Videogame publishers, pushing to expand their businesses, are making games that target girls and women a new industry battleground.

This holiday season, more games than ever are being geared toward female players. Electronic Arts Inc. (ERTS) is releasing the latest installment of its “Littlest Pet Shop” game for young girls and introducing a series of fashion-themed games called “Charm Girls Club” for older girls later this month. Sony Corp. (SNE) in August packaged a lilac version of its PlayStation Portable device with a “Hannah Montana” game, based on the popular television show about a girl and her secret pop career.

Publishers also will target women with workout games. Ubisoft Entertainment SA is introducing “Your Shape,” a personal-training game, and “Just Dance,” a dancing game, in November. Nintendo Co. hit the market with “Wii Fit Plus,” a sequel to its popular fitness game, in September.

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Ellen Spertus, a graduate student at MIT, wondered why the computer camp she had attended as a girl had a boy-girl ratio of six to one. And why were only 20 percent of computer science undergraduates at MIT female? She published a 124-page paper, “Why Are There So Few Female Computer Scientists?” that catalogued different cultural biases that discouraged girls and women from pursuing a career in the field. The year was 1991.

Computer science has changed considerably since then. Now, there are even fewer women entering the field. Why this is so remains a matter of dispute.

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The fight among women-oriented Web sites will be heating up with a new directive from comScore Media Metrix that could knock Glam Media from the top spot in the women’s category. ComScore, which advertisers depend on to determine Web sites’ traffic, has told Glam and other women’s networks that as of August they cannot count sites in their networks that are not solely for women. If they continue to do so, comScore will no longer include the network in the women’s category.

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The New York Times had an article today about the loss of women in the science and technology fields as they hit their 30s and beyond. It cites a report that blames a macho culture intrinsic to those fields. But it’s possible that readers in the tech field missed it, as it only ran in the Style section of the paper’s Web site rather than the Technology section. Because apparently the loss of female programming and engineering talent has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with the latest swimsuits. An article on the Wii Fit, however, was deemed worthy of appearing in both sections.

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