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QA outfit Testronic rolls out 50% Initiative to encourage more women in games

Designed to develop and further careers, too

QA outfit Testronic rolls out 50% Initiative to encourage more women in games

UK video games QA and localisation outfit Testronic has announced the 50% Initiative to help more women to get into the industry.

Revealed on International Women's Day (March 8th), the firm says that this new concept came from Ann Hurley (pictured), head of new business for Western Europe.

As well as encouraging women to get involved in the games industry and consider a career there, the initiative also hopes to help keep them in the market and further their careers with mentoring and self-development.

Improving diversity

“We’ve called this the Testronic 50% Initiative because, despite females accounting for half of all gamers, in the UK – and many other regions, too – just 14 per cent of those working in the industry itself are women. We believe that figure should be closer to 50 per cent," saud Hurley.

“At Testronic we buck the trend in some areas – 40 per cent of our management team based out of London and Warsaw are female, while 42 per cent of our localisation QA team are women. But there are other areas we need to work on, and it’s the same for many other companies in the business – whether publishers, developers or service companies.”

Localisation manager Gaelle Caballero added: “Here at Testronic we are actively recruiting more female testers, highlighting that a job in QA is often a stepping stone to a career elsewhere in the games industry. We’re excited to be further pushing this commitment to closing the gender gap with the launch of the Testronic 50% Initiative and invite our publisher and developer friends to join us.”

This story was originally published on our sister-site PCGamesInsider.biz.

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PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.