Why Are There So Few Women in Wargaming?

"Why Are So Few Dental Hygienists Are Men?"

"A combination of a high barrier to entry and outdated attitudes keep men out of a profession where they could thrive."

I hope to see something like this on Wired someday.

I dunno, women may not like wargaming because women don't like wargaming.

I haven't gamed with any "seriousness" since the late 80's early 90's. But back then I was heavy in to "cardboard and hexmap" style war games, and would routinely go to the local conventions (of which we had, and still do to be honest, 3 or 4 per year in the area). I even volunteered at the conventions both for board games and RPG doing administration, security, and running games.

There was always a mix of men and women, boys and girls across the open gaming floor. But in the wargame tournaments, there were no women. At my college gaming club, there were no women.

It's not like they would show up and not come back, they simply never showed up at all. And we weren't some pack of graying grognards, we were just college kids. Engineering, architecture, psychology. This was how we'd spend our Friday nights, 5-6 hours in the science building playing everything from SFB to Nuke War to Illuminati. (We were not an RPG group, however.)

My D&D groups at the conventions were always a mix of men and women. The wargaming tournaments? No. Wall to wall men. I don't even recall many women just hanging around.

It's hard to believe there was any exclusionary behavior when they weren't showing up to even have the chance to be excluded.

Squad Leader, Star Fleet Battles, the 18xx railroad games. No.

Rail Baron, Talisman, even Titan. Yes, sometimes.

When Origins (national board game convention) came to town, I was invested in the SFB tournament. Bunch of our members were there, and it was a very large tournament with national recognition (one of our guys almost won - worst streak of rolls, even his opponent was dismayed). But no women.

The one time a women showed up at a Star Fleet Battles tournament, she was instantly surrounded by folks willing to engage her and answer her questions. She was just interested, she wasn't there to play (she didn't know how). Over reaction of the guys in the room? Perhaps. Negative? Not in any direct sense. Crowding, claustrophobic, maybe (she was surrounded by 5 or 6 players). They were all helpful and welcoming.

However, there's a detail to that encounter -- she was trans. This was 1990ish, and she was definitely transitioning. Some, perhaps, thought that maybe she was trolling the group. It was odd for a women to walk in to our gaming room, much less one that was actually interested in pushing little cardboard squares with starship silohuettes around. And here was a this "guy", "dressed up", that showed up. The folks helping her didn't seem to care one way or the other.

I don't know why wargaming didn't seem to appeal to attract women back then. But in the several years I went to these, both in front and behind the scenes, they weren't turned away as far as I could tell. I know my group wouldn't have done that.

I hate Wired, it's the same kind of "storytelling" that other publications like to manufacture, only applied to topics I care for. You can't trust anything about them (even if they feel intuitively true) because they ignore or modify anything for the narrative.

> her Warhammer knowledge slyly tested by dubious men who felt the need to vet their non-male adversary

An infuriating thing - but no mention of how Wired came to know the motives of these dubious men. Presumably the unchallenged opinion of Ostrander, but even that is something you have to guess from the mishmash of direct quotes and paraphrasing.

I'm sure Games Workshop is concerned that their customers are stale, pale, and male.

But I'm not sure you can greatly expand the audience for wargaming without destroying what it fundamentally is.

When entire classes of hypotheses are not allowed to be discussed, we will be perpetually confused by things like this