A recent article suggests that the number of girls playing games has increased to 41% in Australia. The article argues – as we have pointed out many times in this blog – that stores selling video games and makers of video games are not set up to please female customers. It is really surprising that companies have not realised that almost half of their customers are female.

The study also highlighted that women playing video games in Australia are now on average 28 years old, up from 24 years. The trend suggests that games of the future are not only as likely to be male as female but also older.

The article suggests that one way of responding to the increasingly female audience of video games is through having more female game developers. The figure the article quotes for Australia is 5% while the international figure stands at 12%. The picture is similar in computer science courses at universities and colleges where women make up only about 10% in the US as an article in USA Today states.

This is supported by the fact that the few women who enter science and technology professions are also likely to drop out as a recent contribution of Silvia Ann Hewlett in the FT claimed (I will review her Harvard Business Review article here when it is published next month). Hewlett argues that as many as 52% of highly qualified women in science, technology and engineering drop out due to work pressures and a hostile environment.

The IT industry can ill afford training few women and losing them in disproportionate numbers later on. However with more women actively using technology and playing computer games, one can hope that the image of technology jobs might change slowly.

On Wednesday I read an article in the Metro called ‘’. The article is based on a report produced by Gamesvision. This report claims that 23% of people aged between six and 55 play computer games and 41% of gamers are female. These are encouraging statistics.

The article argues that this is due to more women who join the labour force and program and develop games. The games have in turn become more realistic. This means that the busty Lara Croft went from a 36DD to a 36B. Well, she still fulfils the ideal of slender femininity and has still a perfect wais to hip ratio. However Lara Croft is now a bit more realistic than before.

This makes business sense for game producers. If they alienate half of their potential consumer market, it does not make sense to have stereotypical representations of women. Having more women programming games together with consumer demand might thus change the face of gaming or rather the representation of female characters.

A fascinating topic. The university of Warwick will host a conference on Women in Gaming from 10 to 12 September.