Women and video games

The relationship between women and video games has received extensive academic, corporate, and social attention. Since the 1990s, female gamers have commonly been regarded as a minority, but industry surveys have shown that in time the gender ratio has become closer to equal and since the 2010s females have been found to make up about half of all gamers. Sexism in video gaming, including sexual harassment and the underrepresentation of women as characters in games, is an increasing topic of discussion in video game culture.

Advocates for increasing the number of female gamers stress the problems attending disenfranchisement of females from one of the fastest-growing cultural realms as well as the largely untapped nature of the female gamer market. Efforts to include greater female participation in the medium have addressed the problems of gendered advertising, social stereotyping, and the lack of female video game creators (coders, developers, producers, etc.). The term "girl gamer" has been used as a reappropriated term for female players to describe themselves, but it has also been criticized as counterproductive or offensive.