Feminist Movement: Gamer Girls

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Recommended: Sexism in the gaming industry

A feminist movement in its own right has begun in the gaming community. Women are generally believed to be understand by members in many geeky, gamer or nerdy parts of today’s society. In the gaming industry women are statistical and cultural outliers. Gender stereotypes about girl gamers or ‘Gamer Girls’, the latter of which has begun to receive a negative meaning, keep many women from fully participating in the rich game industry culture. Female workers in the gaming industry get mixed signals from an industry that on the outside appears to desire gender diversity in order to attract the growing ranks of female gamers but on the inside it is resistant to change its sexist and discriminatory practices that make women feel singled out and alone. Females of the gaming community not only receive sexist and vulgar remarks from their male counterparts of the community but the very companies, making the games they love to play, single them out more than anyone else. Being that game development is a very male dominated job in the gaming industry it is understandable that women would feel a little advised not to pursue a career in gaming but the few women that do brave the doubts are met with criticism and dominating remarks. They are paid less than their male counterparts and are given less chances at promotions.

Women are looked down on in the video game industry, like many other ‘male dominated’ factions of society, mainly do to the poor numbers of women in high jobs of the gaming community. Female game developers make up only 11 percent of game designers and 3 percent of programmers, dramatically low percentages in the light of their male counterparts. The percentage of women as game developers are low even when compared with the br...

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...en with that holding them back many have rose to an almost prestigious ranks. In and out of FPS games.

Works Cited

Frum, Larry. "Nearly Half of All Video-gamers Are Women." CNN. Cable News Network, 01 Jan. 1970. Web. 13 Apr. 2014. .
Kessock, Shoshana. "#1ReasonWhy Brings Game Design Discrimination To Light." Web log post. Http://www.tor.com/. N.p., 28 Nov. 2012. Web. 10 Apr. 2014. .
"Major League Gaming." Major League Gaming. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Apr. 2014. .
Sarkeesian, Anita. "Damsel in Distress (Part 1) Tropes vs Women | Feminist Frequency." Feminist Frequency. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Apr. 2014. .

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