Women and Video Games

The complex relationship between women and video games has received extensive academic, corporate, and social attention. While composing close to half of the population at large, female gamers have traditionally represented a distinct minority of total gamers. 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 dearth of female video game creators (coders, developers, producers, etc.). Debate has also been provoked regarding whether the proper course of the industry should be to create female-targeted games in parallel with male-targeted games or whether gender-neutral games should be the ultimate goal. After decades of gender disparity among players, the gap between number of male and female gamers is today closing.

Socially, the term "girl gamer" has also received attention both from advocates who largely use it as a reappropriated term as well as from those that argue against its use by characterizing it as a counterproductive or offensive term. Stereotypes and generalities about the "girl gamer" as a figure of the gaming scene have become common within the video game culture.