mr_orgue (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} mr_orgue) wrote in ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} gametime,@ 2007-03-13 14:20:00 |
|
| Entry tags: | gender issues |
Dragon Magazine Covers (6) - Gender Breakdown
We've looked at submissive and avatar figures as they divide between genders, but now we'll check out how they look *within* genders.
Important Note: On 15 March, after some useful discussion at the Paizo boards, I felt I had a better idea of what I should class as "submissive" and went back through my classifications to double-check them. As a result of this better understanding I changed 6 female and 2 male classifications to 'Neutral'. The following data and graphs have been modified to reflect this. Some minor amendments have been made to summary statements but in large part these statements were too general to reflect these small changes in data. As always, trust the numbers you see more than what I have to say about it.
There were 179 Dragon covers depicting men (Fig 15). Of these, 107 showed characters who might be appealing avatars, 16 showed submissive figures, and the other 56 were in neither category (I've called that 'neutral'.)
There were 126 Dragon covers depicting women (Fig 16). Of these, 49 showed characters who might be appealing avatars, 29 showed submissive figures, and the other 48 were in neither category (I've called that 'neutral'.)
The differences in proportional representation are very clear. Most men you see on Dragon covers are heroic (avatar-friendly) types; but only a minority of women appear in heroic fashion.
Breaking these down across the 350-issue history of Dragon magazine:
Males in Fig 17a and 17b (in 25-issue and 50-issue blocks respectively)
Females in Fig 18a and 18b (in 25-issue and 50-issue blocks respectively)
This shows that this gender disparity has not gone away over the years.
The distribution of male depictions has been pretty constant throughout, but female depictions have varied. For example, and to its credit, the recent (50 issue) era of Dragon has seen an increase in the presentation of women as appealing game avatars, as compared to the period before that, although still not at the heyday of around issue 100.
However, equality across genders is still a long way away - the proportion of women presented as submissive figures far outweighs that of men.
That was all the initial analysis I performed. There were a few suggestions made in comments that I intend to follow up on, and a few other bits and pieces to throw out, and some kind of concluding post will get made at some point...
Next: Conclusions
