To honour International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month 2022, Xbox will celebrate mentorship to empower and tap into the upcoming generation of women in the gaming industry.
A new mentorship program will be launched to focus on women aspiring to become game developers.
Louise O’Connor, producer at Rare Ltd, draws on the fact that although the presence of women in gaming careers is growing, it still remains far behind compared to men.
In a Xbox Wire statement, the video game industry has 24% of the workforce as women. This does not correspond to the actual number of women who play video games (45%) which is an under-representation Microsoft wishes to address.
With its Mentoring programme, Xbox’s aim is to create possibilities to match experienced women with juniors in the industry, resulting in partnerships between women and Xbox’s diverse range of studios and products. Also the aim is to find “aspiring talent” as well as provide “valuable 1:1 coaching sessions with key leaders” globally. According to Louise O’Connor, Xbox hopes to use its experience to guide the next female talents in the industry.
More details of the program, including which regions and countries are eligible to take part, is expected later this month but for now, read more about the programme on Xbox’s blog:
Photo credits: XBox