Technologies of the Gendered Self

Because video game play is not exclusively a male activity and because technology related professions are not exclusively male, it is important to question why more females are not involved in technological professions, to include video game creation, as opposed to marketing of video games or other facets of the business end of the video game industry. 

A concern posed by scholars Jennifer Isabelle Pei Ling Ong and Pei-Wen Tzuo is that their study, which positions girls as consumers only, instead of as active creators, cannot add depth to our understand of their views.  The gaming industry, however, does position girls and women in ways, which are positioned to draw the female to the industry.  I look to an education game project, which took place in the Digital Media department of the University of Central Florida.  Based on the folktale, “The Turkey Maiden,” with its genesis in 1930, in Ybor City, Florida, this study engaged young females by modifying an existing game a user-created addition to the original game was created.  Speaking to gender, Natalie M. Underberg revisits the Cinderella tale, where Rosa, the Latin-American heroin must complete culture based quests.  Within this tale, the heroin rescues the Prince who is ill, cures him, and in the end they are married, keeping consistent with both the Spanish and English versions of the Cinderella tale.  This modification visited the gendered positionality of the heroine in the game as the female student

integrates specific tasks the heroine must successfully complete in order to advance

in the game… Adapting an oral folktale with an active female protagonist into a heritage-based computer game involved experimenting with feminist game design principle (gender differences in play), and understanding how features of digital environments, like spatiality and interactivity, affect storytelling and game play. (Underberg, 201)

Numerous articles, many of which reviewed, contextualized, and critiqued the current involvement of girls/females as portrayed and involved in technology and gaming were available on the Internet.  I was drawn to this educational computer game project as a focus, because it led me to draw on the works of Gloria Anzaldúa , in recognition of my own positionality as a mestiza, between-borders, a non-Spanish speaking, third generation American (Anzaldúa , 1987).  I also felt it important to draw from Anzaldúa based on the context of this past week’s Girlhood Remixed camp, which revisited the role of the female in technological fields, crossing boundaries into fields that reveal professional positions, which are historically predominantly male: “Necesitamos teorıas that will rewrite history using race, class, gender and ethnicity as categories of analysis, categories that cross borders, that blur boundaries—new kinds of theories with new theorizing methods” (Anzaldúa 1990, xxv).

It seems that historically, video game creators have either drawn the damsel in distress female, or the hypermasculine female with impossible bodily measurements.  However, with educational games such as with “The Turkey Maiden,” there is hope that games will be created where the female doesn’t have to be the subversive Cinderella, but can save herself based on measurements of her own capabilities, not those positioned next to the male.