Sexism in Tropico
I have been indulging myself in a computer game called Tropico recently, in which you can become a king of a small tropical island and control many many variables by creating industry, providing education, housing and food to the people, conducting an election, issuing diplomatic announcements etc...
In the game I needed more professors in a college, so I fired some female college- educated workers at a newspaper company so that they would start working in the college. After a while, I checked how it went by looking at the college, but there was still no one working there. I wondered why and read carefully the requirements to become professors. It says "college-educated male people" My reaction was 'Ahhh,' and then 'What!!!???' I have been very sensitive to gender-related bias in the real world, but did not notice there are interesting ones in Tropico until today. Then I checked the requirement for each job position. While college professors have to be male, high school teachers have to be female. Workers at hotels need to be female, but those at beach sites need to be male. What is more difficult to understand is why only women can work at power plants or newspaper companies.. Weird....
Anyways, Tropico is still my favorite game since it realizes, in a way, a dream of my childhood which is to become a dictator of a small country. But I am really curious why the programmers set these weird rules in this game...
Posted by sayaka at September 8, 2003 01:57 AM
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