What is the woman's role in the gaming industry?
It has been common for men to talk incessantly about video games while the women seemingly get bored or agitated the moment the topic is raised. Despite the narrowing gender divide, females still find the games industry leaning favorably towards males which is why the hashtag #1reasonwhy was created.
The hashtag was introduced on November 27, 2012 by Filamena Young. Young collaborated with Jessica Citizen, a games writer and then the two started discussing the reasons why there are only very limited number of female players around.
Twitter users immediately adopted the trending hashtag. There were posts discussing their favorite characters and why most playable figures in games only come in male versions. Others shared how playing time interfered with their work, family time and other productive activities. There were also a number of game developers who shared their expertise and talked about different features of certain games.
In particular, men denied the allegations, stating that games are actually general, catering to both men and women. Of course, the ladies naturally responded, citing the different reasons why the imbalance is existent and evident.
One of the thrusts of the hashtag #1reasonwhy is to increase awareness and to get more online users and gamers involved to hopefully strike a balance whenever gaming companies and developers churn out new games.
Hopefully, #1reasonwhy will be one of the reasons why the gaming industry will identify with women more.
Here's the activity on #1reasonwhy at its peak.
Courtesy of Hashtags.org Analytics
Changing the perspective of people towards women will also effectively pave the way to eliminating sexism in other areas. Many online users call out to others to keep the hashtag open and running to identify the various problems pertaining to gender in the gaming industry and to encourage game-makers to improve the quality, content and approaches of their creations, particularly the more famous ones, to entice more female players.
Courtesy of Hashtags.org Analytics
