Paging Dr. Summers

Clean-up on aisle three:

A quarter-century after women became the majority on college campuses, men are trailing women in more than just enrollment.

Department of Education statistics show that men, whatever their race or socioeconomic group, are less likely than women to get bachelor's degrees — and among those who do, fewer complete their degrees in four or five years. Men also get worse grades than women.

And in two national studies, college men reported that they studied less and socialized more than their female classmates.

Small wonder, then, that at elite institutions like Harvard, small liberal arts colleges like Dickinson, huge public universities like the University of Wisconsin and U.C.L.A. and smaller ones like Florida Atlantic University, women are walking off with a disproportionate share of the honors degrees.

Kevin Drum thinks the phenom can be attributed to the male addiction to video games. I suppose this would be plausible, 'cept that ...

A consultation paper on women in gaming, prepared for the UK games trade body Elspa, highlights how women are increasingly interested in video games.

Traditionally, games have been aimed at men, but researcher Aleks Krotoski found that the situation is changing.

"The technology has got to a point that the product that is being made is more interesting to women," she said.

"More women than ever before are playing games."

And ...

The U.S. survey, conducted during December 2003 and January 2004 by Digital Marketing Services (DMS) of more than 3,600 individuals who have played online games within the last three months, revealed that a significant portion of 40-something women used gaming almost daily as a way to relieve stress, increase skill levels and inspire social interaction. While only 22 percent of teens admitted to playing games every day, 41 percent of 40-something women were daily gamers.

[...]

Word and puzzle games were most popular with the women over 40, with 49 percent preferring them over casino (27 percent), arcade (16 percent), trivia (7 percent), and sports (1 percent) games. The 40-something women were also more likely to take their online gaming friendships offline at 21 percent. Only 7 percent of teens were likely to pursue gaming friendships outside of the computer, and 9 percent of males have sparked romantic interest via gaming.

And

Historically, the video game market has been predominantly male. However, the percentage of women playing games has steadily increased over the past decade. Women now slightly outnumber men playing Web-based games. Spurred by the belief that games were an important gateway into other kinds of digital literacy, efforts were made in the mid-90s to build games that appealed to girls. More recent games such as The Sims were huge crossover successes that attracted many women who had never played games before. Given the historic imbalance in the game market (and among people working inside the game industry), the presence of sexist stereotyping in games is hardly surprising. Yet it's also important to note that female game characters are often portrayed as powerful and independent. In his book Killing Monsters, Gerard Jones argues that young girls often build upon these representations of strong women warriors as a means of building up their self confidence in confronting challenges in their everyday lives.

Me? I blame Title IX.

Comments

[JackGoff]

DAMN! Women are getting smarter, boys! Society's going to hell, and how!

So, is there an actual problem here, or am I just missing the point?

[JackGoff]

And, by the way. We should be graduating many more women than mean, simply because women are a larger portion of the population.

[JackGoff]

mean = men

[SimoneDB]

Looks like male privilege has seen its day. Only not really. Even though men don't graduate in as timely a manner, with as many honors as women, they still make more money!! And that perhaps is worth analyzing.

[Brandon Philips]

Re: SimoneDB

Perhaps the socializing pays off?

The old saying: "It's Not What You Know, It's Who You Know"

[Zak]

Wow. This is just incredible. These articles you have written are composed very, very well. I agree with almost all of your topics and comments, but of course I'm still just a teenager. This is a good site even being a male i do support dominance in females because it's true throughout nature, the male always performs or is trying to attract the females. Women shouldn't have to be "sluty" or do degrading things like sex acts or anything, men should just stop bitching and let them have their pick of us.

Well, have a nice day.

Love,
Me