In the nascent metaverse, women are locked out of leadership roles, according to a new report by consulting firm McKinsey & Co. The report, authored by Mina Alaghband and Lareina Yee, saw a shortfall, not in terms of women participating in the metaverse, but in having leadership roles.
The firm said it saw five early indicators about women in the metaverse that reveal gender inequality — especially in the leadership creating and setting metaverse standards. McKinsey estimates the metaverse will have a $5 trillion value by 2030.
According to McKinsey’s data, women are more likely to spearhead and implement metaverse initiatives. However, just as in the tech sector as a whole, women represent a minority in the metaverse economy. Both the entrepreneurial capital and the CEO roles in the metaverse space remain disproportionately reserved for men. “We found an already discernible gender gap in the metaverse, similar to the gap that exists in Fortune 500 companies and startups, where less than 10 per cent of Fortune 500 CEOs are women, only 17 per cent of venture capital (VC) dollars go to women-led and women co-led companies,” the report said.
Co-author Yee highlighted that in the past five years, metaverse companies led by men received a higher share of total entrepreneurial funding than metaverse companies led by women—90 per cent vs. 10 per cent. Men received $107 billion in funding compared to women who received $5 billion. McKinsey research also reveals that women are more likely than men to engage in hybrid use cases in the metaverse, traversing both physical and digital worlds to take part in activities such as gaming, fitness, education, live events and shopping via AR/VR technologies. By contrast, men are using the metaverse to participate in purely digital experiences such as gaming, trading nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and attending social events.
“Ironically, the research also found that of the women who are active in the metaverse, they’re more likely to be power users than men—35 per cent compared to 29 per cent. The lack of women leadership in the metaverse surprised me because I was hopeful that this might be one of the technologies that has more parity,” she said.
According to early indicators, women may already be a powerful metaverse user base, McKinsey said. Addressing the existing gender gap in leadership roles while the metaverse is still in its formative stage is therefore of paramount importance. To do so, industry stakeholders will need to engage a range of different voices and infuse diverse leadership into the companies and coalitions shaping the metaverse today, McKinsey said.