Gender Gap on
the Internet
ANGELO HICKS
Claim
The internet aids in increasing the inequality gap between genders.
Early Days
In the early days of the internet, it was
mostly populated by males. This was
because mostly tech-savvy people
had access to the internet. It wasn’t
until a few years after that access to
the Internet became widespread.
Anonymity and Trends
Having an anonymous
identity on the Internet
provides a breeding ground
for people to voice
controversial opinions and
say what is actually on their
mind without consequence.
This video provides proof that
sexism exists on the Internet. It
does this by testing Google’s
autocomplete feature,
googling phrases like
“women should” or “women
need to”.
Video Games
In many games, men will create
female characters and pretend to
be females in order to get
different treatment from other
player. This can even go as far as
getting free items, sometimes of
high value.
Mostly
Men
Online
Role
Playing
Girls
Female gamers used to be a rare
sight which led to the creation of
a parody of the acronym
MMORPG (which actually stands
for Massively Multiplayer Online
Role-Playing Game.
Journalism: Gamergate
Gamergate is an incident where female
game developer Zoe Quinn created an
interactive game called “Depression
Quest”. The game received many positive
reviews from game critics but reviews from
the players were overwhelmingly negative.
As a result, Quinn received multiple forms
of harassment from hate mail to death
threats claiming that she got undeserved
praise for the game because of the fact
that she was a female.
Social Settings

Online Chatrooms
In the early days of the Internet, chatting with
strangers online was one of the main draws.
Chatrooms often started off with questions like
“a/s/l?” which stands for “Age/Sex/Location?”
Often times if users didn’t respond that they
were female, the chat would end because
males didn’t want to talk to other males.
Disclaimer

Mature content is discussed on the next slide. View at your own will.
That’s Weird: Pornography
Since access to the Internet went public, the
production and distribution of pornography has
seen and significant increase.
Feminists argue that pornography goes against
the beliefs and platforms of feminism. One of their
main points are that women lose value as human
beings because they are reduced to subordinate
sex objects for men. An example of this would be
on-face ejaculation.