Female Online Gamer Demographics

I missed Comscore's press release outlining the demographic breakdown of female gamers a couple weeks ago, so I'll assume so did you. Without further ado.

Online Gaming Site Visitation by Age Segments August 2008 vs. August 2007 Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore Media Metrix
Demographic Segments	Unique Visitors (000)
	Aug-07	Aug-08	% Change
Total Females: Online Gaming Category	33,888	42,884	27%
Females: 12-17	3,030	4,710	55%
Females: 18-24	3,781	5,090	35%
Females: 25-34	5,724	6,543	14%
Females: 35-44	7,990	8,839	11%
Females: 45-54	6,366	7,359	16%
Females: 55-64	3,100	4,418	43%

Comscore's explanation of the marked increase of female gamers from last year:

"Contributing to strong growth in the category among younger girls is the increasing popularity of fashion and dress-up sites, such as Stardoll.com, DressUpGames.com, and I-Dressup.com, and virtual worlds such as Neopets and Gaiaonline.com. Meanwhile, the growth among older females is in part due to partnerships between women’s content portals and casual game sites, such as iVillage.com’s partnership with Pogo.com games."

All told, Comscore counts around 43 million female online gamers in the U.S. There's no indication in the press release of their methodology, but I'm going to guess that they're not counting gamers on Facebook or Myspace. If they did, I'd speculate that they'd see another 10 million or so females who play games regularly.