/ Cory Doctorow / 6:00 am Sat Jan 4, 2014

Representation of women in games and movies: the awful numbers


Catriona tumbled these enraging statistics about gender and representation in games and films for 2013:

Women make up 45% of the gaming community and 4% of the protagonists of the 25 biggest games of the year.

"Yes, but that’s still a minority! If more women played video games, there would be more reason to have female protagonists!"

Men make up 35% of the cinema audience and 84% of the protagonists of the 25 biggest movies of the year.

I think the bottlenecks in film and game distribution are the only thing that makes this kind of economically insane under-representation possible. That is, you could, in theory, make a hatful of money by making media with better balance in representation -- except that the idiotic old boys calling the shots at the top of the media have sewn up all the ways that your customers would find out about and buy your product.

Those bottlenecks are being shattered by the Internet. Whatever failings the DRM-laden digital distribution channels have*, they hold the potential to redress this dismal situation.

* These failings aren't just theoretical. The WC3 is about to add DRM to the very infrastructure of the Internet because Netflix demands it -- requiring that every computer that complies with Web standards will also have to be capable of disobeying and keeping secrets from their owners.

(Image: More sausages on the grill, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from 95268887@N00's photostream)