Women and men are not the same and do not have the same interests. Women do not play the same games as men, as a whole, and do not engage in the same activities and do not have the same job preferences. Earlier it was mentioned that less women are in competitive esports. Less women typically play those types of competitive games. Although my girlfriend has good tastes in games, she usually plays very different games than I do, and almost never plays anything with a competitive element.
What's important isn't whether there's a 50/50 parity on gaming demographics, and I feel it doesn't even matter why that is; if it's due to social circumstances shaping people into having different preferences, well, that's OK. What's important is that people aren't excluded and that it's open to everyone. I feel the gaming scene is pretty open. I think a lot of the perceived hostility some claim is by far due to different social dynamics between men and women; men tending towards aggression are more likely to trash talk, and thus female gamers may take a bit of in-game trolling more personally than male gamers that understand that ribbing isn't always so serious, or are used to it when it is.
I used to play WoW when I was younger, and did trash talk a few women in the guild, but I trashed talked everyone, and they trash talked me. That was the culture of our guild. The reasons anyone ever got angry or were mean to anyone else were always due to performance or behavior. Gamers tend towards more libertarian and permissive attitudes and this idea that gamers are all a bunch of women haters is something being crafted by people with a very specific ideology and political agenda to bring attention to their causes.
I concur completely with Markus G. He couldn't be more right on the money.
Though that all said, I certainly do wish there were more female gamers and game designers. More perspectives bring more diversity in storytelling and different ideas.
