Here’s the truth: the tech industry has long had a gender imbalance problem, and it starts early. Globally, women obtain 53% of STEM university degrees, but in the EU only 34% of graduates in the field are women, according to data from Girls Go Circular.
That has obvious knock-on effects. According to figures from Eurostat, women hold only 17% of major technology jobs, such as programming, systems analysis, or software development.
Startup funding too poses particular challenges for women in technology. In 2021, despite a record amount of capital invested that year in Europe, women founders were on the receiving end of less than 1% of the total funding, or €400 million, according to PitchBook data.
And now, with the advent of the metaverse, these systemic problems are raising their heads again.
The metaverse’s gender gap
A virtual world, or a collective area created by the convergence of physical and virtual reality, the metaverse is envisioned as a shared space where people can interact and participate in a simulated environment that mimics the physical world — albeit in a more enhanced way. The metaverse is underpinned by six technologies known as “BIGANT,” which represents blockchain, interactive, gaming, artificial intelligence, network, and the Internet of Things.
Despite last week’s announcement from Meta that its metaverse division lost $4.279 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022, adoption is increasing. Gartner predicts that by 2025, 10% of workers will regularly use virtual spaces, up from 1% in 2022. It also says that by 2027, 25% of retail organizations with an ecommerce presence will have completed at least one proof of concept for tokenized assets using metaverse technologies.
Some companies are already leveraging the metaverse to build up hype, with luxury and consumer goods being particularly quick out of the traps.
At last week’s Samsung Unpacked event, the company announced that it will work with Google and Qualcomm on an upcoming mixed-reality platform. Apple, too, is expanding its footprint in the space, with reports indicating that its hotly-anticipated mixed reality AR/VR headset will arrive in the second half of this year.
Balenciaga gave one of Fortnite’s characters a digital Balenciaga-branded hoodie that could also be bought in real life for €725. Lacoste has created digital looks for Minecraft characters, plus a co-branded Minecraft collection of sportswear available to buy online, and Ralph Lauren created digital snow apparel for Roblox’s Winter Escape, pitched as “the ultimate holiday experience.”
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