Women and War Gaming

The above post was posted to Facebook a few weeks back. Since then it has made its rounds across social media channels, and has made more than a few waves. Making us question, how women are represented in the War Gaming communities and are the game makers and communities doing everything they can to make women feel included?

With the likes of wargames such as Warhammer 40,000  , listening to feedback and working with their studios, saying they work three years in advance, is enough being done? Not just in regards to the models and backgrounds, what about the community as a whole?

Much like the video game world, women in wargaming communities get extra attention, whether thats good attention or bad, due to their gender. Now this attention can be anything from players offering help to a female players to 'help her win' even if she didn't ask for help in the first place. To unsolicited sexual conduct. The extra attention is there and it can be off-putting and considered patronising.

We took to Reddit (hyperlink) and posted the following questions to relevant Sub-Reddits:


Are women misrepresented in the War Gaming community? 

Are there enough female players? 

Are women welcome in the war gaming community? 

We also asked for any other comments users had on the topic. We had a pretty big response from this, with a lot of people giving us varied opinions.

User gwarsh41 commented, that he didn't think women were misrepresented in the community. That female players are few and far between, and few stereotypers really exist for them, just that they are rare. He said, "There are as many women in the War Gaming community that choose to be apart of it." he thinks there is a social awkwardness that exists and if we could get over that, then more women maybe interested in playing.

He went on to say that he felt that, female players were welcome in the War Gaming community but for mostly the wrong reasons, and also no they were not welcome because theres a varied amount of players. He said, "There is always going to be 'that guy' or some Redpill attitude, it's always going to have a negative effect when that kind of person does swing through, as the 'creep level' goes up to 11. Getting past the minority can be challenging, and some may feel its not worth the effort. As a dude, I can see how it can be difficult for anyone but especially women."

Another user Mad_Doodles commented, "on a local community level I don't think it's as big of an issue, as any problems with bad behaviour get shut down, pretty much right away. It's when you look at the wider community, that is when you'll start to find issues.

"Bolter B****es. The sheer vitriol surrounding female Space Marines  The insistence that there 'isn't a market' for updating the model to include female options. The insistence that BDSM Nuns, Elves and Daemons being the only on-table representation (largely) is perfectly fine. These things I personally see quite commonly. Luckily other aspects, like the wehraboos to the flat of fascists idolising the Imperium of Man (spoiler alert, they are not the good guys), are very much the minority. At least I very much hope so.

"I'm not the only one seeing this either. A lot of my female friends have also seen this part of the community and are a bit weirded out by it, it stops them wanting to get involved much. If at all. Yet, as this thread is showing so far, women inside the community don't seem to consider these issues, or agree they're even there."

A female War Gamer commented under the username StepfordCrip, "I've been into Warhammer since the age of roughly eight. I'm now 22. Younger me thought it was very difficult to get into as nobody at my local club would play with me because, 'i'd ruin it because i'm a girl' or 'it's a boy's game, why are you here?' I became good at painting as this was the only thing I could do.

"Adult me couldn't ask for a more welcoming community. I've been treated as a player and not a female player. I still see a lot of younger boys coming to play though and no girls!

"I guess we're under represented. I don't see many, if any, ladies in the White Dwarf (magazines or posts. If there have been I've certainly missed them. It's (War Gaming) a very intimidating hobby to get in to, there is a stigma surrounding these kinds of hobbies."


User Sarcastry, gave his experience of when his girlfriend plays, " I've been playing Warhammer 40k for quite a while. This year, my girlfriend started playing as well. I've noticed that the store is very different when she's there. Since it's usually guys in the shop, a 'normal' could expect to have a small handful of spectators, maybe between one and three. When my girlfriend plays? Generally, there is five plus people who come to watch the game, cheer her on and give advice. That's the other main difference I notice - Everyone is super helpful and wants to give her advice, strategy tips, and tricks to try and win.

"Sometimes, it can go to far, as people will, unsolicited, tell her what to do, or get a bit too much in her space.  This has significantly decreased since the local GW (Games Workshop), hired a female employee. I'd say women are currently under represented, and there needs to be more effort put in by the shops to ensure that it's a reasonably comfortable place for them to be in."

The overall feel to the tread, is that women are welcome in the War Gaming communities, but there are always going to be some that are more welcoming than others. The fact of the matter is War Gaming is a male dominated hobby, and there is going to be some that see women as a 'girl in a boys club' way.

The lack thereof female players seems to be down to personal preference and those women who want to play already do.


Getting into the lack of representation of the female gender in the models. A lot of armies tend to have a 'trophy' female model within its army, which uses a breast plate to differentiate between the genders. Many feel, this is sexist. However looking through many threads on Reddit on the matter, both male and female players come to an agreement, that unless you want a model to be 'Obviously female', there is no reason why you can't play other models are female characters.  Example: Orcs are supposedly genderless, Tyranids are basically bugs so again have no defining gender, so you theoretically play as a female if you wanted.

The main argument comes from The Imperial Guard and Space Marines.
The Imperial Guard are regular humans, they're deployed in their billions so you would think it's a good assumption that they would pull troops from both genders, right? Well in a sense. Females in this are in the background and in the Ciaphas Cain novels, there is a lesbian couple. However, there isn't a single model of a female guard in any of its dozens of units. (please, correct me if i'm wrong, but my research suggests there isn't).

It's been suggested on the internet, about how easy it would be to implement. A few additions to the heads and torsos of models and a few different poses? Maybe?

Lets talk Space Marines, shall we? Right. In brief there are 7-foot-tall genetically enhanced soldiers. They are often referred too as the most iconic army in the 40k series. According to Warhammer lore, they can only be men (i'm not going to get into it, you can go look it up yourselves), in the discussions, that i've read, when the prospect of of making Space Marines gets mentioned, it tends to be shut down with 'they can only be men'. From my research, this just seems to be just 'boys club' nonsense. The science of making a Space Marine seems to be just a science of making 7-foot-tall, 800lbs plus, immortal super soldiers. So any arguments about 'scientific accuracy' can be closed when you remember that they can fly! It's a made-up science for a made-up world. So why can't they be female again?

I'm told there are armies made up of just female models but the model lines are not updated as often, making it difficult to collect them.

With the female gaming population rising more and more, in both playing and painting. Games Workshop has said it's going to make they game more enjoyable to all it's players multiple times. So this new announcement can't come soon enough.

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*NOTE: Comments from Reddit have been edit for the purpose of spelling, grammar, length and inappropriate and bad language.