Gender diversity in esports: Obstacles and facilitators to the career development of professional women esports players

Details

Supervisors

Jammaers, Eline

Faculty

Louvain School of Management

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences de gestion, à finalité spécialisée

Abstract

Today, the video game industry is the most prolific cultural industry in the world. Every year, billions of dollars are generated by this industry with an ever-increasing number of players. Indeed, 1/3 of the world's population plays video games. In my thesis, I'm going to approach a specific part of this industry: esport. Esport is the competitive practice of video games. During an esport competition, a player or a team of players faces another one for the victory on a same game. Today, the best esports players are recruited into organizations similar to football clubs. These organizations manage the career and training of their players to get them to compete in the best competitions, giving access to more and more important cash prizes. Esport is becoming more and more important every year, both in terms of players and spectators. In France, during the year 2020, esports players represented 13 million people. When we look at mainstream players (unranked and non-competitive esport players), we can observe that one out of two players is a woman, however, when we look at amateur players (ranked and competitive esport players), women represent only 6% of players. These figures raise an obvious question: why is there such a difference between the proportion of women playing video games for fun and women playing video games competitively? This is the question I will try to answer through this thesis. To answer this question, I will divide my thesis into three parts. First, I will conduct a literature review on gender diversity and women's presence in the video game industry, traditional sports, and esports. This research phase will allow me to develop my understanding of what has already been said and studied about the problem of gender diversity in the two very different universes of video games and traditional sports and the esport that connects them. Then, I will conduct a qualitative study during which I will interview professional women esport players to develop a better understanding of their experience as women in this industry. Finally, once my study is complete, I will conduct a comprehensive analysis of the results to draw conclusions and propose solutions to the problem of gender inclusion in esports.