"I Am Not a Gamer": An Empirical Study on Women as Self-Identified Digital Gamers

• In Event: Beyond Lora: Female Gender in Games

Abstract

Women often deem to be outside game culture resulting in a low gamer identity profile. A nuanced and detailed examination of how gender identity and threatening experiences tap into their play practices has hitherto been lacking however. The present study fills this gap by examining how female players express a gamer identity and how this relates to perceptions of threat and stigmatization. Based on a large-scale survey directed at female players, a statistical model is specified taking into account how respondents attribute a gamer label to their self-concept. Results suggest that the cognitive, evaluative, and affective dimensions of female identity predict gamer identification in distinct ways. Moreover, rather surprising, perceptions of stereotype threat and stigma consciousness are positively related to women’s gamer identification. An opposite relation is however observed for women’s awareness of being stigmatized by male players.

Authors

• Lotte Vermeulen, iMinds-MICT-Ghent University

• Jan Van Looy, Ghent University

• Sofie Van Bauwel, Ghent U