Recent from talks
Women and video games
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Women and video games
The relationship between women and video games has received extensive academic and media attention. Since the 1990s, female gamers have commonly been regarded as a minority. However, industry surveys have shown that over time, the gender ratio has become closer to equal. Beginning mainly in the 2010s, women have been found to make up around half of all gamers. The gender ratio differs significantly between game genres, and women are highly underrepresented in genres such as first-person shooters and grand strategy games. Sexism in video gaming, including sexual harassment, as well as underrepresentation of women as characters in games, is an increasing topic of discussion in video game culture.
Advocates for increasing the number of female gamers stress the problems attending disenfranchisement of women from one of the fastest-growing cultural realms as well as the largely untapped nature of the female gamer market. Efforts to include greater female participation in the medium have addressed the problems of gendered advertising, social stereotyping, and the lack of female video game creators (coders, developers, producers, etc.). The terms "girl gamer" or "gamer girl" have been used as a reappropriated term for female players to describe themselves, but it has also been criticized as counterproductive or offensive.
In 2008, a Pew Internet & American Life Project study found that among teens, 39% of men and 22% of women describe themselves as daily gamers. This trend was found to be stronger the younger the age group. The study found that while adult men are significantly more likely to play console games than adult women, on other platforms they are equally likely to play. But even in this area, the numbers are moving towards equality: in 2012, Nintendo reported that half of its users were women, and in 2015 another Pew study found that more American women (42%) than men (37%) owned video game consoles. In 2013, Variety reported that female participation increased with age (61% of women and 57% of men aged 45 to 64 played games).
Female participation in gaming is increasing. According to an Entertainment Software Association survey, women players in the United States increased from 40% in 2010 to 48% in 2014. Today, despite the dominant perception that most gamers are men, the ratio of female to male gamers is rather balanced, mirroring the population at large.
A mid-2015 survey reported by UKIE indicates that 42% of UK gamers are female.
In North America, national demographic surveys have been conducted yearly by the U.S. Entertainment Software Association (ESA) since at least 1997, and the Canadian Entertainment Software Association of Canada (ESAC) since 2006. Other organizations including the Australian/New-Zealander Interactive Games & Entertainment Association (IGEA) since 2005 collect and publish demographic data on their constituent populations on a semi-regular basis. In Europe, the regional Interactive Software Federation of Europe (ISFE) and numerous smaller national groups like the Belgian Entertainment Association (BEA), the Nederlandse Vereniging van Producenten en Importeurs van beeld- en geluidsdragers (NVPI), and the Association for UK Interactive Entertainment (UKIE) have also begun to collect data on female video gamers since 2012. One-off market research studies and culture surveys have been produced by a wide variety of other sources including some segments of the gaming press and other culture writers since the 1980s as well.
Not only has the general female gaming population been tracked, but the spread of this population has been tracked over many facets of gaming. For more than 10 years, groups like the ESA and ESAC have gathered data on the gender of video game purchasers, the percentage of women gamers within certain age brackets, and the average number of years women gamers have been gaming. The ESAC in particular has gone into great depth reporting age-related segmentation of the market between both male and female gamers. Other statistics have been collected from time to time on a wide variety of facets influencing the video game market.
While 48% of women in the United States report having played a video game, only 6% identify as gamers, compared to 15% of men who identify as gamers as of 2015. This rises to 9% among women aged 18–29, compared to 33% of men in that age group. Half of female PC gamers in the U.S. consider themselves to be core or hardcore gamers. In 2012, an EEDAR survey found that nearly 60% of mobile gamers were women and that 63% of these female mobile gamers played online multiplayer mobile games.
Hub AI
Women and video games AI simulator
(@Women and video games_simulator)
Women and video games
The relationship between women and video games has received extensive academic and media attention. Since the 1990s, female gamers have commonly been regarded as a minority. However, industry surveys have shown that over time, the gender ratio has become closer to equal. Beginning mainly in the 2010s, women have been found to make up around half of all gamers. The gender ratio differs significantly between game genres, and women are highly underrepresented in genres such as first-person shooters and grand strategy games. Sexism in video gaming, including sexual harassment, as well as underrepresentation of women as characters in games, is an increasing topic of discussion in video game culture.
Advocates for increasing the number of female gamers stress the problems attending disenfranchisement of women from one of the fastest-growing cultural realms as well as the largely untapped nature of the female gamer market. Efforts to include greater female participation in the medium have addressed the problems of gendered advertising, social stereotyping, and the lack of female video game creators (coders, developers, producers, etc.). The terms "girl gamer" or "gamer girl" have been used as a reappropriated term for female players to describe themselves, but it has also been criticized as counterproductive or offensive.
In 2008, a Pew Internet & American Life Project study found that among teens, 39% of men and 22% of women describe themselves as daily gamers. This trend was found to be stronger the younger the age group. The study found that while adult men are significantly more likely to play console games than adult women, on other platforms they are equally likely to play. But even in this area, the numbers are moving towards equality: in 2012, Nintendo reported that half of its users were women, and in 2015 another Pew study found that more American women (42%) than men (37%) owned video game consoles. In 2013, Variety reported that female participation increased with age (61% of women and 57% of men aged 45 to 64 played games).
Female participation in gaming is increasing. According to an Entertainment Software Association survey, women players in the United States increased from 40% in 2010 to 48% in 2014. Today, despite the dominant perception that most gamers are men, the ratio of female to male gamers is rather balanced, mirroring the population at large.
A mid-2015 survey reported by UKIE indicates that 42% of UK gamers are female.
In North America, national demographic surveys have been conducted yearly by the U.S. Entertainment Software Association (ESA) since at least 1997, and the Canadian Entertainment Software Association of Canada (ESAC) since 2006. Other organizations including the Australian/New-Zealander Interactive Games & Entertainment Association (IGEA) since 2005 collect and publish demographic data on their constituent populations on a semi-regular basis. In Europe, the regional Interactive Software Federation of Europe (ISFE) and numerous smaller national groups like the Belgian Entertainment Association (BEA), the Nederlandse Vereniging van Producenten en Importeurs van beeld- en geluidsdragers (NVPI), and the Association for UK Interactive Entertainment (UKIE) have also begun to collect data on female video gamers since 2012. One-off market research studies and culture surveys have been produced by a wide variety of other sources including some segments of the gaming press and other culture writers since the 1980s as well.
Not only has the general female gaming population been tracked, but the spread of this population has been tracked over many facets of gaming. For more than 10 years, groups like the ESA and ESAC have gathered data on the gender of video game purchasers, the percentage of women gamers within certain age brackets, and the average number of years women gamers have been gaming. The ESAC in particular has gone into great depth reporting age-related segmentation of the market between both male and female gamers. Other statistics have been collected from time to time on a wide variety of facets influencing the video game market.
While 48% of women in the United States report having played a video game, only 6% identify as gamers, compared to 15% of men who identify as gamers as of 2015. This rises to 9% among women aged 18–29, compared to 33% of men in that age group. Half of female PC gamers in the U.S. consider themselves to be core or hardcore gamers. In 2012, an EEDAR survey found that nearly 60% of mobile gamers were women and that 63% of these female mobile gamers played online multiplayer mobile games.
Recent media