Because feminists. They've spent decades telling girls that comics (and many other spaces) were hostile to them when they never were. So the girls that loved comics were pushed away and the ones who DO go into it are doing it to "stick it to the patriarchy" and burn down what's there.
They weren't unwelcome in games, STEM, comics, whatever. There were fewer of them because they were, on average, less likely to be into those things. The ones who were into it were as accepted as anyone else. Activist outsiders gaslit the public into thinking the demographics were due to hostility rather than an organic differences in interests and created a self-fulfilling prophecy: the only women getting involved are shitty activists* who destroy everything they touch, so those spaces try to protect themselves by gatekeeping. Then the feminists smile about the issue they created, claim it shows they were right the whole time, and beg for [government] money.
* I know there are some women whose genuine interests are so strong that they ignore the social stigma and love those things for their own sake. And it sucks that they'll get hate from all sides. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be statistically significant in perception.
tl;dr: Japan didn't have a bunch of blue haired land whales telling girls that they weren't welcome in manga and discouraging them from pursuing it.
Because feminists. They've spent decades telling girls that comics (and many other spaces) were hostile to them when they never were. So the girls that loved comics were pushed away and the ones who DO go into it are doing it to "stick it to the patriarchy" and burn down what's there.
They weren't unwelcome in games, STEM, comics, whatever. There were fewer of them because they were, on average, less likely to be into those things. The ones who were into it were as accepted as anyone else. Activist outsiders gaslit the public into thinking the demographics were due to hostility rather than an organic differences in interests and created a self-fulfilling prophecy: the only women getting involved are shitty activists* who destroy everything they touch, so those spaces try to protect themselves by gatekeeping. Then the feminists smile about the issue they created, claim it shows they were right the whole time, and beg for [government] money.
* I know there are some women whose genuine interests are so strong that they ignore the social stigma and love those things for their own sake. And it sucks that they'll get hate from all sides. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be statistically significant in perception.
tl;dr: Japan didn't have a bunch of blue haired land whales telling girls that they weren't welcome in manga and discouraging them from pursuing it.