Voodoo Extreme report that, according to a recent study, about 2/3rds of all U.S. online gamers are female, though the boys still hold a 2-1 margin as far as gaming overall in concerned:

The research found that among the roughly 117 million Active Gamers in the U.S. in 2006, more than half (56%) play games online, and that 64% of all online gamers are women.

Girls it seems are social beings, travelling into cyberspace to entertain themselves and others by interacting directly with other human gamers, whereas boys lock the doors, draw the blinds and shut the lights off to enter a world of solitary gaming. In other words, we're anti-socials, they hook up.

Nah, I'm kidding - if any of our readers are parents, this study seems to confirm what many others have done already: gaming (online and other) is very much a social experience:

Active Gamers spend upwards of 5 hours a week playing games socially, led by teenagers who are socially involved in gaming about 7 hours per week.