Videogames are one of the many modern mediums that influence gender roles in society. As videogames are typically played by younger children and teenagers, there is a concern as to how gender representation in videogames may influence the “attitudes toward acceptable gender role behavior” (Beasley.) As there is a severe underrepresentation of female characters in videogames, as out of 597 characters analyzed, only 82 or 13.74% were women (Beasley,) it is vital to see how these small amount of women are portrayed.
According to this study, even though female characters were underrepresented, they are “proportionally more likely than males to be portrayed in a sexualized fashion” with 41% of female characters in a sexual image while only 4% of male characters were in a sexual representation (Ivory). In a comparison of clothing, sleeve length, neckline and bust size, females were more likely to be showing skin, wearing clothes such as tank tops and bathing suits that showed off cleavage.
It is a society preconception that males predominately play videogames, thus, most companies decide to market towards boys, which may lead to the oversexualizing and underrepresenting nature of females in the industry. However, the Ivory study brought up the idea that female sexualization was not discussed in the game reviews they used to collect data as often as it would be perceived, which raises the question, is the token sexy female character required to sell a game? If not, then why is this a continuing trend? As society as a whole makes progressive leaps forward, the videogame industry is slowly making itself aware of the gender representation it enforces.