Survey says 59% of women hide gender to avoid harassment while gaming online Most women gamers are happy with portrayal of women in AAA and indie games, want better representation in ads
Brendan Sinclair Managing Editor Wednesday 19th May 2021 Share this article Share
59% of women hide their gender while playing games online to avoid harassment, according to a new survey.
Reach3 Insights and Lenovo today released findings from a survey of 900 women gamers in the US, Germany, and China about their playing habits and perceptions of how women are portrayed in games.
"A lot of the time I end up playing as male characters in MMORPGs so people don't realize I'm a girl," one woman explained. "We try to hide what we are so people don't flirt with us, send us stuff, send us messages we really don't want, or pictures."
77% of women surveyed said they had experienced gender-specific discrimination while gaming, most commonly with comments about their skills (70%), gatekeeping (65%) or patronizing comments (50%). 44% said they had "received unsolicited relationship asks."
While women reported poor treatment from their fellow players, they were largely satisfied with how they're depicted by developers.
80% of women gamers were happy with the representation of women characters in AAA titles, with 91% happy with depictions of women in indie games.
As for where there's room for improvement in the industry's treatment of women, 71% chose ideas to improve gaming ads, for example by showing more women, having women provide the voice-overs, or by showing women playing AAA titles.
Women gamers' fondness for "core" gaming genres was a theme of the survey, with 88% of women playing competitive games, 75% playing action/survival games, and 66% playing shooters.
61% of respondents also said they wanted to see game companies form all-women esports teams to compete at the highest levels.
Disclosure: GamesIndustry.biz was asked to participate in the creation of this survey and suggested a handful of questions.
pandaappleblossom on May 27th, 2021 at 05:58 UTC »
I definitely do this. At first I didn’t but then I realized I was getting bullied and harassed like crazy and it seemed like it must be disproportionate to the average gamer’s experience or else no one would be playing that game. So I changed my name to not sound as feminine and low and behold, I was treated like a normal person, except I was called ‘dude’ and such a lot.
eatyourpho on May 27th, 2021 at 05:44 UTC »
Literally just existing with an obviously female name in games is enough ammo for randoms to start flaming. I'm only surprised because I would think it's way higher than 59%
addicuss on May 27th, 2021 at 05:15 UTC »
Someone posted a screenshot of someone being insanely toxic in overwatch chat toward her, with the title "blizzard needs to do more to chat ban these people" on r/gaming. Pretty non controversial stuff.
The mods deleted the thread and banned her from the subreddit.