Iyokus Patrouette, thanks for commenting. I recognize and appreciate your sentiments toward player equality. I think your attitude toward indiscriminate murder is on par with all reasonable expectations of capsuleers throughout New Eden. In fact, I applaud your tenacity and I would hope discrimination in the literal sense is in fact a thing of the past, at least in those areas where we can help it.

(And coming up, here is why I quoted your response. I don't mean to call you out. You've been helpful and you commented most recently:) But I am concerned that for whatever reason, you are intentionally misinterpreting my question to make your own point that you don't feel like a gender discrepancy in Eve Online is a problem - and you are certainly entitled to that opinion - but to dismiss this entire thread as if my question is the problem would, itself, be a symptom of the problem you're referring to, if such a problem were to really exist (which I hear you saying it doesn't, and I respect your opinion and I recognize the spirit in which you said it and I don't think you're wrong).

Once more, just to reiterate:

I do not, as many of you have suggested, "mean anything" by the question. And again, to reiterate, I am looking specifically for research-based, or at least science-oriented - whether it be social science, cognitive science, computer science - answers. Without some basis in observable facts, we can't really have this discussion as the 15 pages of dialog, much of which was deleted by the ISD, has extensively proven.

And again, once more, I am looking for answers to the question of why is it that - within the population of people playing Eve Online, small, rich and rewarding as it is - don't more women choose to play Eve Online?

In this type of conversation, the kind of answers I'm looking for would be something short and to the point without too much personal anecdotes, which don't qualify as evidence, however interesting and informative to your life they might have been. Here's something I was thinking about, just as an example and maybe we can talk about it:

I am looking at a 2008 study I saw recently in the Duke Law Journal published by Phillip Stoup, entitled The Development and Failure of Social Norms in Second Life in which Stoup argues that in many virtual worlds such as Second Life, what he calls "positive social norms" break down without intense regulation in the form of community moderation. I think it goes without saying that such regulations would not be in the spirit of Eve's hands-off approach by CCP, and a sentiment echoed throughout this forum (and a sentiment I agree with wholeheartedly) is that any attempt at community regulation on CCP's part would be grossly inappropriate. But while I think that's not a solution, I also believe that because of Eve Online's noteworthy complexity, the reasons for fewer women gamers would have to be much more complex than that. Perhaps even societal?

That's the kind of discussion I am trying to have - something based on research and evidence - and if anyone wants to have that talk, that's why I started this thread. The extreme, politically charged rhetoric being used here has no place in the sensitive and important discussion I tried to facilitate.

In this type of conversation, we feed each other constructively, riffing on mutual curiosities rather than shutting down the discussion before it can even get started.

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