Three quarters (76%) of female gamers have disguised their gender while gaming, according to new research published on International Women’s Day 2022 today.
FandomSpot.com, a platform for fandoms and online communities, surveyed 2,000 female gamers across the world to discover common behaviours of women whilst gaming.
This followed the release of US statistics which found that women accounted for 45% of gamers in the US in 2021.
Of those who have admitted to disguising their gender, it was revealed that 93% of women did so due to experiencing sexual harassment online.
Additional findings from the survey discovered that despite making up nearly half of gamers, only one in five (22%) women feel fully comfortable chatting to other gamers through microphones whilst gaming, and a quarter (25%) of female gamers have stopped playing certain games due to online abuse.
The data tallies up with a similar report made last year, which found that 59% of women gamers (of 900 surveyed across China, Germany and the US) say they adopt a non-gendered or male identity to avoid harassment while playing online.
“We can’t lie, we were heartbroken with the results, and it was so sad to see that despite women holding such a strong place in the gaming community, so many of them have, and still are experiencing online hate due to their gender. Hopefully as more women make up the game population these stats will reduce dramatically.”
Alyssa Celatti, FandomSpot.com
When FandomSpot.com asked women if they would stop gaming altogether following any hate they’ve experienced due to their gender, the majority (87%) confirmed they would not leave the community, with nearly all stating they wouldn’t stop what they love doing as a result of any backlash from being a female in gaming.
Alyssa Celatti of FandomSpot.com said: “At FandomSpot.com we are proud to have an inclusive community of all ages, genders and race, who respects one another and bonds over their one true love – gaming.
“When we saw the national report last year that more females are gaming than ever, making up nearly half of all gamers in the US, we were overjoyed – and so ahead of this International Women’s Day wanted to talk directly with some female gamers to discover how they find the gaming community in 2022.
“We can’t lie, we were heartbroken with the results, and it was so sad to see that despite women holding such a strong place in the gaming community, so many of them have, and still are experiencing online hate due to their gender. Hopefully as more women make up the game population these stats will reduce dramatically, but we hope by sharing our findings, we can highlight to others what some female gamers go through to ensure any online hate such as this soon becomes a thing of the past.
“Despite all the awful findings we were positively surprised with how many women still game and hope to encourage as many women as possible to keep doing what they love.”
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Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
