5 Video Game Companies: Textual Analysis of Workplace Policies pt 1

Businesses restrict their own growth potential

when women are unintentionally excluded from

key training and advancement opportunities.

Whether the economy is up or down, who

gets promoted — and who gets left behind —

has substantial consequences for business success.

Ilene H. Lang, President & Chief Executive Officer, Catalyst

(For those of you who haven’t been following my posts, this is the sixth post in a series that analyzes the company policies of five video game companies: Blizzard, EA, Zynga, Riot, and Valve. These posts are all part of my dissertation and are somewhat taken out of context so that they are appropriate for the audience of NYMG. Rest assured, my actual chapter has far more of the boring academic stuff that makes it credible. For more detail on the policies, please see my previous posts. I have written this with the assumption that the readers are familiar with the policies of each company, as it comes on page 40 of my analysis chapter. However, I have attempted to repeat crucial details where necessary.)

The visual analysis is key to this project because it allows viewers to see things that can be obscured. The textual analysis that follows approaches the policies from a different angle. I gather together components from several studies that have been conducted on gender equity in the workplace, particularly in relation to company policy, and use these components to see whether the codes of conduct and employee handbooks comply with the principles of an equitable workplace. The visual analysis allows us to see meaning that is embedded. As a textual analysis, this section should focus on what is said. However, as will be seen shortly, there is such a shocking lack of policies that ensure an equitable workplace, that this analysis really focuses on what is not said. The AAUW argues that the single most important factor in improving the retention and recruitment of women is (programmatic and cultural) environmental improvements (62). Brenton Faber argues that companies can improve, change, and even shape the culture of their organization through their programmatic policies. Policies, then, are a critical place to examine and improve in order to improve the representation of women in the video game industry.

The San Francisco Gender Equality Principles Initiative conducted a “groundbreaking project undertaken to help businesses achieve greater gender equality and build more productive workplaces” (1). In it, they outline specifics of how workplaces can improve the conditions for women and other under-represented groups. This covers seven things that companies need to have in their public policies to ensure an equitable workplace:

1. Equitable and transparent employee compensation
2. An acknowledgement of the importance of a private life (through the support of things like flexible work hours, re-entry opportunities, and parental leave)
3. The assurance of a workplace free from violence (this includes action in the workplace, in company travel, and outreach about domestic violence)
4. Policies that pro-actively promote women to managerial positions
5. Goals of concrete ways to reach out to underrepresented groups, ethical marketing practices (this would include products that don’t demean women)
6. Avenues for employees to participate in civic engagement and communities
7. Leadership, accountability, and transparency

The initiative created these for companies to utilize them to increase participation of women and equity for women. They are more of a productive matrix than an analytic one.

That said, I think it is telling that three of the five companies do not meet even one of these standards (Blizzard, EA, and Zynga). Valve only meets requirement number 6. Riot meets 3 and 5 and partially meets numbers 1 and 7. EA and Blizzard both provide completely stock statements about harassment, and that does not show that the company is truly trying to ensure a violence free workplace, but rather that they are more interested in covering themselves in a lawsuit. In fact, I would argue that only including the bare minimum suggests that you are aware of the need for a harassment policy but don’t value it enough to go beyond the minimum. This borders on an active desire to not protect women, rather than a passive overlooking of their needs. Valve, on the other hand, has zero policies that discuss harassment. Their policy is clever, and funny, and even inviting. But it provides its employees no protection from things like harassment and discrimination.

Compensation is an area that is not discussed much in these policies, though it is not surprising considering that the documents I analyze are public documents. However, making your pay-scale transparent is one important step to recruiting women, because it allows for the possibility of women being able to demand equal pay to their male counterparts, which, unfortunately, is still not the norm. One thing that is entirely absent from all companies is the acknowledgement that the recruitment and retention of diverse populations is crucial to the success of the company. Further, all of the studies suggest that concrete policies ensuring the retention, promotion, and recruitment of these groups is necessary. Informal discussion about hiring more women is not effective, according to the research (The San Francisco Gender Equality Principles Initiative, Deliotte Women’s Initiative, and the AAUW). It is necessary to have concrete policies that reflect these values, and these policies are lacking in the documents available publicly.

There are also several topics lacking from these policies that overwhelmingly impact women. For example, none of the policies available discuss family leave, part-time work, working from home, and flexible work schedules. While discussing those things would undoubtedly positively impact all employees, these particular issues impact women more than men. For example Slone reports that “Women are somewhat more likely (79%) than men (68%) to use flextime when it is available” (Galinsky, Bond, & Hill, 6). Similarly, “”Women are much more likely (24%) to have part-time positions in their main (or only) job as defined by their employers than men (9%)” (Bond, Thompson, Galinsky, & Prottas, 9). Allowing for part-time employment, then, will likely attract more women, who are still responsible for a majority of the household obligations, particularly when there are children in the household. Since 68% of women who work part time do so voluntarily, organizations who lack a critical mass of women (defined by CGAIR as 35% of the overall workforce), this would be one way to improve those numbers. However, in the policies available online, there is no mention of flexible work time in any of the 5 companies.

Maternity and paternity leave are policies that also seem to be absent from the publicly available codes of conducts and employee handbooks. This could be a major deterrent to anyone with a family looking for a job in the video games industry. A lack of these policies, however, do impact women more than men (while this may seem obvious, there are many statistics to back this up). For example, Hill, Hawkins, Martinson, & Ferris report that “Within the IBM organization, “58% of all parents reported that mothers were mostly responsible for childcare and only 6% reported that fathers were mostly responsible” (249). Since women still seem to be the primary provider of child care, an industry-wide silence on maternity and family leave policies may be a major contributor to the dismal numbers of women in the industry. The five companies analyzed here are certainly no exception. In fact, the companies analyzed here comply with nearly 0% of the equitable workplace policies outlined by the AAUW, CGAIR, Slone, and The San Francisco Gender Equality Principles Initiative.

Faced with these statistics, it is a wonder that any women have been able to be successful in this industry.