Gendered Barriers to Participation in Gaming Culture

Abstract

Existing scholarship on gender in gaming does not well consider social structural factors, instead either psychologizing gender issues or rendering it an insignificant variable altogether [1]. Thus, we aim to build on this literature by focusing our analytical frame on conditions of gaming environments that may spur unequal participation by gender. In this paper, we describe the variety of intersections that can occur between interest, gaming communities, and gender, as well as how these intersections impact womens' ability to interact and access the learning potential of these environments.