It’s a tough world for women in Esports
Samantha Kitson struggles being a woman in a sport dominated by men.
For Samantha Kitson, gaming has always been in her blood.
Some of the earliest memories she can recall were watching her older brothers playing Final Fantasy. Once she got the chance to game for herself, it quickly turned into a hobby and today Sam creates content for Twitch.
Putting herself on a public platform, though, it has come with its fair share of challenges.
“Being a female streamer, there’s a lot of abuse and sexism coming your way.”
Samantha explains that with every stream there is a live chat feed, which is often a subject with comments. The chatrooms are moderated by a group of nominated people and are mostly full of praise or banter but every so often negative comments will infiltrate the chatrooms. This can be difficult to ignore.
“Suddenly there are like four new viewers and they will start making derogatory comments on your appearance… whether you are completely disgusting to them, or whether you are extremely hot…There is a lot of insinuation of rape and physical violence.”
The moderators are usually quick to catch the comments, but the negative words leave a lasting impact. One of the biggest challenges, when this happens, is knowing whether or not to speak out, as a large part of her demographic is in their teens to early twenties. One of Samantha’s goals is to focus on reiterating positive values and “make a generation of gamers that aren’t horrible to each other”.
In 2018, a form of support for women emerged in womANZ, a group for female content creators in Australia and New Zealand. Anyone who is female or identifies as female is welcome to apply. The goal of womANZ is to provide a safe place to network, talk about streaming, vent, organize meetups, and normalize woman in the gaming industry.
“We are not really at a point where it feels like females are being represented. It’s like we are at the tip of the iceberg but we only (just) found the iceberg.”
Samantha volunteers at the Waikato University Esports club. She would like to do a fortnightly event where women can come along. They can play co-op or individually, have pizza and get to know each other. “Be confident if they just want to come down …. there is no weird expectations or anxieties.”
