Women accounted for 52% of video gamers in the UK in the last six months, surpassing men for the first time, a new report noted.
The female gamers share increased in the last six months compared to 49% three years ago.
According to statistics from the Internet Advertising Bureau UK, the transformation was mainly driven by women in the age group of 25 to 44 years who downloaded free puzzles and trivia game apps on their mobile and tablet devices.
The overall gamer audience increased to 33.5 million, accounting for more than two-thirds of the population.
Smartphones contributed to the major surge in gaming among new areas of the population, making free, intuitive and accessible mobile puzzlers available to users.
The Internet Advertising Bureau data and industry programmes director Steve Chester said: "The internet and mobile devices have changed the gaming landscape forever.
"They’ve brought down the barriers to entry, making gaming far more accessible and opened it up to a whole new audience.
"In the past you needed to go out and buy an expensive console and the discs on top to get a decent experience, now you can just download a free app."
An average British individual spends six hours per week in playing games.
About 54% of the overall UK survey respondents voted their phone as their preferred gaming platform, with 25% of them admitting to playing games on it daily.
Smartphones were followed by other gaming platforms including PCs (51%), consoles (45%) and tablets (44%), the Gaming Revolution survey found.
An average gamer aged above 16 spends about 11 hours gaming a week, compared to 20 hours by 8 to 15 year olds. The 6-8pm slot is the most preferred playing time.
With two-third of game-players being aware of advertising within some games, six in ten of them are glad to see ads within games if it makes them free, while a quarter of them believe ads make games more realistic and immersive.
Chester added: "Getting in-game advertising right is a very delicate skill. In-game ads can enhance the experience by adding realism or extra content – as long as they’re not interruptive and irrelevant. If they are, it can have the opposite effect and stop people playing."
