Gender in Gaming

            Not that I’m a sexist person who believes in male dominance, but when I was kid I couldn’t see gaming as an interesting hobby for girls. I usually saw girls interested in gossip, clothes, or celebrities. However as years went by, I have noticed a change gaming dynamics amongst males and females.

            In the past, video games were more associated to males. Males themselves considered gaming as a masculine activity. According to the article by Jo Bryce and Jason Rutter, “Most research has examined barriers to female access to technology, ICT use, and associated technologically mediated leisure activities such as computer use and computer gaming…From this perspective it has been argued that these technologies are associated with a highly gendered and masculine culture”[1]. Females were not tech savvy and didn’t consider technology as a true leisure activity.

            Hitting into the new millennium, females became more recognized as gamers. “…mid 1990s suggest that a large percentage of females of a comparable age range report playing computer games for approximately 1-2 hours a week…Colwell and Payne (2000) provide evidence that 88% of those 12-14-year-old females surveyed played computer games on a regular basis”[1]. As indicated, the percentage of female gamers and increased along with the hours these gamers play.

            With advancing technology, more ways of becoming socially active became available. One of the ways is virtual game space. Virtual game space is the online community of gamers who want to enjoy chatting and pairing off with friends. The space also had an increasing amount of female gamers. “For female gamers, the anonymity of virtual game spaces provides the opportunity to compete against male opponents free from markers of gender, and reduces stereotypical behavior towards female gamers”[1]. Females now had a reason and the chance to game like male gamers.

            Gender separation had been a problem in the past. Males and females had their own agendas. However, as video games were evolving, female gamers rose to the challenge of fighting to be as good as male gamers. In essence gaming, socially helped develop the female gender and put a crack in gender separation.

References

 [1]. Bryce, J., Rutter, J. (2003). Gender Dynamics and the Social and Spatial Organization of Computer Gaming. Leisure Studies 22. Retrieved from http://web.nmsu.edu/~jalmjeld/onlineidentity/readings/gender_dynamics.pdf