Gender Disparity In Video Games

Gender disparity in video games is a topic that both scholars and major gaming icons have discussed before. However, the topic recently resurfaced with the upsurging population of female gamers. For the majority of history video games were associated with males. Therefore, the integration of females was a spectacle that caused a massive culture shock. Many members of the gaming community were unsure how to handle the change and took to discriminating females. While discrimination may seem unimportant, many scholars and icons believe it is a prominent factor of gender disparity: an environment which typically favors males, a hostile or “toxic” atmosphere, and repeated stereotypes all manifest certain behaviors of both genders that can cause

She starts her article with a collage of screenshotted statements from male gamers to female gamers. Each statement contained some sort of threat, sexual comment, or discrimination towards the women in which they were directed. Prior, Christopher Rosen took notice to the problem as well. Dinwiddie supported Rosen’s evidence as she displayed both the collage of screenshotted statements and mentioned Sun-Higginson’s 2015 documentary GTFO akin to what Rosen included in his testament eight months before. These authors speak to each other claiming there is a disparity between males and females in terms of treatment. However while Rosen focuses on female gamers in the competitive gaming community such as Miranda Pakozdi and a panel at the popular PAX East Gaming Convention, Dinwiddie focuses more on the layout of the game. One piece of evidence Dinwiddie uses in her article is an infographic published by the developers of League, Riot Games. In the infographic section of “Who Plays” shows that 90% of players were male (Qtd. in Dinwiddie). However, Dinwiddie supports that astounding statistic to show that due to this audience base, the game also has a platform catered to males. She uses the example of the microtransaction commonly referred to as a skin. A skin can be bought with real currency to alter the

In Feng’s paper, she took a more analytical route noting that video games improved gender disparity in spatial cognition. Other authors including Ratan and his colleagues mentioned the benefits of spatial cognition in their articles. However Feng narrows in on why decreasing the gap is so beneficial, “Superior spatial ability is related to employment in engineering and science (McGee, 1979), and females, who typically score lower than males on tests of spatial skills, are underrepresented in these fields, with worldwide participation rates as low as one in five.” (Qtd. in Feng). Feng deducts that without video games there is a huge gap in performance between males and females when it comes to spatial cognition which in consequence leaves females with a lesser chance to get into engineering and science fields. However, she testifies that with females’ spatial ability increasing due to video games that gender disparity is now becoming smaller allowing the same opportunities to become available to more people. This refreshing view reverses the conversation to not only look at how gender disparity only affects gaming, but how gaming also affects gender