Ratio of male:female gamers (was forked "DDM: Chicks not in chainmail")

[pawsplay]

Forked from: DDM: Chicks not in chainmail

To go a bit further...

In my local RPGA club (population 40 or so members), I would imagine that the population is roughly normally distributed, with mean: 30 and standard deviation: 6 at a guess. In non math-talk, the vast majority of people in my club are between 20 and 40 in age.

The ratio of male:female club members is something like 10:1, give or take. Among the subset of club members who are regular DMs, the ratio is skewed back a bit, more like 5:1.

I've played in a few other cities with other RPGA clubs in the past, and the trends tend to be the same. Fewer females involved, but those who are involved tend to take more leadership roles.

Wizards, with their methodology, concluded the market is about 20% female (1:5):

RPGnet News

In my experience, both older gamers (active in the 70s and early 80s) and younger gamers (playing less than a year) are skewed more in the direction of male. I am going to guesstimate that for players who are under 40 but have been playing two years or more, 2:1 is about right.

 

[amysrevenge]

It's entirely likely that stable home games have a different ratio, but I'm reasonably well travelled among the "plays in public" crowd, and I stand by my 10:1 ratio for that particular portion of RPGers.

A 10:1 ratio means that for every two full tables, there is one female (well, 11:1 would be exactly that, 10:1 accounts for an extra girl now and then). Very much matches my experiences in Alberta, Saskatchewan, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Utah, Tennessee, and Wisconsin.

Of course, this is still not actually valid, as it's all anecdotal (and based on impressions and remembrances rather than actually counting).

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

In 30+ years of gaming, I've played in 3 states and 5 distinct metropolitan areas.

IME, males far outnumber females. Most of the games I've been in, regardless of genre, have been total sausage fests (IOW, no women at the table). I can count on 2 hands the number of female gamers who've participated in a campaign in my presence.

And oddly, one of those campaigns was female dominated. I ran a 3.XEd game for a couple of years that had, at its peak, 10 gamers (+ me as DM) in the group. Only 3 were men. Over the course of the campaign, players came and went (due to RW issues), but men never accounted for more than 40% of the group. (Not including me, of course.)

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

My current campaign has a 5:4 ratio of male to female participants. That's an outlier for me personally, though every long-term game I've run since 1994 has had at least one woman.

 

[SteveC]

I've found that there have been a lot more women getting into gaming in the last 5-10 years or even a bit further back.

When I was in college (the late 80s) I would have put the ratio at about 10/1. Our college gaming group have 50-60 members and we had maybe 4-5 women in it. Since then, with the arrival of White Wolf and the increased interest in Anime and card games, things have gotten much better, perhaps closer to 5/1 or even 4/1.

A few years ago I was the debate coach for my highschool team, and I was amazed at the number of women there who gamed, and didn't think anything of it. What has also been interesting is going to Gen Con: I've been there every year since, if I'm remembering properly, 1977, and the number of women who attend has been steadily increasing.

I think this is a great thing for the hobby, since a lot of the antisocial stereotypes that accompany gamers have a lot to do with the fact that there is an inequality of genders involved with it (at least in my opinion).

--Steve

 

[Kask]

10:1 seems pretty accurate.

 

[Harlekin]

Forked from: DDM: Chicks not in chainmail



Wizards, with their methodology, concluded the market is about 20% female (1:5):

RPGnet News

In my experience, both older gamers (active in the 70s and early 80s) and younger gamers (playing less than a year) are skewed more in the direction of male. I am going to guesstimate that for players who are under 40 but have been playing two years or more, 2:1 is about right.

Given that this should be one of the easiest thing to assess with a decent market research, I would believe Wizard's number.

Nitpick: 1:4 is 20%, 1:5 is 16.7%

 

[amysrevenge]

To be fair, in addition to only observing the "plays in public" crowd, I also really only have observed the "plays D&D in public" crowd, not the White Wolf crowd, or any other game that might swing more toward female participation.

 

[pawsplay]

Why should we assume the "plays in public" crowd is representative? We already know:

* Societally, role-playing is considered a masculine hobby. How would other people look at a woman playing with a group publically? Not that anyone is likely to go, "Check out that dude playing D&D, he's so cool," but if you are a woman, it's not an activity that is likely to be reinforced by others.
* There are plenty of male gamers who do not think female gamers should be playing with them; some have posted on these forums. What kind of experience can they expect with the unfiltered mass of gamers in general, many of whom may not feel the need to censor this opinion?
* Cons and such are already widely considered to be sausage fests. Apart from wondering whether they can relate to men who attend such events, women may have thoughts about what kind of attention they can expect.
* Childcare is not an issue. This means said gamer has no children, has a babysitter, or has their spouse watching the children. The majority of women are going to get married and many are going to have children. There is no guarantee their male partner is going to volunteer to watch the kids every other roleplaying convention while they go. Given the male majority, it's a safe bet that female gamers marry younger and more often than males.
* They have nothing better to do. Like, you know, go to bars and have people buy them drinks.

All of those are good reasons to assume that "public gaming" is going to be more skewed than actual gaming in people's living rooms.

 

[C_M2008]

Gaming in public is not a representative sample, the vast majority of people do not game in public. I've never met someone who has and everyone I've seen that does fits the stereotype to a tee. Every group I've been involved with has had at least one female in it in my 14 years of gaming thus far.

The number is only likely to go up, as things like videogames, MMOs and fantasy movies become more common place.

As it stands I'd wager the 1:4 ratio is accurate, it's closer to 1:3 in my experience, but you've got to account for the social misfits too.


*Everything in this post is anecdotal and yes I know it.