Women and video games

The relationship between women and video games has received extensive academic, corporate, and social attention. Since the 1990s, female gamers have commonly been regarded as a minority, but industry surveys have shown that in time the gender ratio has become closer to equal, and since the 2010s, females have been found to make up about half of all gamers. Sexism in video gaming, including sexual harassment and the 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 females 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 term "girl gamer" has been used as a reappropriated term for female players to describe themselves, but it has also been criticized as counterproductive or offensive.

Female participation in gaming is increasing. According to a 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 balanced, mirroring the population at large.

In 2008, a Pew Internet & American Life Project study found that among teens, 65% of men and 35% 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 2013, 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 males aged 45 to 64 played games).

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