Gender representation in fandom
From Fan History Wiki
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[edit] Actors
[edit] Anime
Anime fandom has historically been dominated by males. The shift toward a more equal gender representation is recent, fueled by the increased sales of manga to female readers and the failure of titles aimed at guys.
A February 2007 blog entry on Entertainment Weekly said that Cartoon Network, home to Adult Swim, is the "top cable channel among men aged 18-24 to 23 months — yep, more cereal-eating, pot-smoking, dorm-living homebodies watch Adult Swim than tune in to outlets like ESPN or MTV. Dude!" [1]
Based on the demographic data for Anipike and AnimeNewsNetwork, anime fandom, as of December 2007, is pretty gender balanced.
[edit] Gender composition in fan fiction
MediaMiner.Org is one of the larger anime multi-fandom focused fan fiction archives. As a representative of all anime fandom, anime fan fiction communities have a larger female population.
[edit] Books
[edit] Cartoons
[edit] Specific fandoms
[edit] Kim Possible
Based on demographic data for KPFanWorld.Com for February 2008, the Kim Possible fandom has a large male representation.
[edit] Comics
Comics fandom has historically been characterized as having a large male representation. This was highlighted by the gender composition of the writers at various comic book houses and the heavy male attendance at comics conventions.
Based on the demographic data for Marvel, comics fandom, as of December 2007, has greater male involvement than female involvement.
Sequential Tart is an influential comics site. Their audience, as of February 2008, skews more female with 43% of the audience being male. The audience though is about 40 times smaller than that of Marvel getting 8,868 unique visitors a month compared to Marvel's 557,569 unique visitors a month. How representative they are of greater comic fandom is up in the air, especially when contrasted to BATMAN ON FILM, an influential Batman fansite, lists audience as 90% Male, and 10% Female. [2]
[edit] Further discussion
- Wonder Woman Lassoes Her First Regular Female Writer in 60 Years: Wired, January 2008
[edit] Movie
[edit] Music
[edit] Politics
[edit] Science fiction
Science fiction has been a historically male community, putting estimates of the male representation of the fandom at ninety percent during the 1970s. Market forces reacted to this over representation of males by publishing female authors using initials and not revealing much about the author or some other way to not highlight that some authors were female.
[edit] Sports
Sports fandom has traditionally been an enclave for men and male fans. Where women tended to be a larger group was in fan fiction communities.
[edit] Further discussion
- Fiske, John. Researching Historical Broadcast Audiences: Female Fandom of Professional Wrestling, 1945-1960. Diss. Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 1997. 5 Apr. 2006.
- Schimmel, Kimberly S.; Harrington, C. Lee; Bielby, Denise D.. "Keep Your Fans to Yourself: The Disjuncture between Sport Studies' and Pop Culture Studies' Perspectives on Fandom" Sport in Society 10.4 (2007). 16 Jan. 2008 <http://www.informaworld.com/10.1080/17430430701388764>
[edit] Specific Sports
[edit] Baseball
According to newspaper reports, early baseball fandom tended to be dominated by afluent and middle class white men.
There was a demographic shift in terms of gender representation. In looking at the website for Major League Baseball for December 2007, 57% of the visitors were male.
[edit] Football
Based on the demographic data for the NFL's website, the football fandom has greater male participation.
[edit] Hockey
Based on the demographic data for the NHL's website, the hockey fandom has greater male participation.
[edit] Television
Men and women, in television fandom, tended to split their activities and/or fandom interests along gender lines. In the case of Babylon 5, men tended to be focused more on the creation of fansites, on collecting canon facts, and in being more involved on Usenet. Women tended to write fan fiction. When men entered some spaces dominated by women, they had to hide their gender. The inverse was also true.
[edit] Gender composition in fan fiction
According to quantcast, searches for fanfiction on search engines trend are done by more males than females as of December 2007. [3]
