All those studies make me angry. Such a HUGE sample base (effort) and then the question they ask is almost irrelevant.
The most important question is how much are female gamers willing to SPEND on gaming compared to male gamers. That's the number the industry cares about.
Other things about OP's study:
- what were the demographics? How many non-gamers? Age? Living alone? Income? How many hours of play per week?
- the study calls out the ESA report for people thinking it's inaccurate und bundles "gamers" together, but - even though they have the data - they only analyze their own survey data for genre differences in percent and not by numbers.
What if only 100 people play match 3 games and 69 were female, but 10,000 people play sports games and only 200 are female? Then not only sports game would be more popular by female gamers than match 3 games, it would (/could if this holds true for more genres) also mean that there a a ton more male gamers than female gamers.