The gender balance in Second Life continues to skew in favour of the masculine according to the updated demographic statistics provided by Linden Lab. Although the proportional drop in female residents is very small there’s certainly a trend line downwards since June 2006.
So why? One reason may be that the evolving nature of SL means that the user experience is altering more and more toward a male world-view – if sixty percent of any experience is one gender then the balance of activities is going to skew that way as well. Also, the predominance of the males in regard to broadband internet use was always going to bite in the longer term. The big shame for SL is if the comparative decline in female membership continues – a world where males are significantly iin the majority is not the natural balance of things – SL or RL.
Nothing to be overly concerned about.. It will hit around 60% males and 40% female, but I don’t believe it will change much more 😉
Also, I do believe these results would be a little inaccurate — Some research was done a while ago and it was found 1 in 16 male AV’s are really females and 1 in 5 female AV’s are really males so there’s probably a lot more females there than what’s being accounted for…
oops I meant a lot less females 😉
Nothing to be overly concerned about.. It will hit around 60% males and 40% female, but I don’t believe it will change much more 😉
Also, I do believe these results would be a little inaccurate — Some research was done a while ago and it was found 1 in 16 male AV’s are really females and 1 in 5 female AV’s are really males so there’s probably a lot more females there than what’s being accounted for…
oops I meant a lot less females 😉
These figures are based on the Resident’s declared gender at the time of registration- not based on the apparent gender chosen for any avatars. 🙂 As with any self-reported metric there is an acceptable standard deviation, but looking at the same stats just for the “payment information provided” accounts we have similar ratios – and a similar trend.
These figures are based on the Resident’s declared gender at the time of registration- not based on the apparent gender chosen for any avatars. 🙂 As with any self-reported metric there is an acceptable standard deviation, but looking at the same stats just for the “payment information provided” accounts we have similar ratios – and a similar trend.