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 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.

Also our fellow players who identify as non-binary!

I gotta give you credit for cutting straight to the point.

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