TLDR; Men participate at a rate 7x that of women. In the TOP tournaments (the ones that yield enough points to compete for a top ranking), men participate at a rate of 21x - 35x. Given that, women who participate in top tournaments are only slightly underrepresented. Over all, women are almost EXACTLY represented in the top 10% of rankings.

Solarvalue has the right idea. I wouldn’t be surprised if statistics alone could answer this (to a great extent).

Given that there are about 30,392 players total, and about 2131 (2135 today) women. That’s almost exactly 7%. So, assuming a linear distribution, we would expect the following

Top 100 - Expect 7 - Actual 1 - Women 14% of Expected Value (Actual/Expected)

100 - 7 - 1 - 14%
200 - 14 - 3 - 21%
300 - 21 - 7 - 33%
400 - 28 - 9 - 32%
500 - 35 - 13 - 37%
1000 - 70 - 38 - 54%
2000 - 140 - 113 - 81%
3000 - 210 - 202 - 96%
4000 - 280 - 341 - 122%

So, women are underrepresented at the very top, all the way until we reach the top 3000. At 4000 , women represent 122%. So there are more women at the top of the rankings (if you define the top as 4000 out of the 30,000).

I looked at some of the recent results of big tournaments. I only considered Top 140 US men (excluding women), Top 20 US women. The idea is that these top player should attend the top tournaments in the same ratio as exists in IFPA.

48 men / 1 women (expected 7) - The Open - IFPA World Championship
40 men / 3 women (expected 6) - D82 Pinball Super Series Event 4: Group Match Play
38 men / 3 women (expected 5) - IFPA Pin-Masters
27 men / 0 women (expected 4) - IFPA North American Pinball Championship
21 men / 2 women (expected 3) - It Never Drains in Southern California Classics
18 men / 0 women (expected 3) - Cleveland Pinball and Arcade Show Main Tournament
192 men / 9 women - total over the 6 tournaments

These numbers indicate that women disproportionately do not attend the top point garnering tournaments. Not one of the above have the top women over represented. It turns out the women in these tournaments, Kassidy Milanowski, Keri Wing, Sunshine Bon, Louise Wagensonner, are the top 4 US women.

So we aren’t really comparing 7x men to women, it’s more like 21x (192/9) or as much as 35x (140/4). While 1/7 of those participating are women, only 1/35 - 1/21 of those participating in the top tournaments are women.

Given that we’d expect (assuming men = 35x women)
100 - 3 - 1 - 33%
200 - 6 - 3 - 50%
300 - 9 - 7 - 78%

It’s not that far off from the expected value. In each range, women are under represented by 2-3.

Smaller brains?

UltraPeepi
Thank you for doing the math that I didn't feel like doing.
I was going to use Chi-squared analysis, but this is simpler.

Just a little aside: The default on IFPA is that a player is listed as male. You have to actually register to get your gender listed as female, and if you don’t play in any women’s tournaments, you don’t show up on the rankings of women. So you can’t look at the distribution there as an accurate reflection of newer players. (I assume serious players are completing their profiles)

If the field you're referring to is the NBA then your statement makes sense. If you mean engineering, mathematics, or Mary Kay sales then you haven't sold me. In 1900 a majority of Americans might well have agreed that women were biologically unsuited to be doctors or lawyers, and there were still plenty of scientists providing theoretical backing. This turned out not to be true. So at least to me, "boys are just better at ..." arguments have to be well supported to make it out of the gate.

Your thought seems to be the very top of competitive pinball will always be dominated by men, even assuming equal participation by women. No one can prove this true or false at the moment, of course, but we're pretty far from having the equal participation setup you'd need to test your theory. And at least to me, it's not so clear what physical characteristics make a great pinball player great, and how closely those correlate with gender. Whereas with basketball, well ...

A final question might be "who gives a shit?" We've established that the best women players at the moment could kick your ass at pinball (and my ass, and most of the dudes on Pinside). So does that mean that these women received more "innate, God-given gifts" of the manly/pinball variety than you or me? And does the fact that the top-ten is all male say anything much about you and me and our respective pinball abilities, just because we share a gender with the champs?

If you know me at all, one of the first things you’ll notice is that I’m a woman who’s interests almost always are opposite “what women like”. I like to challenge the notions of what women are capable of doing and I have zero problem pointing out if people are being chauvinistic.

So I’ve been thinking through this question a lot. A comparison that is in my head right now is bowling. I’m an extremely consistent bowler, averaging low 170’s, and I take great delight when I can kick the ass of the guys in my leagues. The thing is, I’m too small to throw a 16 lb ball—even the 14 lb I use pulls me back on the backswing if I’m not careful and I don’t have near the upper body strength to compensate on the release. So I don’t generate anywhere near the pin action of even the crappy men bowlers. I have to compete on my precision alone. Those are factors that doesn’t affect all women, but it’s more prevalent for women than guys.

Looking at pinball, the interesting thing is that strength and size aren’t as big a factor as they are in other sports. The best players are all perfectly capable of nudging the ball in a controlled manner, and the tilt bob is there to limit the upper end of movement. A bigger factor to me is the ability to keep a running knowledge of strategies across hundreds of titles, and hand eye coordination to dial in the trajectories you want on the ball. I’ve seen scientific studies years ago that discussed that men tend to score higher on “perspective” (ie visualization of 3D spaces) while women tend to score higher on “perception” (ie noticing something has changed in an environment), but I would argue that both skills are critical to the strongest play. The main physical limitation that I can think of is pin ownership. I can’t just go pick up a pin solo like most of the guys here can—I need to line up muscle any time my pins need to be shifted around. As the number of locations to play have increased it feels like that last factor has become less of an issue.

I think where I’m netting out is that the main difference right now is more cultural than physical. As more women get involved in the sport and the current women player continue to gain experience playing at the highest levels, I think we’ll see a more even distribution across the ranks of players. The comparison that comes to mind is when I was watching some of the other competitions on the Ocho. A lot of them had parity between sexes in terms of participants as well as in terms of the skills required, and the women held their own in those events. My feeling is that pinball is perfectly capable of having a similar parity the more women get involved at the lower levels.

I don’t take offense to the original question being asked because honestly, I as myself that sort of question all the time—there are some things I simply can’t do as well as guys can no matter how hard I try. Then there are things where women can be perfectly skilled and I personally just happen to suck. That’s where I see pinball right now. The only challenge I’d push back to the guys in the discussion here is how often do YOU step out of your comfort zone to try things that women are historically considered “better” at? I’d be super interested to also see what things on that end are cultural vs physical.

Well, I've tried to have a baby, but I get to looking like I'm about 9 months pregnant and then nothing happens.

You should meet my niece.

I've refrained from posting in here, but quite frankly I can't take anymore of some of BS being cited as facts, or comparing apples to oranges, when in fact they're simply sexist garbage.

I think that it's safe to say that the overwhelming majority agree that physicality is not a significant factor in being able to play pinball at the highest level and can be dismissed as a factor.
You've only got to see Escher winning PAPA at 13 or Paul Englert from Germany currently to see that.

To simply dismiss the statistical argument shows a complete lack of understanding of pretty basic maths (Plus it was Disraeli who is most widely recognised as coining the phrase, I can't find a single source attributing it to Washington).

It has already been shown and is clear that there is a smaller proportion of women competing overall, there is an even smaller proportion of women who go 'point hunting', travelling round the world/country to high level events. The fact that the ranking system is based on a non-forfeit system means that the more comps you play the more you will rise up the rankings - you won't go down the rankings based on YOU having a poor performance. If someone doesn't attend a large number of events they simply won't rise up the rankings. That includes men, women and children.
Perhaps a more indicative ranking system wouldn't count only the top 20 results, but the average of all of your results - if you have played more than 20 events, or use the eff percentage as the primary metric, or the rating, or have a different metric altogether. The fact that the current ranking system is being used to evaluate the ability of a gender to play pinball is ludicrous in itself.

The next question to ask should be why aren't women attending more comps, and thus giving themselves the chance to work themselves up the rankings?
That is a much harder question to begin to answer, especially by a group of predominately male middle aged men, and although I do have my views, I'm not getting into a debate on a pinball community about the way women have been treated/classed as secondhand citizens for 100s of years and, although it is improving significantly, is still the case in many areas.

The fact that the question has even been asked I think is a poor indicator of the way society views the sexes as being inherently different.

I had a quick look at the current rankings, and by clicking on each player and looking at their photo I saw that every single one of them was white.
Would it therefore be acceptable to ask "Why are White Men better than Black Men at Pinball? Your Opinion, with Poll !!!"

Don't come back with the "I was just asking a question" BS.

A question similar to this was actually posited on Pinside once, and boy, did it not end well.

I have not posted in this thread yet either, mainly because a small part of me was afraid my wife created it to set a trap for me lol...just kidding. But in all seriousness, this is a difficult comparison when examining hard numbers. In an age of range of 18-29, only roughly 9% of females would self identify as "gamers" where almost 33% of men do.

Yes, I see there are no women ranked in the top 25. But I am positve there are plenty of women, likely a bunch on pinside, that could absolutely smoke me on a table.

If you look up the currenct world record holder for Tapper...Its a female. Same thing for Quebert....85 plus year old woman.

PS...lol...from my wife...perhaps if women hadn't been pushed into a role of raising kids and running households for centuries, they would have had more time to develop their gaming skills,

The problem with this thread is the title. It's written as a generalization and formulates a conclusion. It's basically stating "ALL men are better than ALL women at pinball". I know he said "Why" at the beginning of it, but you cannot answer that question until you accept the generalized premise first, which makes it flawed.

"Women seem to have under-representation at the top of the IFPA 100, why do you think that is" would have been a better way to phrase the question, and a true discussion may have taken place. This thread was doomed from the get-go with poor wording.

Lastly: I've been knocked out of tournaments by women, I've been knocked out of tournaments by little kids, and I'm a top 1000 player. I don't care who I'm going up against, they can absolutely beat me if they have at least two hands and one eye.

Actual woman here (not "female", btw - I'm not a Ferenghi). Respectfully, many of you are wildly off the mark.

Look at the pinball games properties that get made. Rock bands for dudes. Shows staring dudes. Movies staring dudes.

What are the pinball games that showcase women in them? Elvira? Sea Witch? Playboy? When women do exist in pinball games it's almost always extremely sexualized. The entire reason I want a Halloween cabinet is it's one of the few pinball games ever made where the hero is a woman and she's not half naked. And it's a STILL a game about a man trying to kill her!

The reason not many women play at a competitive level is everything about this sport is for men, by men. So, statistically, not many women are going to sit in a culture hostile to them. I'm a game developer, and have a pretty thick skin for this stuff, but most women don't need the headache.

If you get 100 men and 1 woman trying for a sport, men are statistically likely to dominate. That's all it is.

this thread reminded me of this incredibly embarrassing paragraph from a pinball book:

pasted_image (resized).png

just a turducken of WTF thinking going on here

This thread is like one of those trick birthday candles that you just can’t blow out.

That's interesting that you say that. My wife and I play video games quite a bit, and her two favorite games are Horizon Zero Dawn and The Last Of Us II. Both of those games have strong female leads. I love those games two but it never occurred to me that the vast majority of games are centered around a strong white male. When HZD came out, my wife was drawn to it and played it for hours on end. I never realized why this might be the case.

Stern best listen up.

For new games, Multimorphic has a couple of good female leads. Lexy Lightspeed and Maggie (the mastermind) in Heist.

It is the quote below which triggered me to post - if that is not sexist, I don't know what is.

There are differences between different races which also apply generally - how is that different than comparing gender?

Yes, but the bottom line is they are few and far between.

Personally, I have a pretty thick skin for sexualized women in games. But, if you're asking for structural reasons there aren't proportional numbers of women in games, that's a non-trivial part of it.

Some bold claims that really stretch the imagination! Nice job, Wu.
(Note: it's Ferengi)

Who knew?! Having XX chromosomes makes you literally unable to like rock bands. Only men are allowed.
Metallica, Rolling Stones, Aerosmith? Women HATE THEM! They've never had a women fan. Groupies? HA! An elaborate lie.
Right from Wu, Facts are facts: Female biology hates rock bands.

TV shows and movies with "dudes"? Women hate 'em.
Stranger Things? ZERO WOMEN FANS!
Ghostbusters? Universally panned by ladies!
Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Game of Thrones? All share the same thing: Women hate them.
This is the truth of Wu.

Cassandra Peterson created Elvira, her ENTIRE shtick is being a highly attractive, seductive Mistress of the Dark. Peterson CREATED THE CHARACTER
Seawitch is based off of mythological historically accurate Mermaids/Sirens. I shouldn't have to explain them to you, but you chose to act so ignorant and out-of-touch to bring your unsubstantiated claims to a new hobby after being run out of all the others due to your egregious past behavior.
For the record, that machine is from the perspective of you playing against the Mermaids which try to F you up. And they do.
Seawitch is a brutal classic where the women kick your ass most the time. Is it against the law to be powerful and attractive? Would it have been appropriate if there were hideously deformed like a wicked stepmother in a Disney movie?

Must they all get your approval so you can speak for all women?

This cannot be taken seriously from someone who just bought into the hobby less than 5 months ago. Compounded with the fact that on your twitter you happily proclaimed your husband bought them all but then here you claim you bought them. Seriously WTF? You haven't even been to a league. This strange idea of vitriol in the hobby is coming from inside your small bubble of experience at home. You know nothing about this community. You joined a few months ago and immediately made this insane statement saying pinheads who've spent their lives in this hobby are out of touch. You should probably take the time to get to know this hobby and the extremely strong close-knit community of women and men that keeps it alive.

WOW! This takes the cake!! So your "thick skin" is why you went on daytime news said all gamers are white supremacists and trying to kill you? Is your "thick skin" why you begged for tens of thousands on kickstarter and embezzled that money, after firing most the female staff, only giving people a severely unplayable buggy mess with graphics from the Sega Genesis-era in 2014? I implore users to either pop over to Wu's twitter or DuckDuckGo "Brianna Wu" and fall down that rabbit hole yourself

That's probably because your specialty is hyper-sexualizing women in your own games. Pot meet kettle.

Y U So mad tho?

Quite hypocritical of Wu to try and speak on behalf of all women and declare what women can and cannot enjoy.
Equally strange how outing Wu's history of scamming people out of hundreds of thousands of dollars on Kickstarter and other platforms is being "mad".
In the same way that Magic Girl and RAZA was a massive scam that blew outrageous amounts of money. Wu's game also blew outrageous amounts of money while still having game-breaking bugs that make it unplayable and somehow it justified a massive quarter of a million dollar budget. These toxic scammers are bad news. Were you a Jpop defender?

JFC go smoke a bowl dude

Think about it a minute.
Men use wheelbarrows. Hand trucks. Chainsaws.
All require two hands out front.
Hitching a horse to ride. Holding reins to plow with a mule.
You kind of hold the reins on a pinball machine after hitching yourself to it.
Riding a motorcycle. Controls on the right and left, steering it with nudges.
I think this is an evolutionary thing, even though I don't believe in evolution.
Carry on!

Well, no one’s going to top that …

231 posts, and I only read maybe 10 of them.

In the poll I voted because we can nudge better, because while my girlfriend loves playing pinball, she constantly complains that she can just not move the machine like I can.

She still gets some awesome scores, and beats me and some of my high scores sometimes.

She is a real champ on the Big Buck Hunter arcade, she plays it a lot and has most of the high scores on some animals, while others she is not even in the top 10 yet.

Anyway, just be glad that at least some women are interested in pinball and games in the first place.

I have heard a lot of people here say that their wife is not interested and never plays any games.

I feel lucky that my girlfriend loves most of the games as much as I do.

Are men allowed to play in IFPA women’s tournaments?

Congrats to Brooklyn’s own Anna Wolk for her 4th place finish at Pintastic silverball rumble!

Why was she better than 112 men at Pinball last weekend?

Your opinion; with poll!!

No. They are for women.

Why would you ask such a stupid question?

Stay tuned for the reason. This will be good.

His answer - like every idiot who asks that - will inevitably be “well, why aren’t there MEN’S tournaments?”

My answer is always: because nobody has ever been obnoxious or Petty enough to launch such a moronic undertaking. Maybe you can be the first!

Trick question. IFPA won't sanction any tournament that restricts players for any reason. Gender, age, ranking, whatever. No points for you! They may 'endorse' these tournaments, but no points are awarded. So if you're thinking about switching teams to get a leg up, it won't work.

This is a colossally stupid thread.

Enjoy your time at the top boys

They are coming for you!

312FC4F0-E64D-45FC-84B8-A6A183279F9D (resized).png

What the heck is this creep shot?! Feels like a creepy hidden cam angle lol!

No. There was a women’s tournament this weekend with a very nice person that “switched teams”, as phishrace calls it so I’m wondering if that is fair or not to the other people that joined a women’s tournament that did not “switch teams.”

If you are living your life as a woman, you are free - and encouraged - to play in the women’s leagues and tournaments. This isn’t exactly news to anybody but you apparently. I know of MANY trans women who play in women’s leagues and tournaments and I’ve never heard anybody complaining about it.

Are you running for Congress or something, and looking for a fundraising angle? These are non-issues in pinball.

Did you really join pinside just for this?

Yes. I am new to pinball. If it’s considered normal then i will start playing in the women’s tournament myself now that i know it’s an option.

Great. Good luck, Ms. Clinton.

The women’s leagues and tournaments were created for women like you who want to play with other women. They will appreciate your participation and enthusiasm.

I’d also like to welcome you to pinside and apologize for the misunderstanding. We need more women posting here and it’s fantastic to have more ladies like yourself signing up.

There are a several reasons why it would be fine. The no points thing I mentioned above. The fact that any physical advantage that men may have at other sports doesn't carry over to pinball. You don't have to be physically big to kick ass at pinball. Lastly, the sport of pinball is very inclusive. That, the good sportsmanship and the comradery is what keeps me competing.

Their are women's leagues all over the country, if you think you might be up for league. Look for Bells and Chimes at the link below. Good luck and hope to see you out there.

https://www.ifpapinball.com/leagues/

Dang, I thought it looked like us spreading the hobby to the newest generation…

Thank you.

Also our fellow players who identify as non-binary!

Girls will be boys and boys will be girls
It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world.

The Kinks

I saw your post in the jokes thread oh, you're getting a lot of mileage out of The kinks today aren't you.