How many women…? May 2014 update
by Gil Hova
A few months ago, I mentioned that I was tracking the genders of all my board game opponents for the year. Here’s a quick update of where we stand, now that we have a few more months of data.
We now stand at 71% male, 29% female opponents, over the course of 168 games and 502 opponents. If we compare playtests versus no playtests, the numbers don’t change much: I’m at a 69%M/31%F split for playing published games, versus 71%M/29%F split for playing prototypes.
This is somewhat encouraging to me; I’d gone into this project expecting a massive difference there, with many more men involved in playtesting games. It’s good to see that in the games I’ve played, I’ve had a similar percentage of women playing prototypes to published games. Of course, I wish it was closer to 50/50!
The real interesting thing is a new breakdown I’ve been looking at: what’s the gender split between playing in public (at conventions or in public game groups) versus private (at people’s homes)?
In public, I’ve played 117 games with 355 total opponents, and I get a 74%M/26%F split. Almost 3 out of 4 of my opponents are male. This seems to match up with empirical data I’ve heard from others; anecdotally, it seems that a 75% split is common..
But in private, the numbers change tremendously: In 51 games with 147 opponents, I get a 61%M/39%F split. It’s not quite 50-50, but it’s 13 percentage points closer.
The sample size still isn’t terribly large, and of course, this data only applies to games I’ve played, not you. But it’s a start, and it does start to back up my long-held hypothesis that there are a decent number of women who play board games; they just prefer to play in private.
Again, my methodology is not very scientific, and I don’t pretend that these results are conclusive. But it is a start at shedding light on this interesting topic.
Formal Ferret Games 
I’m quite glad you’re doing this. I think very few in ANY geekdom take the time to contemplate the census data of that data. I think it’s incredibly useful at pointing out choices we may be making or allowing others to make for us.
Because I’m more of a social gamer when it comes to tabletop games, it’s pretty rare that I play any game that isn’t 75-25 or 50-50 M-F. I have noticed, however, that the vast majority of my gaming is predominantly white, something that I do find somewhat troubling. It seems that, while nowhere near ideal, women are finding more welcoming, safe ways of getting into geekdom. I hope we can continue to make things better, and perhaps discover ways of opening doors to non-white players as well. I’d also love to see a day when non-hetero-normative geeks felt more comfortable gaming in public. Even in otherwise “safe” spaces, I’ve heard some dodgy things that make me want to pack it in from time to time.
(as a side note, I was playing D&D Encounters at 20 Sided Store last Wednesday, and while I think the gender ratio in the room was pretty solid at 75-25, at least three of the regulars are openly gay, and I was the only white player at my table. Encouraging.)
Yes, I’ve been reading about how women have been historically treated at conventions. And my old gaming group used to meet at a game store, which had all the welcoming ambiance and inclusivity of a junior high school boys’ locker room. It’s why I expect my data to show that women tend to game more in private than in public.
I don’t know of any real direct, impactful way I can help gender balance in gaming, but the next time someone tells me something like, “women don’t play board games” (true story on multiple occasions), at least I’ll have some data to refute him.
As for race, yes, I wish I could do that as well. But it’s a lot less convenient. I can work out gender for most people without having to ask. But race will usually mean asking a possibly-invasive question, and I’d rather do this kind of study invisibly.
Also, race is more squirrelly than gender; for example, “Hispanic” is not a race, although it would be relevant and interesting to my results. Also, most people identify with only one gender, but many people identify with more than one race. So it would take a lot more thought and work to properly handle that than what I currently have time for.
(Side note: you’ll notice that I say things like “most people identify with only one gender.” I know that there are people who are gender-fluid and prefer to not identify with a single gender. I haven’t played with any of them this year, so it hasn’t come up in my study yet. I do have a third column for gender-fluid, if it comes up.)
Finally, it’s good to see more diverse sexual orientations getting into the gaming scene. I know there’s at least one gaming group in NYC just for the LGBT scene, which is really great.