Why are communities like IMDB overwhelmingly male dominated?
 

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...hat-men-think/



On IMDB, the differences in movie scores between men and women are slight. However, there are 4-5x as many men voting than women. And it's not just IMDB; forums like these are mostly male as well. This is strange because women make up ~52% of turnout in movie theatres.

What's the reason behind this? Are women just less interested than men in critiquing/rating movies online? Is there sexism or mistreatment that's deterring them? Or do they just critique films in different websites/communities than men do?

Re: Why are communities like IMDB overwhelmingly male dominated?
 

Different places skew to different demos.



I haven't seen women harassed on the forums, I've visited over many years. If anything, people have worked hard to be nice and create space.

Re: Why are communities like IMDB overwhelmingly male dominated?
 

Simple answer: males choose to rate movie scores more often than females do. It's an interesting phenomenon, but its all up to choice.

There's way more male MoFos than female MoFos, why? Females don't join as often, but they are sure welcomed to join.

https://external-content.duckduckgo....gif&f=1&nofb=1

Re: Why are communities like IMDB overwhelmingly male dominated?
 

Are there places that skew toward women?


And there are a particular reason why IMDB is mostly appealing to just men.

Are you trying to make a deadline for a Buzzfeed article or something?

@Stamina888

Can I ask you some questions...

Why do you want to know about this?
Do you have concerns? Or a theory? and...Why do you think more men rate movies then women on IMDB?

Re: Why are communities like IMDB overwhelmingly male dominated?
 

Mainly, I want fair representation in movies. Diversity in race, gender, age etc.

Because I feel like most ratings, lists of top movies, have gotten homogenous, overwhelmingly american/european male, age 20-50, etc.

I see..so what do you propose can be done to change that?

Define "fair representation."



Different people are into different things. Generally speaking, voluntary association is a good thing, right? And if differences of skin, height, and plumbing (the sort of diversity which appears to concern you) also reflects some diversity of interest and inclination, then it is natural that we don't see equal outcomes in communities. That is, different demos of race, age, gender, will freely self-select into different interest groups. This would seem to be the epitome of fairness. You would have to violate free association in order force equal outcomes. Would that be fair?



The inference that unequal outcome = prejudicial exclusion rests on the assumption that we're really all the same, just a homogeneous blob of humanity with identical interests and inclinations. That is, you have to assume that we're all the same (a "problematic" thing to assume I am told), get access to the warrant for this argument.


The most direct measure on interest is to see how people vote with their dollars. Demographic breakdowns of box office receipts will really give us representation. Outside of that, we can find what different demos of different sizes think by making use of stratified random samples.



And there are demo-exclusive (e.g., black people twitter on Reddit) and demo serving (e.g., Jezebel) applications, services, forums, etc. Instead of asking IMDB to be something it is not, you would have better luck fishing at a few different watering holes to get access to a more stratified sample of opinion.




https://external-content.duckduckgo....jpg&f=1&nofb=1

Personally I don’t think theatre goers are the most serious film fans and I would bet that men outnumber women in how many films are watched on every format in every country in every decade that we have had film.. ever.

I don't know. First I would have to know what the exact cause of this gap is. I came here looking for answers; not necessarily to promote my own viewpoint.

Re: Why are communities like IMDB overwhelmingly male dominated?
 

There's a related thread that has some pretty good discussion on this: Do Men and Women Have Different Taste in Movie?. Here's a capsule version of my response to this, and things like this:

I like this explanation for these kinds of disparities not just because I think it's true, but because it elegantly explains them in a way that doesn't involve us having to think anybody is evil or delusional.

Re: Why are communities like IMDB overwhelmingly male dominated?
 

Cinema seems to be yet another male-dominated form of entertainment/art/time-spending. Well, in general, more men than women use the Internet. More men than women are cinephiles, as well. Even among these women who do care about film, most of them are not as die-hard maniacs as men. Do you know a female film psycho like me or @mark f? If you do, then tell me. I might marry her.

This is all anecdotal, but as a cinephile with accounts on multiple film-rating sites, I don't encounter film buff women as often as men, and these women I do encounter seem to have seen fewer films and more often approach cinema in a less serious manner than their male counterparts in the same age/occupation/nationality group.

Women mostly gravitate toward Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and similar social media sites. They rarely seem to be 'serious' about anything that is done over the Internet. They're much more social and ever-changing, on average. So many more men are hikikomori as compared to women. The suicide success rate is so much higher among men than women. Why? You can write a book about the reasons. Or you can just say just because.

So yeah, if you wanna meet a man, simply log in to any specific website or multiplayer video game and you'll have too many of them. However, if you want to meet a woman, you will most probably have to go out, unfortunately. Sure, you can try social media sites, and Reddit has a surprising number of women, too. But it's hard to tell which ones are real women and which are males pretending to be women to troll.

I agree. I've seen other hobbies that both genders are into, yet message boards for those topics are mostly male.

Maybe women are more likely to discuss their hobbies on social media sites/groups, or in real life social circles?


This is true. I remember seeing stats of male-led superhero movies where the gender split of viewers was like 58-42. Minor difference.


I agree. The purpose of this thread isn't to criticize men, or to in anyway say that there is something wrong with male-led or masculine themed films. Just that it's not an all-encompassing perspective.


For example, an age 35 American male might think Star Wars, Godfather and Batman are the most influential and culturally resonant films. But a 62 year old woman from Singapore might have different opinions.

This is not true. Lol. You may be disproportional looking at male-dominated while overlooking communities with more women in them. And a portion of online groups are women-only, women inviting other women: probably to avoid unsolicited sexual DM's from dudes.

My previous girlfriend was. She loved horror, sci-fi and mindbenders. She's watched thousands of movies. When we'd watch movies together, she made it clear that she only wants to watch great, classic or highly acclaimed films. And that she has no interest in derivative or low IQ movies.

But I would've never met her on imdb, this movie forum or reddit. I met her in the comments section of a small blog about writing, and I was interested in her writing.

Did she watch more than a thousand movies a year, though?

What would these be?

Must not be a fan of HK comedy, then.

Re: Why are communities like IMDB overwhelmingly male dominated?
 

The gender gap in developed countries is extremely small (86% vs. 87.6%).


In developing countries, it's an ~11% gap on average. But this is probably more to do with socioeconomic factors rather than one gender being inherently more interested.


But even then, the internet use gap is nowhere near the movie forum use gap. Even if 1.02 to 1.11 times as many men use the internet. But 4-5x as many men use movie critic/review sites. That's still disproportionate.

Re: Why are communities like IMDB overwhelmingly male dominated?
 

Sure, but I'd like to know what "using the Internet" means anyway because there is a big difference between a girl who passively has the Internet on 24 hours a day on her phone but only spends 1 hour a day actively surfing and a guy who spends 10 hours a day surfing the Internet and doing other things online. I'm too lazy to read into the research(es).

Anyway, I have already written what websites girls tend to visit...

Re: Why are communities like IMDB overwhelmingly male dominated?
 

Absent specifics I'd take "using the Internet" to mean, very broadly, just using apps and social media sites, basically. And by that measure, yeah, women use the Internet just as much.

They obviously don't use certain types of site as much, hence the thread topic.