There was a nice article on women gamers (subscription required) in the Wall Street Journal today.

It covers There's special iVillage zone within that persistent world game, women in XBox's holiday TV spots, and the continued growth of women casual gamers (zone.com reports that 68% of its visitors are women). One undercurrent of women gamers the article covers but doesn't mention explicitly is that many (most?) women gamers playing online are playing while doing something else, like watching TV.

There was also mention of Legacy Interactive, a little game studio in Hollywood I did some work with a few years back. Legacy produces a series of doctor and emergency room games, as well as the Law and Order TV show license games. These are fairly lightweight games that focus on exploration and evaluation over 3D full-body movement (which is what I'm sure most studios would have done with the license). Legacy's president, Ariella Lehrer, reports that the Law and Order games have a 60% female audience, so they are worth paying attention to.