I have a bunch of hobbies, which range from female dominated to a solid mix of participants. However, for a hobby that has a good number of both men and women involved, there seems to be a gap in the participation and achievement levels in a way that mostly alings with gender. A friend of mine mentioned we would have to look at how men engage with hobbies.
Do you feel that the ways men and women engage with hobbies generally, but especially when they share the same hobby still differs?
I think each hobby and person is going to have some different nuance to this, but in general I think there’s a split. Physical hobbies where one is face to face with peers are more likely to be engaged in similar ways if there’s mixed genders, I think. Co-ed community sports are generally going to have the same vibe from place to place and from gender to gender, or community gardening, volunteering, etc.
However where I think things are much more likely to be different is when one can hide behind the anonymity of the internet. Gaming is hugely divided by gender and how one interacts with things because of that (and age, partially). I feel like if social media or reddit is considered a hobby, then that’s going to have similar divides between genders. I know for sure there can be division in online TTRPGs.
Granted, the online bit might be partially biased as I’ve experienced no end of harassment online for being a woman, but I think the world sees it in general. Gaming is insanely toxic and girls are pushed out or to different genres because of that toxicity that seems to fester with young men in those spaces.
women play games overwhelmingly. they just don’t identify as gamers. they make up the bulk of casual game players though, esp on mobile. They are they buying hardware specifically to play games on. They do however, poor tons of money into micro-transactional game apps, visual novels, and other non-traditional console/pc gaming types of game software. I remember the height of Candy Crush, when like every third person on the subway car was playing it and they were overwhelmingly women.
god my sister in law probably puts 10x hours in wordle and that kind a thing on her phone than I do on my playstation. but due to social perception one of those is seen as harmless distraction and the other is anti-social.