Toys for Boys? Women's Marginalization and Participation as Digital Gamers

This paper develops out of ongoing research into the location and use of digitalgaming in practices of everyday life. Specifically this paper draws on aquestionnaire based survey of just under four hundred undergraduate students andtwenty-three follow up interviews. This paper suggests that the women in thisresearch play digital games significantly less than their male counterparts, andsuggests that this is largely due to digital games continuing to be viewed, bothculturally and by the gaming industry, as belonging to men. However, this papersuggests that for some women video and computer gaming can be an importantsocial activity, and for others mobile telephone based gaming can offer a lessrestricted and more accessible leisure activity.