BBC is reporting that roughly 40 percent of online gamers are now female. This information comes from a study examining gender differences in over 2,400 EverQuest II players. All participants in the study were voluntary, both answering questions about their game habits and life, with Sony Online Entertainment providing information on in-game behavior.

The study said that female players actually played more per day than male players, causing lead researcher Scott Caplan of the University of Delaware to pronounce certain gamer stereotypes out-of-date. "In many cases, stereotypes reflect what I would call a 'cultural time lag,'" said Caplan. "What we think about men and women and videogames may have been true 10 or 15 years ago, when there were mainly console video games or single-player games, but what were seeing now is that games become social, and as these online games become communities then the attraction for that kind of behavior might increase for women."

"I think a lot of our stereotypes are based on the way computer games have been, rather than where they're going," he added.

Interestingly, the study suggested that the majority of women in games like EverQuest II might reject traditional gender roles, with bisexuality among females reported five times more than the general population. "These are not people who are following strict gender stereotypes," said Professor Caplan. "I think that the game itself is right now a very non-traditional activity for women, and so I think what you would find in this population are going to be people who are in other ways less traditional than the majority population."