I.T. Girls

Posted at: Thursday 16th October 2003 by Rhianna Pratchett

Only men like PCs right? Wrong. Rhianna Pratchett discovers the differences between the sexes on a hardware level

As a user of PCs both at home and at work, Lisa also strongly believes that more women should consider IT as a viable career: 'I think women need to understand that there are so many opportunities in this industry. When I say what I do for a living some people's eyes glaze over, but it's the variety in my job that I find the most interesting part. One minute I could be helping someone design forms in Word and the next I could be installing routers!'

THE PLAYERS
While Lisa may be in the minority of ladies who get excited about installing routers, there is another function of the PC that's becoming much more appealing to an increasing number of women. PC gaming has never been as popular with women as men, but certain genres like role-playing and adventure games have helped buck the trend. However, rather than actively purchasing PCs to play games, many women seem to discover gaming almost by chance.

'Most women come to gaming because a friend or relative has a computer or console.' explains avid gamer, Cal Jones. 'Few will actually think, "I know, I'll try that new game," and run out and buy the hardware to run it. Until PCs become an essential purchase, like a television or phone, I don't think that will change. Right now, women tend to buy PCs because they need them for, say, working from home, rather than for entertainment.'

Scarily (for the coupled males out there anyway) Cal reckons that one of the ways you could encourage the woman in your life to take up gaming is by leaving her.

'If a woman lives with a man who has a PC, and she gets into playing games, then he leaves and takes it with him, she might well go out and buy one for herself,' muses Cal. 'It's a bit like pushers giving out drug samples for free. Women need to get hooked first before they'll spend money to support their gaming habit.'

Thankfully, such drastic measures as dumping your girlfriend or drip-feeding her small doses of the Sims to build up an addiction aren't always necessary. There are already plenty of women who find a good blast of Counter-Strike or Unreal Tournament at the end of the day to be as beneficial for relieving stress as an episode of 'Sex and the City' and a tub of Ben & Jerry's.

Assuming that most of you reading this are blokes, you will probably never have considered that the last person who dealt you a swift death in Counter-Strike could have been a woman. But believe it - just have a scout around online and you'll find plenty of girl-only gaming sites and a fair few girl-only gaming clans. Don't believe me? Well just take a look at www.csgirls.net and www.girlzclan.com

If you're still not convinced and just think these websites are actually run by blokes with a curious disposition for posing as ladies, then why not meet and compete against some avid, and very real, women gamers at a LAN party, such as Multiplay's i-series events. In fact, this is exactly what the Custom PC posse did recently when they popped along to i17, partly to convince themselves that such women exist. And in between bouts of Counter-Strike and Battlefield 1942, they even managed to chat to some avid girl gamers.