We wanted to change how VET and HE providers in the gaming sector design and run their programmes so that girls, women and gender-diverse learners feel invited, supported and able to succeed. Concretely, our objectives were to: 1) increase knowledge and awareness of gender bias and barriers in gaming education and careers; 2) strengthen the capacity of VET and HE staff to think and act in a more gender-inclusive way when planning curricula, teaching and guidance; 3) create practical, research-based resources – a fact sheet, handbook and toolkit – that offer ready-to-use activities for outreach, orientation and classroom work; and 4) ultimately help VET providers attract and retain more women in game-development studies, building a more diverse and inclusive European games sector.
We applied for NuGamers to respond to a clear skills and equality gap in the European gaming sector. Although women increasingly play games, they remain strongly under-represented in both gaming education and the industry (around 20–24% of students in partner VET programmes, 23% of employees in Sweden), limiting diversity of teams, content and perspectives. Our VET and HE partners offering game-related courses (Futuregames, XAMK, AUC) had a shared need to attract more women, but their orientation activities and curricula were not yet explicitly designed from a gender-inclusive perspective. Staff involved in outreach and programme design reported low awareness of gendered barriers, few concrete tools, and little specific training. The partnership therefore sought Erasmus+ support to co-create a solid knowledge base on gender bias in gaming education, and to turn it into practical handbooks and creative tools that help VET and HE providers design more inclusive curricula and orientation activities, address stereotypes and harassment, and ultimately increase women’s participation in gaming and related STEM paths.