UC Merced Undergraduate Research Journal

The experience of female gamers in online gaming and gaming communities arecharacterized by a lack of social-emotional and organizational support, as well as prevalent general harassment and sexual harassment. Offline, negative stereotypes associated with female gamers and the lack of understanding from others towards women with video games as a hobbylead to the unwillingness of women to self-identify as gamers. Gender stereotypes, specifically, traits of male gamers being traditionally associated with gamer stereotypes cause the exclusion of female gamers and feminine traits from fair and normal treatment in the gaming community. In this contribution, the effects of existing gender stereotypes and misogynistic ideals present insociety on the gamer stereotype and gaming community, as well as the subsequent treatment of female gamers are examined. I conclude that only a multifaceted approach capable of addressing the aforementioned relationship between the larger society and the gaming world would beeffective in improving the overall condition and support for women in the gaming community. Additionally, I argue that the categorization and grouping of coping strategies used by female gamers in response to harassment online should be standardized into specific categories – taking into account previous methods of categorization grounded in both quantitative and qualitativeapproaches – to benefit future research.