Halls Hopper
Posts: 64
Joined: Wednesday, 28th September 2016, 06:37
Real-world scientists
As I’m expecting some very predictable responses, I echo duvessa’s opening sentiment.
NOTE: If you unironically complain about "political correctness", you should probably go back to complaining about food or high elves instead of "participating" here.
Further note: I’m Australian so my sources will mostly reflect that.
The concern
There is a severe, worldwide underrepresentation of females in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) – refer to Key Findings 12.1 to 12.5 of this report. This is true at senior education level, in university/college (both undergrad and postgrad) study and in the workplace. I’d guess that many crawl devs work in the technology field which means they feel the effects of this daily.
If it isn’t already obvious to you why a lack of women in STEM is problematic for society, please refer to this talk.
There are numerous reasons for the female underrepresentation in STEM but several well-known and accepted ones distill into what I would call gender stereotypes. From birth, young girls have the idea transmitted to them by society that STEM is a male pursuit. Schools mostly focus on male scientists and the vast majority of scientists and experts on TV and in movies are male. I’m willing to bet that while most of you reading this would know many male scientists, you could only name 2-3 female scientists at best.
As a quick aside: for anyone who would like to learn more about some amazing female scientists, this list of Nobel Prize winners is a good start.
The unfortunate result of these gender stereotypes is that society ends up with a self-reinforcing system because females have so few role models. STEM becomes a sort of invisible career choice because it's supposed to be for males. Luckily, “research has found that the largest influence on female decisions… is due to controllable factors, such as encouragement and exposure…” (emphasis mine). Refer to page 13 of this report.
Scientists in crawl
Crawl doesn’t explicitly have “scientists” in the game but when it wants to refer to one it uses “inventor”. The most prominent one is the male unique Nikola who is very obviously a reference to Nikola Tesla. His description even includes a quote from Tesla himself.
Proposal 1: Change male Nikola to female Nicola or Nicoletta
This change will allow crawl to have a visible scientist who is female. The theme of the unique along with the description clearly quoting Tesla will still invoke the male, real-world scientist for those people who care about such things. For anyone who says it’s somehow unthinkable to change a real-world reference from male to female like this, I refer you to Sojobo who is the King of the Tengu in Buddhist mythology but the Queen of the Tengu in crawl.
The second most prominent scientist in crawl is Maxwell. While he is never shown directly, multiple unrandarts in the game refer to him. Maxwell’s Thermic Engine strikes me as a clever reference to James Clark Maxwell’s contributions to the field of thermodynamics but the rest are lazy and don’t seem to fit in any meaningful way. Take Maxwell’s Etheric Cage for instance: what does this have to do with Maxwell besides the fact that the item has a “sciency” feel?
Proposal 2: Change Maxwell’s Etheric Cage to Curie’s Etheric Cage
The item’s theme centres around harnessing magical energy and the resulting contamination. It's both beneficial and harmful to the user. I couldn’t think of a more perfect place to reference Marie Curie and have more female science exposure.
Some of you may say that crawl is only a video game that doesn’t influence what happens in the real world. Some might also push back by saying that social issues such as these are not worth thinking about here. To those people and arguments, I would counter that it doesn’t hurt the game to aim at inclusivity and social good.
Short version
Crawl probably shouldn’t have references to real-world scientists but if there must be, we shouldn’t be reinforcing harmful gender stereotypes by making them all male.