Gender and games

this was taken from http://venturebeat.com/2013/07/23/the-problem-with-esas-essential-facts-report-on-the-video-game-industry/

Females jumped from 23% in 2008 to 28% in 2009 in the Console Gamer category, and rose four percentage points each in Heavy Portable and Extreme Gamers.

 Other categories of segmentation in the study include Secondary, Online PC, Avid PC, and Offline PC. The NPD Group attributes the rise of female console players primarily to the Wii.

Focusing large sections of this year's E3 press conferences on so-called "girl games," which is quickly turning into a lucrative market.

The wider net of female gamers and Wii adoption is simply more profitable right now than the core fan base due to its relative size. On the bright side, the data does suggest that more females are making the transition to becoming part of that core audience, so we're unlikely to see our beloved AAA titles go anywhere.

the next page I looked at was http://venturebeat.com/2013/07/23/the-problem-with-esas-essential-facts-report-on-the-video-game-industry/

Newspapers ranging from the Washington Times to the Indianapolis Star picked up the story that 45 percent of gamers are women. In response, sites like PC Magazine asked if gaming was “no longer a boy’s club,” and Think Progress wondered why there are still so few female characters in games If women make up nearly half of the video game market, why are companies like Activision, Electronic Arts, and Microsoft still catering almost exclusively to the adolescent male demographic?

 

Greg Rutter comment
these two articles show that the population of female gamers has gone up a lot between 2008 at 23% to 2013 at 45%. I think part of the reason for this is as there are more female gamers there will be more women making games for other women and this will make the population of female players grow. I think in a few years the ratio will be 50%/50%.  I think that the reason companies like activision, EA and Microsoft are still catering more for male gamers is because even though almost half the population of gamers are women, male gamers probably spend more time gaming in general than women but I don't have the facts to prove that its just my guess as to why they are doing this.
are women not playing games for as long as men because most games aren't designed in the right way for them or is it because they just don't want to play them for as long?