Female Gamers

Some demographic on female gamers:

Nielsen breaks down computer players by age and gender, revealing some interesting nuggets. Women in the 25 - 54 year old group made up the largest percentage of computer video game players. Men in the same age bracket came in second. Women age 55 and up came in third.

Mostly, all these groups played Windows Solitaire and other free titles included with the operating system. World of Warcraft, a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG), is the most popular non-card game title, as measured by number of players. Nielsen figures about 1.2 million male players in the US along with 600,000 women played World of Warcraft in December, 2008.

While women showed the strongest numbers in "casual" game areas, young men still dominated in the more "hardcore" games like the latest Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 titles.

-from here

According to a Nielsen Company study last April, almost 50 percent of all PC gamers are female, with hit PC titles like The Sims played primarily by women.

In NPD's Gamer Augmentation 2009 report released today, the industry-tracking group revealed new figures that show 28 percent of all console video gamers are female in 2009, up from 23 percent last year. NPD attributed the five-point rise to the Nintendo Wii, which it believes has attracted a large number of new female gamers. It reports that Wii usage has increased by 19 percent from 2008 for all demographics.

At the 2007 Women in Games Conference, Electronic Arts VP Sharon Knight said that the Wii is attractive to female gamers because of the console's accessibility.

"The Wii levels the playing field," she said. "You don't embarrass yourself--you can grab it and right away start having fun. ... [Wii games] don't require the same investment to learn and to master how to pick up and play [as other consoles' games]."

-from here

It was also a common stereotype that men predominated in video game consumption but the numbers are now evening out as 2 out of 5 gamers are female.

Gamer is broad term so let us look at the breakdown of gender versus console preference. Females just love Nintendo’s Wii with 80% saying that it is their primary console, or console of choice. Just 11% play Microsoft’s Xbox360 and even fewer (9%) play Sony’s Playstation3. Males are more divided in terms of console preference. 41% still play the Wii primarily but fully 38% prefer Xbox and 21% like the Playstation3.

-from here

One of the common statistics often cited by video game industry trade groups is that the average age of a gamer nowadays is around 30 years old. What you might not know, however, is that among game players between the ages of 25 and 34, women far outnumber men, according to a new study by the Consumer Electronics Association (as reported in The New York Times).


The CEA study found that 65 percent of women in the 25-34 age bracket play video games, while only 35 percent of men in that group said that they play video games. Apparently, the key factor involved with these findings is the increasing popularity of casual games, especially among women.

Women were found to be slightly less likely than men in the 25-34 bracket to play traditional console games on systems like the PlayStation 2 or Xbox, while they gravitated more heavily towards simple types of games like Tetris or other puzzle games and card games like solitaire. These casual titles are typically found on web portals like Yahoo!, AOL Games, PopCap Games, EA's Pogo.com and elsewhere.

[...] Of the three hardware makers Nintendo is the only company that has gone out of its way to create unique titles for "non-gamers" and gamers outside of the typical core market — e.g. Nintendogs and Brain Age. With games like these and the simple, intuitive Revolution control scheme, it's clear that Nintendo is looking to leverage the casual market.

[NOTE: That was before the Wii was on the market and called Revolution. And the focus on casual games worked]

-from here

Study 1 found that young German women prefer rich social interactions in computer games, which most available products cannot offer, and also revealed the women's dislike of violent content and heavy gender-stereotyping in the presentation of characters.

[...] Overall, the findings contribute to an explanation of the substantial gender gap in computer game involvement. They also call for further theoretical discussion in entertainment research: Current explanations of why playing video games is fun (e.g., Klimmt, 2003; Vorderer & Bryant, 2006) need extensions to account for gender-specific models of pleasure. If competing, winning, and being a violent superhero do not appeal to women to the extent that they appeal to men, several mechanisms of enjoyment that have been proposed, such as pride in success and identification with attractive role models (e.g., Klimmt, 2003), should be reconsidered. Most importantly, the pleasures of social interaction with game characters, and with other players as well, require more attention in theories about (interactive) entertainment. The studies reported indicate that further gender-specific refinements are needed in entertainment theories and entertainment research in general.

In addition, differences related to frequency of game use among players should be added to the gender comparison. For example, research suggests that males who play games infrequently more closely resemble the stereotypical female game player in their preference for less violence in games (AAUW, 2000; Kafai, 1998).

-from here

Sentencing disparities in child-sex-assault cases point to double standard - The Denver Post

No surprise here:

A Denver Post analysis of sentencing data provided by the Colorado Judicial Branch shows that of the 2,128 men convicted of sexual assault on a child by a person in a position of trust from 2006 through 2010, more than 50 percent were sent to prison.
Of the 79 women convicted of the same felony offense, 38 percent went to prison. A little more than 39 percent of female defendants in that same period — 31 — were put on intensive supervised probation. Less than 35 percent of men were given the same sentence.

[...]Several studies show that males molested by female caregivers run a huge risk of becoming sex offenders in adulthood. Also, 80 percent of male victims of female sexual abuse have been divorced, according to a study done by Stephanie Reidlinger, a law student at Regent University School of Law in Virginia Beach, Va.
Her study says that women who molest boys are most likely victims of abuse themselves. Reidlinger also says that many cases of woman-on- boy crimes are not reported at all, due in part to the media.

Survey: Women get more value out of college than men do | Reuters

Some interesting findings:

Some 77 percent of respondents in a Pew Research Center survey said it was necessary for a woman to go to college to get ahead in life, while only 68 percent said the same for men. [...] Pew said women surpassed men in educational attainment in 1992, and the gap has continued to grow. In 2010, a record 36 percent of women ages 25-29 had earned a bachelor's degree while only 28 percent of their male counterparts had done the same, Pew said.

The same gender pattern was found across racial and ethnic groups, Pew said, with the widest gap within the black community. [...] Half of all women who have graduated from a four-year institution say it was money well spent, while just 37 percent of male graduates would agree. [...] Large majorities of both women and men said college was not affordable for most people, according to the survey. When it came to footing the bill, some 40 percent of women said their parents wrote the check to cover college expenses compared to 29 percent of men.

The Actor and the Observed, Man and Woman

Kudos to Typhonblue on that one who linked to this article and started an interesting discussion:

A recent study by Marisa Bortolussi, Peter Dixon, and Paul Sopčák (2010) was about the effects of gender on reading fiction in Canada and Germany, but the results are best explained in terms of actor-observer differences.

The influence of gender on reading is a perennial question because it’s invariably found that more women than men read literary fiction. In the most recent large US survey by the National Endowment for the Arts (2009), which had 18,000 respondents, it was found that 58% of women had read a play, poetry, short-story or novel during the previous year, as compared 42% of men.

Bortolussi et al. selected four passages, each of about 1000 words, from contemporary novels, two with male protagonists, and two with female protagonists. For each passage with a male protagonist, they wrote a version of the same passage with a female protagonist, and for each passage with a female protagonist, they wrote a version with a male protagonist. They prepared versions in English (for the Canadian readers) and in German (for the German readers). Previous research has tended to find that males tended to prefer male protagonists and females to prefer female protagonists. With their clever manipulation of assigning people to the same stories but with different-sexed protagonists, Bortolussi and her colleagues found both male and female readers—in Canada and Germany—preferred male protagonists. That is to say: both males and female readers agreed more strongly with an item that stated, "I feel I can understand and appreciate the main character and situation of he story," and one that stated, "I would like to continue reading to find out what happens next in the story," when the protagonist was male as compared with being female.

The researchers explain this effect in terms of the actor-observer bias. In general, say Bortolussi and her colleagues, men in Western societies tend to be seen as acting in response to circumstances ("he did what he had to") whereas women tend more often to be seen in terms of their personality ("she behaved emotionally"). Thus, for both men and women, our social stereotypes make it easier in stories to understand and to identify with a male protagonist, the kind of character who acts in response to the situation he is in, than with a female protagonist, the kind of character who acts because of her personality.

Men seek beauty, women want wealth - Telegraph

Men seek beauty, women want wealth - Telegraph:

The new research confirms that, while humans may pride themselves on being highly evolved, men really do go for an attractive mate - though will make do with someone who falls somewhat short of this ideal - while women - apparently understanding this - adjust their desire for a "high-quality" mate according to how attractive they perceive themselves to be. In other words, beautiful women want rich men.

That is the conclusion of research published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Peter Todd, of Indiana University, Lars Penke, of Humboldt University, Berlin, Barbara Fasolo, of the London School of Economics, and Alison Lenton, of the University of Edinburgh.

Mr Todd said the problem with earlier work that suggested that likes attract was that the scientists had simply asked people about preferences while today's work showed what they actually did in a real world setting - a commercial speed dating operation with 46 people in Munich.

[...] "We found that what men and women say they want is not the same as what they actually choose and that the actual choices made by men and women accord with a rough evolutionary-predicted trade-off, in this case between men's overall mate value [combining their wealth and status, family commitment and health] and women's self-perceived attractiveness," said Mr Todd.
Women dominate this trade-off, he said, because "men are much less discriminating".

Although people may claim otherwise, beauty is the key for men, since it signifies "good genes", while women, the choosier of the sexes, leverage their looks for security, fitness and commitment.

"Ancestral individuals who made their mate choices in this way - women trading off their attractiveness for higher quality men and men looking for any attractive women who would accept them - would have had an evolutionary advantage in greater numbers of successful offspring."

Smell and social behaviour

Two interesting studies:

Gender differences and similarity in personality and social behaviour Ros Barnett (2004)

Over a wide range of personality and social variables, there is much evidence of gender similarities. For the Big Five personality dimensions, there is no gender difference in openness to experience (d=.03) and small differences in conscientiousness (-.13), extraversion or gregariousness (-.14), and neuroticism (-.25); there is, however, a large difference in one aspect of agreeableness, termed tendermindedness or nurturance (-.97). The gender difference in self-esteem is small (.21). Likewise, there are many gender similarities in the realm of social behavior. The direction of the gender difference in helping behavior depends largely on the situation. In small groups, men and women are similar in their instrumental and expressive behaviors. The gender difference in democratic vs. autocratic leadership style is small (-.22 for democratic style). The research evidence does not support popular media claims about enormous gender differences in language use. The gender difference in self-disclosure is small (-.18). There are several exceptions to this pattern of gender similarities. Gender differences are moderately large for aggression (.50), smiling (-.63), and sensitivity to nonverbal cues (-.52).

And...

Scent of a Woman: Men’s Testosterone Responses to Olfactory Ovulation Cues

Women around the world spend billions of dollars each year on exotic smelling perfumes and lotions in the hopes of attracting a mate. However, according to a new study in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, going "au natural" may be the best way to capture a potential mate's attention.

Smells are known to be critical to animal mating habits: Animal studies have shown that male testosterone levels are influenced by odor signals emitted by females, particularly when they are ovulating (that is, when they are the most fertile). Psychological scientists Saul L. Miller and Jon K. Maner from Florida State University wanted to see if a similar response occurs in humans. In two studies, women wore tee shirts for 3 nights during various phases of their menstrual cycles. Male volunteers smelled one of the tee shirts that had been worn by a female participant. In addition, some of the male volunteers smelled control tee shirts that had not been worn by anyone. Saliva samples for testosterone analysis were collected before and after the men smelled the shirts.

Results revealed that men who smelled tee shirts of ovulating women subsequently had higher levels of testosterone than men who smelled tee shirts worn by non-ovulating women or men who smelled the control shirts. In addition, after smelling the shirts, the men rated the odors on pleasantness and rated the shirts worn by ovulating women as the most pleasant smelling.

The authors note that "the present research is the first to provide direct evidence that olfactory cues to female ovulation influence biological responses in men." In other words, this study suggests that testosterone levels may be responsive to smells indicating when a woman is fertile. The authors conclude that this biological response may promote mating-related behavior by males.

College Rape Accusations and the Presumption of Male Guilt

The important part:

OCR requires universities to render judgment using "a preponderance of the evidence" standard. This means that in a rape case, a campus disciplinary board of faculty, administrators and perhaps students serves as both judge and jury. Few if any of these judges are likely to have professional competence in fact-gathering, evidence analysis or judicial procedure. Yet to deliver a verdict of guilty, they need only believe that the accused is more likely than not to have committed the crime.

This is the lowest standard. It is much less demanding than "beyond a reasonable doubt," which is used in the criminal justice system, and the intermediate standard of "clear and convincing proof." Yale, Stanford and many other universities have rushed to comply with OCR's directives.

On campus, where casual sex is celebrated and is frequently fueled by alcohol, the ambiguity that often attends sexual encounters is heightened and the risk of error in rape cases is increased. The consequences for a wrongly convicted student are devastating: Not only is he likely to be expelled, but he may well be barred from graduate or professional school and certain government agencies, suffer irreparable damage to his reputation, and still be exposed to criminal prosecution.