User:CelineCharlebois/sandbox

When it comes to the gaming community, research suggests that male gamers tend to be more problematic in comparison to female gamers. The behaviour and actions of men when seeing a female gamers profile, username, or hearing the sound of their voice has been known to give more of a hostile reaction than a positive one. A main reason for this negative reaction has been because gaming has typically been completely designed and advertised to and from men. Female gamers are also stereotyped into a category of not being considered a "real gamer", in the gaming community. Often in video games, women are over sexualized whether it is within the playable character selection screen or in-game activities. This repetitive trend can reflect a negative light onto women's reputation not only in an online environment, but also in the real world. Nicole Martins, Dmitri C. Williams, Kristen Harrison & Rabindra A. Ratan took this upon themselves to investigate the outlooks of the female body to the male gamers perceptions. In a 2009 study, 150 of the top-selling video games sold nationwide in the U.S. were analyzed to review the representations of the female body and how they were betrayed. When closely analyzing 150 video games, female characters bodies where captured via screenshot and measured by bust, waist, high hip, hip and buttocks. These results were then measured by against 3,000 American women and results had proven that female characters in video games are vastly exaggerated and over sexualized with thinner waists and larger portions of the human body that are naturally physically impossible. Due to the over-sexualization of the female body, males begin to look at a woman's body as an object and can affect the real-life perception and alter unrealistic, unreachable expectations of females.

Author Lavinia McLean & Mark D. Griffiths report that a large majority of female gamers typically experience harassment whilst playing any sort of online video game. McLean and Griffiths hosted a study that included 271 female gamers. The study suggested that females are most likely to get harassed when there is a type of lack of social support because they are playing online anonymously, alone and/or continuously moving to different groups with other online males.

Another study conducted by Carina Assunção, involved 291 women aged from 18-48 to discuss what their online experiences have been like. The questionnaire includes questions regarding their gaming habits, advantages, disadvantages and pleasures they take away from playing violent video games. The results had shown that the more hours these women spent playing violent video games, it is less likely that they will speak about their identity. Within this study it was found that women exposed to high volumes of harassment end up giving up the hobby of gaming as a whole due a negative development in their mental well-being. While other focus groups found that when it comes to their gender identity, females will typically avoid the topic as a whole in online or social settings.