Despite the rapid growth of the esports industry, gender equity remains a complex and systemic issue both at the competitive level and in the corporate sector. Women rarely reach top positions, and those who do face specific challenges that rarely concern men.
BLAST Programme Director Anne Banschbach, who previously worked at Team Vitality and G2 Esports, shared her leadership experience in an interview with Esports 101. According to her, the problems in esports reflect broader societal trends. Having secured a senior role at an early age, she faced skepticism from older male colleagues. As a result, she often had to put in twice the effort and provide more justification for her decisions than would be required of a man in a similar position.
Banschbach highlighted the uneven distribution of roles within the industry. While women are widely represented in marketing, commercial, and HR roles, their presence in core esports areas—such as team operations, tournament organization, or performance staff—remains minimal, often limited to support or psychological roles.
A similar crisis is observed in the professional scene, where opportunities for women are failing to keep pace with the overall growth of the ecosystem. Counter-Strike 2 is a prime example. After the main women's circuit, ESL Impact, was put on an indefinite hold at the end of 2025, the number of tournaments dropped sharply. This forced organizations to drop their rosters—for instance, FURIA moved its entire women's CS2 roster to VALORANT. Well-known professional player Zainab "zAAz" Turkie publicly criticized the current state of the scene and called on Valve to do much more to support women's Counter-Strike.
Research from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology confirms these issues, pointing to a hostile environment, open sexism, and barriers of male dominance that women have to break through.
Despite systemic obstacles, the industry landscape is gradually changing thanks to new initiatives:
While these targeted steps will not solve all problems overnight, they provide female esports athletes with more opportunities for growth. Anne Banschbach emphasizes that the path to equality requires dismantling cultural preconceptions and structural barriers. Her main advice for women in the industry is to set clear personal boundaries, address workplace ethics violations head-on, and drive change by leading by example.
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