Reclaiming the “F-word”: Structural Feminist Theories of Leisure

Valtchanov, Bronwen L.; Parry, Diana C.

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-56479-5_32

Cited by 11 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 15 publications

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“…The masculine dominance of esports is likely due to social and historical forces rather than sex-or gender-linked potential (as described in esports by Prescott, 2014;Taylor, 2012; and in other leisure spaces by Henderson, 2013;Valtchanov & Parry, 2017).…”

Section: Factors Contributing To Women's Underperformancementioning

confidence: 99%

Novice Women Players Have Better Outcomes in Women-Only Versus Mixed-Gender Esports Tournaments

Nolla

Beeman

Reber

et al. 2023

Journal of Electronic Gaming and Esports

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Competitive video gaming or esports is a field with the potential for gender-equal competition. However, esports is dominated by cisgender men at both the casual and professional levels. When a field is highly gender-imbalanced, gender minority groups tend to perceive the field as unwelcoming, which reduces interest in the field and further perpetuates unequal participation. One potential pathway to encourage interest and participation is the creation of gender-specific spaces, such as women-only tournaments in esports. To study the group effects of gender on tournament experience, we recruited cisgender women who were novice gamers for in-laboratory, one-on-one esports tournaments under two conditions: in women-only tournaments or mixed-gender tournaments with equally novice cisgender men. Our results show that in matches between men and women, women underperformed against men regardless of whether her opponent had played more often, less often, or equal to her in the past year. In addition, women who played in women-only tournaments gave more accurate estimates of their skill and reported greater task importance than women who played in mixed-gender tournaments. In practice, women-only tournaments may aid recruitment and retention of women in esports as a supplement to gameplay in mixed-gender competitive spaces.

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