Sony's G.I.R.L. Scholarship Opens For Applicants

[Vegosiux]

I'm going to join the "ham-fisted" brigade on this one; I mean I get what they're tryin to do, but this just seems...clumsy. Then again, it's also a PR stunt and I have an inherent aversion to those.

Still, want more women in the industry? A good place to start would be signing up the ones who are interested in working in the industry, and have the skills.

 

[Hagi]

And yes, I am mocking those who call this sexist. Not everything limited to one gender is done out of any sense of that the different genders are of different value.

SEXISM: Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on a person's gender

hmmmm, i wonder what discrimination means... Lets go look that up

DISCRIMINATION: Discrimination is the prejudicial or distinguishing treatment of an individual based on their actual or perceived membership in a certain group or category, such as their age, ethnicity, gender/sex, national origin, sexual orientation, religion, skin color, or other characteristics.[1] It involves the group's initial reaction or interaction, influencing the individual's actual behavior towards the group or the group leader, restricting members of one group from opportunities or privileges that are available to another group, leading to the exclusion of the individual or entities based on logical or irrational decision making

So in otherwords, not only is G.I.R.L actually both sexism & descrimination its the literal definition.

There's nothing unfair about providing an incentive to a certain group for whom there are also societal obstacles for a given path.

Wow, i wasn't aware possessing a vagina was a societal obstacle to artistic design. In fact i just checked with some medical professionals, possession of a vagina doesn't hamper ones creative abilities at all.

It almost seems like your opinion is incredibly sexist.

Exactly because the two genders are of equal value that incentive is given so that valuable people, regardless of their sex, can get the opportunities to express their talents.

Except that this is the exact opposite of that. Its almost like i showed you a living person & you tried to tell me its a corpse. If both people are equally valuable, then by extension of that concept both groups should be given an equal chance to get into the program based on merit. Keeping out 50% of the people on the basis of gender, is not both groups being equally valuable... Its one group being given a chance at a free ride & the other group being told to please fuck off.

Because quoting dictionaries is the ultimate argument!

Because there's no such thing as peer pressure against women seeking careers in technological fields!

Nobody will ever question a guy seeking to become a programmer, 3D artist or other game-related profession based on his gender. Don't tell me you honestly believe the same applies to women...

Young girls and women face obstacles when seeking careers in this direction that men simply don't in the form of peer pressure and societal expectations. The opposite likewise applies to men seeking careers in educational or caretaking fields. Just imagine the reaction you would get from the world around you if you chose to make your career as a nurse or at a day care center.

There's absolutely nothing unfair or discriminatory to provide a counter-weight to that peer pressure and those societal expectations in the form such as programs as this to ensure that the actual practical reality does indeed present equal opportunities to both sexes.

 

[Legion]

Because there's no such thing as peer pressure against women seeking careers in technological fields!

Nobody will ever question a guy seeking to become a programmer, 3D artist or other game-related profession based on his gender. Don't tell me you honestly believe the same applies to women...

Young girls and women face obstacles when seeking careers in this direction that men simply don't in the form of peer pressure and societal expectations. The opposite likewise applies to men seeking careers in educational or caretaking fields. Just imagine the reaction you would get from the world around you if you chose to make your career as a nurse or at a day care center.

There's absolutely nothing unfair or discriminatory to provide a counter-weight to that peer pressure and those societal expectations in the form such as programs as this to ensure that the actual practical reality does indeed present equal opportunities to both sexes.

While I agree with most of your points. Saying that discrimination in one area to counter discrimination in another does not mean that discrimination doesn't take place.

Men cannot apply simply because they are men. That is discrimination by it's very definition. As for whether or not it "matters", that's debatable, and personally I don't really care that it's for women only. That doesn't change the fact that by being so it is sexist.

On another note: You mock Matthew for backing up his argument using a dictionary definition, yet back yours up using a satirical comic strip. How does that work?

 

[TriGGeR_HaPPy]

Yes it's *technically* sexist, and yes it could be handled much better (heads up Sony, but girls do already play lots of video games, despite what that second question of yours could be implying). But overall, this will hopefully turn out to be a good thing.

Knowing men and women in the industry and throughout universities, both for general computer science stuff, and for games... Women get way too much crap thrown their way. Hell, it was really hard for the girls I know in computer science courses to do anything without getting pretty severe derogatory remarks and attitudes headed their way.

So once again, I think that this could have been handled much better, but overall, getting more women to enter the field (and without having to put up with the surprising amount of misogyny just to get in) is a good thing.

 

[ThisGuyLikesNoTacos]

I can't find the part where it's declared that you have to be a female in order to take part in the program...

Can somebody help?

 

[TriGGeR_HaPPy]

So once again, I think that this could have been handled much better, but overall, giving more women a chance to enter the field without having to put up with the surprising amount of misogynistic guys is a good thing.

But... It wont do that.

giving them a bit of free money will still put them in the same classes as those guys, they will still need to deal with those guys when they need more money (10k wouldnt have gone very far when I was looking at game related programs), and in the work place.

This just adds to bad images those same guys will use. "Welp, she couldnt get by on talent alone so she had to go into an only girls scholarship to make it."

Sorry, it's getting late where I am and I'm about to head to bed, so I've posed my point... Really quite horribly. :S

In the short-term, this will only directly help a select few individuals, but it could help more girls to decide to head into the industry with more support like this. And while it won't outright stop it, long-term more females in the industry in general will go a long way towards lowering those attitudes.

As for the short-term itself, yeah they'll still have to deal with those attitudes. But from the girls I've known who have had to drop out in the cases it's gotten that bad, it's never for just 1 problem, but because it's been a mixture of problems, both with those attitudes, and being a student and worrying about money. That is, the unfortunately all too common case of smaller problems forming together to simply overwhelm the students and stopping them from being able to continue the course.

Just 10k isn't much in the long-run, no, but hopefully it'll be enough that it can knock short-term monetary problems (rent, groceries, bills, etc.) off their list of worries, and help them finish their course. Once again referring to my personal experiences with people, I've seen cases where this has happened, i.e. a scholarship being the difference between dropping out and continuing the course... For example, a scholarship in the second year, helping a female friend I knew complete their computer science course when they thought they were gonna drop out soon, because they simply needed to get a good paying job asap or else face other consequences at home (such as having to move because they can't pay rent, etc.).

I know I'm relying on personal experience too much in this conversation, normally I'd look up statistics and such to help my argument, but I'm too tired.
And you'd think that after all this time on this site I'd have learned not to contribute to a thread when tired. But apparently not.
I do also apologise for my poor tired-articulation... >_>

 

[Hagi]

Because there's no such thing as peer pressure against women seeking careers in technological fields!

Nobody will ever question a guy seeking to become a programmer, 3D artist or other game-related profession based on his gender. Don't tell me you honestly believe the same applies to women...

Young girls and women face obstacles when seeking careers in this direction that men simply don't in the form of peer pressure and societal expectations. The opposite likewise applies to men seeking careers in educational or caretaking fields. Just imagine the reaction you would get from the world around you if you chose to make your career as a nurse or at a day care center.

There's absolutely nothing unfair or discriminatory to provide a counter-weight to that peer pressure and those societal expectations in the form such as programs as this to ensure that the actual practical reality does indeed present equal opportunities to both sexes.

While I agree with most of your points. Saying that discrimination in one area to counter discrimination in another does not mean that discrimination doesn't take place.

Men cannot apply simply because they are men. That is discrimination by it's very definition. As for whether or not it "matters", that's debatable, and personally I don't really care that it's for women only. That doesn't change the fact that by being so it is sexist.

On another note: You mock Matthew for backing up his argument using a dictionary definition, yet back yours up using a satirical comic strip. How does that work?

That's the thing about dictionary definitions. They're true, in theory.

But they often don't quite cover the real spirit of the word, you've got to use your own judgement for that (and yes, that does turn things subjective, vague and altogether more difficult, welcome to reality).

Sexism and discrimination, to me, includes value judgments. This situation does not judge either a men's value or a woman's value. It's based on the belief that both genders have equal value and thus deserve equal opportunity. Seeing that one gender faces more peer pressure and societal expectations in this field than the other it offers support to that gender to ensure equal opportunities are indeed provided, exactly because both have equal value. Not because men have less value.

Therefore I don't see this as either sexism and discrimination even though when going purely by dictionary definitions it would be. Because the spirit and motivation behind it is entirely different, something that isn't and can't be covered in a dictionary.

As for backing myself up with silly comics, that's kinda part of the whole mocking thing. It's by definition (both dictionary and spirit) not entirely serious, most certainly not scientific and probably somewhat childish. But I'm cool with that, it amuses me to do so.

 

[savageoblivi0n]

5 minutes of research later:

4. Who can apply for the G.I.R.L. Scholarship?
The G.I.R.L. Scholarship is for any individual who is 18 years of age or older at the time of entry and a legal resident of the United States, who is currently enrolled at an accredited school in an undergraduate program related to video games, including programs related to video game art, design, animation, production, programming or visual effects, has an average GPA of 3.0 or higher (on a 4.0 scale), and will not graduate before the end of the 2014 spring term.

source: https://www.soe.com/girl/faq.vm

the arguing can stop now...regardless of the rather odd choice for an acronym, this scholarship is NOT limited to female applicants

 

[savageoblivi0n]

Am I the only one who immediately thought of Ryan Gosling?

Spoiler

5 minutes of research later:

4. Who can apply for the G.I.R.L. Scholarship?
The G.I.R.L. Scholarship is for any individual who is 18 years of age or older at the time of entry and a legal resident of the United States, who is currently enrolled at an accredited school in an undergraduate program related to video games, including programs related to video game art, design, animation, production, programming or visual effects, has an average GPA of 3.0 or higher (on a 4.0 scale), and will not graduate before the end of the 2014 spring term.

source: https://www.soe.com/girl/faq.vm

the arguing can stop now...regardless of the rather odd choice for an acronym, this scholarship is NOT limited to female applicants

Shhh people are trying to have a righteous old rant, stop spoiling it with your silly facts.

but...but i just... *sniff*

*goes back to lurking*

 

[savageoblivi0n]

5 minutes of research later:

4. Who can apply for the G.I.R.L. Scholarship?
The G.I.R.L. Scholarship is for any individual who is 18 years of age or older at the time of entry and a legal resident of the United States, who is currently enrolled at an accredited school in an undergraduate program related to video games, including programs related to video game art, design, animation, production, programming or visual effects, has an average GPA of 3.0 or higher (on a 4.0 scale), and will not graduate before the end of the 2014 spring term.

source: https://www.soe.com/girl/faq.vm

the arguing can stop now...regardless of the rather odd choice for an acronym, this scholarship is NOT limited to female applicants

Actually it is. This lack of a qualifier on there page has been questioned before. Men are exempt from entering, even though it doesn't say so on there web page, it does say so on the physical hard copy paper work. It turns out that legally what they are doing is indeed sexism & they had to remove the clause from the web version... However they are still not accepting entries from male participants.

Scholarship America has already confirmed this, apparently.

meh, if you say so, have only been able to find one or two sites that specified it, admittedly i only did a superficial search since it doesn't apply to my field of study anyway

 

[Xarathox]

You know, it's sad when you almost expect Sony to do shit like this. It's like they've built their entire portfolio on being the most obnoxious twats in the yard.

Damn... I need to stop watching ZP. Yahtzee's coloring my own metaphors now.

 

[flying_whimsy]

Sidestepping all of the gender issues:

Am I the only one that finds it suspicious that Sony is essentially farming for ideas in the guise of furthering education? Think about it: concept art and ideas on changing gender portrayal in games while extending that into getting more females to buy games. Those are probably the same things their marketing and development groups have probably been working on for years. Since I'm not a student anymore, I'm not going to spend any time reading over the rules governing applications, but I'd strongly advise anyone considering it to make sure that Sony can't steal their ideas. After all, this is the same company that makes you agree that you won't join a class-action lawsuit against them just to use the online service.

...Sorry, I'll take my tinfoil hat off now.

 

[Hagi]

That's the thing about dictionary definitions. They're true, in theory.

Oh mate, when you get caught out saying something stupid, the intelligent response is to check to see why you were saying something stupid... you don't double down on the stupidity & hope that if you say enough stupid things, the stupid things you've said will eventually come full circle & stop being stupid.

If one ever wants to know what actual unapologetic bigotry looks likes Hagi, you've given us a perfect showcase.

Yay! Because insulting people is a sure way to show your intellectual superiority and amazing wisdom and understanding!

Then again, I guess I got in the way of your righteous indignation on the subject. Heady feeling isn't it? Makes you just want to bunker down and stick to your viewpoint regardless of any rational thought or reality. Sorry for trying to spoil it for you man.