Girls/Women and video games

[Prowler]

When I was a kid in the late 90s/early 2000s, girls were already playing video games, but it was still a highly male dominated hobby. I was in 3rd-4th grade or so when Pokémon first came out and took the world by storm, and LOTS of boys took their Game Boys to school to battle and trade, but I don't remember a single girl taking her Game Boy to school or her GBA in the early 2000 either. And the few who seemed to be into games were the more tomboyish girls.

As for my teenage years, the girls who seemed to game the most were the ones who had male siblings. The ones who didn't either didn't play games at all or just stuck to games like The Sims and Singstar. Those were the "girly games" back when I was a teenager. If you were a guy and openly claimed to own and play The Sims you'd hear jokes like "lol that's a game for women! Might as well be playing with dolls!"

When did girls/women start getting more into video games? And nowadays, even if the gap seems to be smaller than ever, I think the difference is still noticeable. Look at the top players in competitive games and it's like 90% male or so lol