March 31, 2021

Today, think back to early Blondie records 'cause "I'm On E."

A recent article in University Business exposes the little-known fact that college esports teams are predominantly male despite the heavy participation of females in the games.  

Apparently esports' popularity comes from about a 40% female demographic, and yet women receive less than 12% of college esports' scholarships.  Yes, you read that right.  There are esports' scholarships.

So the surprises here are in the scholarships and in the fact that so many females enjoy esports, not in the fact that colleges are manning their teams with men. Why would anyone have assumed anything differently?

Why? Because it's higher education, Dave, the paragon of social justice!

Think so?  Then beware this line from the article: "There is also a serious lack of oversight when it comes to how many women are on teams because there is no national watchdog like the NCAA or athletic directors to police it (since esports often falls outside of athletics)."  Uh, yeah, we can rely on the NCAA, which just did such a fantastic job showing its awareness of (or lack thereof) equity through the facilities offered for their women's basketball tournament and their men's basketball tournament. 

I will admit, I don't get the esports phenomenon. I like gaming, enjoy online role-playing gaming, but the idea of competitive gaming is a bit foreign to me.  Despite that, I am not surprised that the world of esports has evolved as a world of hesports and not particularly of shesports.  The second most telling line from the UB article is that "Women have always struggled to gain acceptance in competitive gaming, especially on the pro level, as men dominate global rosters and let women know about it with pervasive, sexist chat remarks."

Pervasive sexism (or any other ugly -ism) in a mostly eworld? Egad, who could have epredicted it? The e-xperience is one that provides a layer of anonymity. Let's face it, the world of hesports is more often a world of poor sports than the world of shesports.

The third most telling line comes in the quote from the chief executive at Liminal Esports: "The way that these programs have been built out, the games that they select to play, the esports models that they’re looking at, the people that they are staffing, all are replicating an unequal system.” 

Replicating an unequal system? Well, thank goodness, we only have such inequity in our gaming systems (x-box, please change your name to xy-box). Luckily our social systems overall are cutting-edge redefined systems in equity (please refrain from Googling anything related to the following: equal pay; sexual assault; U.S. soccer; glass ceiling; political representation; occupational segregation; reproductive rights . . . in fact, just don't even Google.)

Too bad the "e" in "esports" never had a chance to stand for "equal."