Why are there no women on the CSM? There are certainly women players, doing all sorts of things. They’ve run mercenary corporations, they’ve run logistics companies, they head complicated production organizations, they’ve presented mass market management techniques at Fanfest. They know how to play the game and they do it rather well. Yet when it comes to the CSM, there isn’t a one to be found.
Or is there?
EVE Onion doesn’t care who is on the CSM, as long as they do their job. They can be any gender, any colour, any height, width or length, they can even be scary, purple and have eight arms. But, being EVE Onion, we’re all at about layers, and we wondered as well why there were no women. So we investigated and we found out, not only is it not true, but the old adage, “truth is stranger than fiction” exists in EVE as well.
EVE is often considered a model of the real world; perhaps even a better representation of it than life itself. However, in the real world there is still the challenge that not all are treated fairly. Sure, there are people who do not perform as well as their peers, but still believe they should get what everybody else gets even if the only comparison they might draw with the others exists in title alone. But there are certainly others, and for more reasons than just being female, that do not get a fair shake. Many anecdotes are bandied about. Many studies, biased and unbiased, are correctly quoted or brandished out of context. It’s such an important matter yet it’s given typical political treatment and, at best, survives as inflammatory or satirical fodder for politicians’ grandstanding or late night jokes.
Yet there’s one place, oddly enough, where such differences do not carry much weight: EVE Online. Oh, sure, the boys go all gaga over hearing a female on comms. Suddenly the conversation is cordial, perhaps a little risque, teasing, boastful. But when the FC calls comms and fecal matter hits the microwarpdrives, no matter your age, gender, race, or favourite soft drink, you are expected to do your job. You don’t even need to do it well. There will be time afterward to discuss tactics, lessons learned, and how we might do it differently next time. The bottom line is that everybody is judged by their actions, not the timbre of their voice. This reporter saw it first hand when two young ladies stood up at Fanfest 2017 to talk about how to run a market. Everybody shut up, leaned in, furiously scribbled notes, and gratefully expressed the 100% respect those two deserved as EVE players.
If there’s no general stigma, perhaps we’re simply not aware of some internal stigma? Maybe the old pirate superstition holds and no women are allowed on board? We took to the phones and started asking CSM members themselves, “What gives??”
We first caught Killah Bee. Actually, he called us. Obviously EVE Onion immediately suspects they have a spai. He seemed to be all for women on the CSM but mostly he kept trying to get us to bring up his twitch stream. It then occurred to us that he isn’t even on the CSM anymore so we hung up (also, the spai has been fired). We moved on.
We then spoke with Innominate. Quite frankly, he was as scary as his avatar. He kept yelling at us to “Get Off My Lawn”. We said, “Wrong alliance.” But nobody got it so we checked next on the list.
Merkelchen and Aryth had no comment. Not that they refused to say anything, after all, they did answer their phones. But we realized we heard The Mittani drinking water in the background so we assume that was the root cause. Gobbins’ right-hand man said he was busy thwarting the latest idiotic actions of CCP and if he had any comment on the matter it would be released inflammatorily and on Reddit as it should be. Dunk Dinkle said this was all new to him, and Steve Ronuken didn’t really know what to make of it.
We then realized that, perhaps we were outsmarting ourselves. Both Olmeca Gold and Vily have female avatars. Could it be this was some secret hint to the real woman behind the curtain? Might we have cracked the code and revealed, not one, but TWO women on the CSM?! We called them both, eager to reveal to our dear readers that (a little tiny bit of) diversity was not dead in the EVE Universe! Both answered! And both pretty much said the same thing. “Yeah, we’re totally the first guys to have created female avatars!” *click*
Damn.
At this point we were pretty much ready to rage quit on the whole article. It was looking like EVE had let us down (first time for everything, I guess). Just as this reporter was reporting to management that the article was a bust, Lillik asked, “What did Sort Dragon say?”
“Who? Oh, right! I always forget about that guy. Didn’t he accidentally get voted in on some technicality or something?”
“No idea. Just call him.”
So we finally got hold of Sort Dragon and put a big red dot next to “due diligence”. While spinning a half-complete 3D model of an Avatar I mumbled, “Hey, it’s EVE Onion, what do you think about no women being on the CSM?”
It was quiet for a minute. I checked to make sure the phone hadn’t hung up. Then there was a sudden pounding on the other end, as if a fist on a table. “Look!” blurted Sort Dragon, “I had to use a male avatar and use voice-enhancing software on comms! People don’t respect me in this game and the only reason I can figure that is, is because I’m a WOMAN!! I am the best FC there is! I am so good at running an alliance that people don’t even understand the level I operate at!! So creating a male avatar is the only way I can get the RESPECT I DESERVE!!!”
Sort actually went on for quite some time but we just put the phone down and did some mining. Well, dear readers, we are not sure if you are well represented by this well-rounded CSM, but at least we cleared up the mystery of why there appears to be no women on the CSM. Remember, this is EVE. We work a little differently than your average real life corporations. If you run into Sort Dragon, don’t give him her the respect a woman deserves, but the respect Sort Dragon deserves.
