Excerpt of the article "How Women in VR are Changing the Technology World" by Serenity Gibbbons, originally published on Forbes, April 9, 2021.
"There’s no longer any doubt that virtual reality (VR) is poised to revolutionize the world...And, despite tech’s notorious reputation as a primarily male industry, it’s women that are leading the charge this time around.
'Walking a mile in someone else’s shoes' was always a figure of speech — until VR made it more possible than ever. The opportunity to don a headset and enter into a completely new experience is one full of promise, and women leaders are finding out just how far it can go.
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The belief that empathy could effect positive change was also the driving force behind Carrie Shaw, the founder of Embodied Labs. Through her experiences watching her mother suffer from Alzheimer’s disease, Shaw knew firsthand the difficulties of caring for someone undergoing something you seemingly can't understand. Embodied Labs’s VR experiences allow caregivers to step into the shoes of patients suffering from hearing loss, macular degeneration, or other chronic conditions that can have an outsize impact on behavior and wellbeing.
It’s easier to provide top-quality care to someone when you can recall back to exactly how you felt when you were simulating their experience; in that sense, VR can serve as a reference for caregivers, something to use in order to better understand a patient. The same principle is true for on-the-job equity training through VR: if there’s a visceral situation to which you can call back, you’ll feel much better equipped to navigate a 21st century office effectively."
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