How to Really Get More Women into VR: More VR Startups Founded & Run by Women

The VR industry is notably top heavy with dudes, probably even moreso than the tech industry at large (where the gender imbalance is already bad enough), so this list of 26 ways to get more women into virtual reality is a nice start. However, I think it's missing two of the very most crucial:

• Foster more VR-related startups founded and run by women
• Fund more VR-related startups founded and run by women

Call me an economic determinist, but I say meaningful, sustainable change doesn't really start happening in an industry until the people at the very top are more diverse (starting with gender, in this case). Offhand, I can think of two very notable virtual reality startups co-founded by women:

• CastAR, co-founded by Jeri Ellsworth, which recently earned $15 million in VC funding.
• FOVE: The World's First Eye Tracking Virtual Reality Headset, which Philip Rosedale endorsed, co-founded by Yuka Kojima.

Both of them got their start through crowd-funding (just as OculusVR itself did), and I'd love to see many more cut through the status quote that way.

Hat tip: VR pioneer Jacki Morie, who got her start in virtual reality when it was still dominated by women.

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Comments

[Cube Republic]

Why does it matter which sex anyone is? Surely people are judged upon merit, quality of idea etc?

[Ciaran Laval]

@Cube The issue is that for some reason, women are not represented as well as they could and should be in VR. A lot of this comes from the fact that women seem to find it harder to get VC funding and the issue seems to be gender based rather than merit based.

I do fear at times that all the talk of women not being represented puts women off from attempting to engage with VR.

The list in the link certainly has points that are relatively low hanging fruit, some of the other points are a tad trickier to embrace.

[Cube Republic]

Could and should are matters of opinion. Nobody can force somebody to be into something if they don't wish to be. You could apply this argument to almost anything. How about this, most trash collectors are men, most people who clean shit out of sewers are men, most soldiers are men, most deep sea divers are men, most builders are men, most truckers are men, most security guards are men, etc. Gender roles are pretty fluid, but I don't think they're enforced by some evil patriarchy. Well maybe in china where rooms resembling chicken farms are populated by mostly woman making luxury electronic goods for eager western consumers to sit about and chat about how hard done by they are.

[cyberserenity]

My hope is that more women in VR will develope other types of games than the usual kill that or that. If i look at Second life o find a game like world where there are a lot of women designing, dj ing and run stuff.

[irihapeti]

Cube wrote: "most trash collectors are men, most people who clean shit out of sewers are men, ..., most deep sea divers are men, most builders are men, most truckers are men, most security guards are men, etc. ... mostly women making ... electronic goods ..."

why is this?

is bc of the physical properties required to fill these roles. When it comes to heavy lifting men are endowed to do this. So most people hired to do heavy lifting are men

When it comes to assembly work women can actually do this physically. So they get hired

computer science/engineering don't require any physicals. Yet very few women get into. Yet they get into other science/engineering fields more readily

the question for the industry is why is this?

a question addressed already by the other engineering fields and who are making progress on the answer

[Cube Republic]

computer science/engineering don't require any physicals. Yet very few women get into. Yet they get into other science/engineering fields more readily''

Are you implying a conspiracy to keep woman out of computer science?

[Marsha Warwillow]

The current VR recruiting and funding atmosphere is very male present. The problem with this is in the area of content making especially, almost all of the VR projects emphasize action gaming and sports (it seems, although I'm sure someone will prove me wrong with examples). I actually like gaming I'm an avid WoW player, but have no interest in seeing EA sports like implementations. I think you can look at some incubators too are super male themed. Some require a residence at the incubator's headquarters and this is not necessarily conducive to those who have families, which implies you must sacrifice your family to be an entrepreneur and I disagree with this. While this matters to men of course, it surely does matter to women who are mothers.

I think even worse than the lack of women, is the age discrimination, with many incubators and vc's blatantly outlining age brackets of desirable applicants and using "melinnial" in their marketing tag lines. As if, those of my generation X would have nothing to contribute at all it's really quite offensive considering my generation has a strong love of VR concepts and content. There are actually many women from generation X who relate and appreciate computers, games, and VR.

It is my hope to see more women in VR because I want to see more content that has a distinct appeal to women and family. I do believe men are capable of making such content, but I wonder if they have an interest in it? You might ask what kind of content well... I think then someone needs to pay women to find that out. :)

[JoeJoe]

Pro points from Cube there. It's not seen as offensive to automatically assume misogynist in a field dominated by men, it's not that men gravitate naturally to different jobs to women it must be that it's sexism.

irihapeti wrote:

"Cube wrote: "most trash collectors are men, most people who clean shit out of sewers are men, ..., most deep sea divers are men, most builders are men, most truckers are men, most security guards are men, etc. ... mostly women making ... electronic goods ..."

why is this?

is bc of the physical properties required to fill these roles. When it comes to heavy lifting men are endowed to do this. So most people hired to do heavy lifting are men"

It's much more than just being physically equipped. Men gravitate to uncomfortable, physically dangerous or high stress jobs that take them away from their families far more than women. Why is it so hard for people to understand that while men and women are not universally different, generally, they are, and as a group they make different choices. Universal is not general, but if you can't mediate some things from the simple obvious fact that men and women are different you've got your head in the clouds.

Take stem, a famously derided area that feminists have as sexist and anti-woman, with dirty learing men hanging nude pictures of women in the tea room or wearing naughty shirts after they perform scientific miracles landing rockets on a comet. There's been a rigorous study in STEM, that actually shows on average, if you take an equally qualified man and woman going for a job application, the woman is TWICE as likely to get the job as a man.

If I had to take a more accurate guess, too many women flock to practically pointless degrees like 'gender' studies (feminism), which in turn has created this boogie man within the tech fields that deters any women away who would naturally go in that career. That and training to be an engineer is extremely hard and makes doing the above studies look like child's play by comparison.

Marsha wrote:
"The current VR recruiting and funding atmosphere is very male present."

Tis true, although I think that's earned given it's a predominately male created industry. The ironic thing being I think of real women actually went towards these industries they would be welcomed and would likely create different more feminine output. But it's dominated by a feminine narrative that looks for anything awesome men have created, spitting and degrading it and then demanding that women have a fairer proportion of the cut even though they didn't do an equal degree of work to get there in the first place.

[irihapeti]

JoeJoe wrote "the simple obvious fact that men and women are different"

i wrote "men are physically endowed to do jobs that require physical endowment"

am not sure how more obvious that is

whats also obvious is your statement

"If I had to take a more accurate guess, too many women flock to practically pointless degrees like 'gender' studies (feminism), which in turn has created this boogie man within the tech fields that deters any women away who would naturally go in that career. That and training to be an engineer is extremely hard and makes doing the above studies look like child's play by comparison."

is obvious that you are guessing

is also obvious that you dont spend a lot of time on construction sites. if you did then look at who are wearing the white hats of the engineers. Look in the cabs of the cranes and heavy machinery. Look in the cabs of the long haul trucks. Look at who is driving the bus to take people to work. Who is operating the log hauler in the forestry. Who is driving the dump trucks in the mines ??

women are

why is that ? why did these industries change ? what social and technological advances happened to make this happen in these industries ?

Who is wielding the scalpel in the operating theatre. Who is a tenured professor at the university. Who is standing before the bar in the courts and sitting on the bench ?

women are

why is that ? why did these industries change ? what social advances happened to make this happen ?

what makes the tech industry so special that is seen as "hard" for women to do

seen as "hard" for women to do by guys who guess that it might be

a tech industry job is not hard to do. In the same way as being a lawyer, a professor, a construction engineer, a log hauler or a dump truck driver is not hard to do

the job is not hard to do. The hard part is guys who guess that it is