Male Dominance in Video Game Production, Content, Consumption, and the Social World

• In Event: 136 - Open Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 05. Technology, Gender and Interaction

Abstract

While women have always played video games, it is only in recent years that the number of female players has rivalled that of men. Yet, numerical equality hides cultural understandings of video gaming as a masculine pursuit. This association leads to concrete consequences for women: the stories video game content tell about women are narrow and restrictive, and differences in engagement in gaming can contribute to overall workplace gender inequality.
I will use Griswold’s (1994) cultural diamond as a framework for conducting a qualitative study across the three cultural diamond points (producers, cultural object, and consumers), and how they relate to processes of male domination and gender ideologies at Griswold’s fourth cultural diamond point (the social world). To accomplish this, I will conduct individual interviews with game developers, qualitative textual analyses of games developed by these individuals, and individual interviews and/or focus groups with players of these games. In addition, I will supplement my qualitative work with a quantitative content analysis of a representative sample of video games released in the past year, and the gender breakdown of key development workers for these titles. Finally, I will outline the ways in which video gaming is positioned as a masculine pursuit in the larger social world, and identify structures which discourage women’s full participation in video gaming. My unique contribution will be to connect these findings into a comprehensive sociological study of how male dominance functions throughout all facets of video gaming, and its connection to gender inequality more broadly.

Author

• Amanda Jacqueline Turner, Temple University