New Report: More Women Play Console Games than Men

With all the talk of females in gaming and equal rights that were happening--a few months ago, honestly, it’s been awhile since that’s been a topical discussion--it’s easy to lose track of who said what and what’s exactly true. I, of course, have written on the subject a lot of times, but inevitably, when someone does bring it up, there’s always someone in the crowd/comment who dismisses it as unnecessary. After all, there are so few girl gamers and so many more males, why waste our time on this extremely small, quiet minority?

Well that’s always been wrong (there might be a minority of girl ‘gamers’ but it’s certainly not a small minority) but following a new report released by the Pew Research center, it’s wronger now than ever before.

The study looked at the number of adult Americans who owned video game consoles, and noted, unsurprisingly, that the number is only 4 out of 10. So the majority of people don’t own a dedicated gaming system--that’s not unusual. What is unusual, though, is what comes next: of the 40% of Americans who have a gaming system in their homes, 42% were women--and only 37% were men. What’s more, this didn’t count smartphones or iPads or other multi-functional devices--this was exclusively gaming devices.

That said, this still isn’t a perfect statistic--the Pew Research Center was quick to point out that women very rarely live alone--only 15% of them don’t have some kind of partner or roommate--so it’s very likely the number of gaming consoles actually owned by women is smaller. Possibly even much smaller.

Still. It’s there, and it’s as great an excuse for a misleading title as there ever was, so why not share?