The percentage of women in gaming?

[Thornir Alekeg]

Back when I first started playing we had 2 females and about 25 or 30 males in the group that gathered at the hobby store to play (8%).

The group I DMed a couple of years back had 3 females out of nine (33%).

My most recent group had 2 females in 6 (33%), but we lost one of the females to her grad school schedule, so we dropped to 20%.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I have had many female players over the years.

Depending upon the group, I've ran games for 0% to 40% female players, and would say an average of about 15-20% overall.

RC

 

[Ulrick]

The WotC survey (conducted in 1999, but copyright 2000) had the following percentages:

Tabletop RPGs: 19% female (specified as monthly players)

Computer RPGs: 21% female

Miniature Wargames: 21% female

Do you have a link to that survey?

 

[der_kluge]

The 19% figure above is probably pretty accurate, from what I've seen.

Go to Gen Con, stand by the dealer hall and count them as they enter.


The problem you're going to have is to find data supporting "growth" of female gamer populations. I doubt you'll find any relevant data from 10 or even 20 years ago to make such a claim.


Also, Gen Con sometimes has demographic information on their website for potential marketers. So, you might check there.

 

[IanB]

Across all groups I play in, I think we're at 4 out of 12 players.

 

[JDJblatherings]

I gotta go with 15-20% also.
My own group was running about 50% for years but we knew that was freakish. When our group went to tournaments /cons we usually ended up bringing half the women there.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I read somewhere, think it might've been an Edwards essay on the Forge, that in the 70s there were many women gamers but the proportion of females became a lot smaller by the 80s. I'm guessing this was purely anecdotal.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Arguably the most serious player in my Midwood campaign is a woman, but currently she's the only female player out of 10 players in two groups.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

In my time playing, it has been relatively low.

Before grad school, it was 0. During grad school I had one short-term player and my wife was a general long-term player at most of my games.

Now, the current group I am in is sort of "boys' night out" time so my wife bowed out so not to change the dynamic of the group. We are thinking of joining an additional group that both of us could do, and that group is, I think, made up of couples, and so evenly split male and female.

--fje

 

[Glyfair]

I read somewhere, think it might've been an Edwards essay on the Forge, that in the 70s there were many women gamers but the proportion of females became a lot smaller by the 80s. I'm guessing this was purely anecdotal.

I'm sure this is anecdotal, but I understand the observation. I expect he started in the 70s.

In my experience, most female gamers end up marrying (or otherwise forming long term attachments) other gamers. When it came time to have children the free time for the family was reduced. As the primary caregivers, the female players tended to cut back on their gaming more than the males and often dropping it completely.

I expect that once the children reached an age where they needed less care that those gamers followed a similar pattern of all "gane dropouts." Some of them came back to gaming, more of them never felt the urge or ended up with the appropriate opportunity. Those that managed to keep gaming at some level tended to stay.