TY - THES ID - 135416706 TI - How do Women Experience the Online Video Gaming Environment? – A Parallelization with STEM AU - Hayden, Blake AU - Murru, Sarah AU - KU Leuven. Faculteit Sociale Wetenschappen. Opleiding Master of Sociology (Leuven) PY - 2023 PB - Leuven KU Leuven. Faculteit Sociale Wetenschappen DB - UniCat UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:135416706 AB - The sociology of video games is but a nascent field on inquiry. As a result, the research on video games is often discordant, contradictory and inconclusive. Despite this, it has emerged that the status of women in the space is that of a cultural minority who face many harsdships as a result of status (Kuznekoff & Rose, 2012; Kuss, Kristensen, Williams & Lopez-Fernandez, 2022). These two factors combined mean that an investigation of the experiences of female gamers is potentially very interesting, and that the tools and frameworks developped by video game researchers will likely be insufficient to accomplish such a task. In this master thesis I attempt to resolve this issue by drawing on a much more developped and standardized field of research, namely that of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). STEM and video gaming both being male-dominated environments – either numerically or culturally or both) also allowed me to engage in a comparitive analysis to determine which parts of women’s experiences stem from the fact that they are in a male-dominated environment and which parts stem specifically from the video game environment specifically. To accomplish this task I performed an extensive literature review encompassing both the research on video gaming as well as that on STEM. Insights from research on STEM were then used as a framework with which to structure my thematic analysis (Makarova et al., 2016; Miner et al., 2019). Interviews were performed with ten women, transcripts were then analysed using a semi-inductive version of thematic analysis: some themes had been brought directly from research in STEM, while others emerged organically from the data. Results showed that while overall experiences followed the same structure, they are different for two fundamental reasons. Firstly the digital environment plays an active role in bringing out the worst in men, making their behavior more inappropriate or offensive than it would be in real life (Sproull & Kiesler, 1992, p. 42; Kiesler & Sproull, 1986, p. 411). Secondly, it was found that the status of gaming as a leisure activity actively prevents women from engaging in any kind of activism to attempt to alter the space for the better. To be clear, they are absolutely right, no one should have to fight for their right to exist while engaging in a hobby. However, this results in complete stagnation and a lack of progress meaning that women continue to suffer while simply trying to play video games. ER -