Producing Games, Reproducing Inequalities: Gender and Labour in the Argentine Video Game Market

This paper examines gender inequality in labour within the Argentine video game industry, arguing that a sector which has grown substantially over two decades nonetheless reproduces the gendered hierarchies found in the wider software and IT services economy, and in some respects intensifies them. It situates the industry at the intersection of cultural production and technological development, where creative and technical work has historically been organised around masculinised and racialised norms. Women are reported to make up roughly 46% of the global gaming community but held only about 30% of industry employment positions in 2021, and more than half face harassment and online abuse that affects both their play and their professional visibility.

A central obstacle identified is the absence of official, systematised statistics on the Argentine sector. Video games lack a dedicated intellectual property category and are dispersed across national accounting frameworks, with the Culture Satellite Account treating them as digital content and technological classifications placing them alongside software and IT services. In response, several local organisations have assembled their own data, including the ADVA-University of Rafaela Observatory's annual reports, Steamcito and Press Over's surveys of domestic Steam releases, and Women in Games Argentina's annual gender-focused workforce survey running since 2022.

The study adopts a mixed-methods design combining three industry surveys (two Women in Games Argentina editions from 2024 and 2025, and a 2025 observatory survey) with ten semi-structured interviews conducted between June and December 2024 with women across production, development, design, journalism, teaching, e-sports marketing, casting, and community management. The authors acknowledge their membership in the surveyed community, and the interviewees were purposively selected for recognised trajectories and role diversity. Theoretically, the work draws on technofeminism, which treats technological artefacts as socio-technical products shaped by the inequalities of the contexts that produce them.

The quantitative findings indicate persistent gaps in roles held, salaries, and access to leadership, with underrepresentation in technical areas and informal employment contributing to more precarious trajectories for women and sex-gender diverse workers. The interviews illuminate how these inequalities are experienced day to day and how workers respond through support networks, community spaces, and sectoral organisations. The authors frame the paper's contribution as empirical evidence and critique aimed at a more inclusive, professionalised, and equitable local ecosystem.