strong. It's one thing to not like CG or to separate it from the craft of hand-drawn animation, and quite another to say that it's irrelevant to the industry altogether.

On topic, I think the women at this conference didn't want to paint a grim picture about what it's like to work in the industry. Instead of focusing solely on the bad experiences, they emphasise that the industry has a lot of opportunities for women. "Have confidence in yourself! Give it a shot!" It's heartwarming, in my opinion.
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Steve Minecraft



Joined: 13 Feb 2019
Posts: 120
PostPosted: Sat Mar 09, 2019 2:06 am Reply with quote
kinghumanity wrote:
That's not true, and you're belittling women's legitimate complaints again. When a job is being done by women, it becomes less valued and is seen as less skilled.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-take-over-a-male-dominated-field-the-pay-drops.html

Transgender women lose income, while transgender men gain income.

https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/25/before-that-sex-change-think-about-your-next-paycheck/

Again, this is reality, even if it might make some people uncomfortable and defensive. Sexism exists throughout the workplace, and trying to pretend otherwise helps no one.


Have you actually read these articles? Because they're pretty misleading. They're comparing male janitors who work for big companies to self-employed women who run their own housekeeping service and saying they're the same job in the cleaning industry. Then they compare menial secretarial work from the 1950s to mid 2000s Silicon Valley software coding as both being 'computer programming'. A far cry from the call of 'equal pay for equal work'.

As far as this article goes I did laugh at Kazuko Manabe's comments about there not being discrimination in the games industry. Not that I disagree with her, but I'm sure a lot of westerners would argue with her on that one. I did notice all the other people on this panel were either foreigners or people who lived overseas. The one native Japanese person said it was no big deal? Kinda interesting. Not sure what to infer from that. The main person in charge of this was from America and seemed to want to force Japan to be westernized, so yikes there. But Xiaoyang Mao gave the message it was on women to get into the industry and not so much the industry needed to change so kudos to her. You can't really hire women who aren't there, afterall.
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TheCanipaEffect



Joined: 27 Apr 2017
Posts: 52
PostPosted: Sat Mar 09, 2019 2:27 am Reply with quote
Steve Minecraft wrote:
As far as this article goes I did laugh at Kazuko Manabe's comments about there not being discrimination in the games industry. Not that I disagree with her, but I'm sure a lot of westerners would argue with her on that one. I did notice all the other people on this panel were either foreigners or people who lived overseas. The one native Japanese person said it was no big deal? Kinda interesting. Not sure what to infer from that. The main person in charge of this was from America and seemed to want to force Japan to be westernized, so yikes there. But Xiaoyang Mao gave the message it was on women to get into the industry and not so much the industry needed to change so kudos to her. You can't really hire women who aren't there, afterall.


I mean, Kazuko Manabe was obviously just talking from her own experiences at Square Enix. Obviously, there are many different experiences. I mean the case with Riot Games was literally only a couple months ago.

Also, it's super weird to gatekeep Kanako Tani as not being Japanese enough because she studied abroad.

In the 1980s, there was a huge increase in women getting into computer science. It was at the point where 3 times more women were entering the industry than men. (Source: https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=zn689kBYZUcC)

It was believed that the ratio between men and women, particularly in computer science would actually end up balancing out (It has for companies like Happy Elements already). What Xiaoyang Mao is talking about is initiatives to encourage women to get involved in the CG industry. This is similar to what Yan Fan states. Having progressive maternity/paternity care programs and being open about addressing workplace problems is key.

Once those have been established, it then becomes about changing women's perceptions of the industry. Even though plenty of male CG animators in the 90s and 00s went on to establish their own companies, the same couldn't be said for female CG animators who were likely dissuaded by the male-dominated Japanese business culture (this is hardly a secret).

So now we have a case where from the outside, if you're just seeing company presidents, the CG industry looks like a male-dominated field. So working to change women's perception of the industry is a part of hiring, outside events (Unity and SEGA recently teamed up for an event to answer questions women had about working in the games industry.)

The chair of this panel works at SIGGRAPH and puts on these panels all over the world. She's not trying to westernise anything, that's why these CG creators who live and work in Japan are spotlighted. (She's also not from America, she's German).
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#Marc123



Joined: 19 Dec 2015
Posts: 43
PostPosted: Sat Mar 09, 2019 5:08 am Reply with quote
Why, when talking about equality in the workspace, do people only talk about wanting more women in higher positions? Why not also talk about equality in the 'lower' positions, such as those of construction workers.
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Blackiris_



Joined: 06 Sep 2013
Posts: 535
PostPosted: Sat Mar 09, 2019 5:41 am Reply with quote
#849231 wrote:
Why, when talking about equality in the workspace, do people only talk about wanting more women in higher positions? Why not also talk about equality in the 'lower' positions, such as those of construction workers.


They do? Quite a lot, actually. Just look around a bit if you really want to know (using Google takes 5 seconds), should be very easy to find.
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