According to a new study by the Pew Research Center, women in the United States are more likely to own a console than men, although the gap is quite narrow between both genders.

A new research study from the Pew Research Center has uncovered an interesting statistic about console ownership in the United States. The technology-based study covered everything from cellphones to e-readers, but here we're focusing on one gender-based discovery: women are more likely to own a console than men.

The US-based study reports that women are slightly more likely to own any type of gaming console than their male counterparts, with the percentage gap between the two genders coming in at 5%. Though plenty of people still assume gaming is a "guy thing," statistics show that not only is that than outdated mindset, but it's also statistically incorrect.

Pew found that an impressive 42% of the females polled reported owning a console, compared to 37% of men reporting the same. It's a very narrow margin, but in a gaming culture constantly dealing with harassment issues and gender bias controversies, the statistic proves that gaming is much more gender-neutral than some play it out to be. Despite the aforementioned negatives, players of both genders can evidently find the time to sit back, relax, and wallop the heck out of other players in console games.

2015 has been a great year for women in gaming, with women getting more representation in mainstream games and strong female protagonists being prominently featured. Plenty of today's popular games like League of Legends, Smash Bros, and even Assassin's Creed all feature playable female characters, which may help contribute to the rising number of female console owners.

Despite the fact that female players statistically have to deal with more negativity online than the opposite sex, it looks like that doesn't stop almost half of all polled women from getting their game on. It doesn't hurt that prominent professional gamers like StarCraft 2's Scarlett and Aphrodite have done well in recent years, proving that women can compete with - and defeat - competitors in the predominantly male dominated world of eSports.

The findings are relatively close to what the Electronic Software Association reported earlier this year, which claimed 51% of households in America owned a traditional gaming console. The latter study also found that there were more women at the age of 18 who identified as gamers than men, so perhaps the console findings shouldn't come as such a surprise.

According to Pew, the percentage of Americans who own a gaming console has hovered around 40% for the last five years, so the research center didn't find it surprising that the pattern continued for 2015. Non-surprisingly, it looks like more gamers have a console during college than any other time in their lives, including just after graduation. Interested gamers can read more from Pew's full technology study here.

What do you think about these findings, Ranters?

Source: Pew Research Center