Still, your argument does gloss over a rather important fact: a "tendency" is a rather different animal from a "biological imperative". Certainly, behavioural tendencies do exist among genders, but there is a fair amount of evidence that these tendencies can easily be elimanated or even reversed subject to proper social conditioning. This in itself brings up an important point - how do we know that gender-based differences we see today are just socially reinforced versions of natural tendencies? It's entirely possible that some of the differences we observe are unrelated - or even run counter - to whatever natural tendencies may exist. Which brings us back to the same point - that the social arena would be a more worthwhile and productive focus than the biological. Hardcoded biology we can't do much about - we might as well give up now - but social conditioning offers much more leeway.
I agree with the majority of what you say here. However I disagree with the word "easily" in the second sentence. I think that if you look at lower life forms, such as mice, you still see the similar behavior patterns between the genders. Male rodents will often kill the offpring of other male rodents. Female rodents rarely do that.. Why???
You even admit yourself that hardcoded biology is nearly impossible to change.
However, I agree that if we want to increase the number of female gamers, the only thing we can effectivly do is focus on the social factors. I'm not sure that social factors can "easily" overtun biological tendencies, but I'll agree that they can. I just don't know how "easily."
Actually, though, I think that the better way to increase the number of female players, is to change the game to a more role-playing style. So far we've talked about how women tend to not like combat, but we haven't really discussed what men think of serious role-playing (opposed to hack-n-slash). Surprisingly, if you read these boards long enough, you will find a lot of guys who claim to prefer role-playing as opposed to combat (or munchkin style play). I think that shows that a role-playing game will still sell to guys, perhaps not in the numbers that a hack-n-slash game does, but I think it would work.
I think that if the only thing keeping women from the gaming table was social factors, women would represent more than 15-20% of the population by now. Gaming has been around for nearly 30 years. Yet it is still an uphill battle to get females involved. Why??
I think there is a deeper, more salient characteristic that keeps women from the game.
