Since 1987, March has been officially recognized as Women’s History Month. But celebrating women’s achievements in March dates back to March 8, 1911, the first time International Women’s Day was celebrated.
March is also home to the International Trans Day of Visibility, a day that celebrates transgender and non-binary people by highlighting accomplishments with the goal of turning visibility into action that benefits the lives of trans people.
Over the last century, March has become a month where we celebrate women, trans, and non-binary people for their achievements across politics, culture, economics, gaming, and so much more.
How We Celebrated
The Riot Alliance of Diverse Genders (RADG) and the D&I Team worked together to put on a variety of internal talks, panels, and discussions around how Riot can uplift women, trans, and non-binary voices at Riot and in the wider gaming world.
Fireside Chat: Renata Glasc
As a buff, authoritative, older woman, Renata Glasc represents the diversity of women in games. After the chemtech baroness became League of Legends’ 159th champion in February, the creators of the champion talked about the inspirations in her design, her powerful persona, and what she represents for women in gaming. While this talk was internal, the developers behind Renata Glasc also explored these themes in her Champion Insights.
Roundtable: Finding Yourself Through Games
Games and the communities that come with them can be extremely impactful in people’s lives. This talk included transgender, non-binary, and cisgender Rioters who talked about how games helped them discover and develop their own identities. The roundtable centered around the importance of diverse representations across games and the value that representation brings to marginalized communities.
Breaking Through: From Playing Games to Leading in Games
Our team in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) put on this panel which featured a variety of game industry leaders from outside Riot who shared their stories about overcoming and challenging biases throughout their careers. The speakers were Jay Ann Lopez, CEO and founder of Black Girl Gamers, Brenda Romero, Managing Director of Romero Games, and Warda Rashid Khan, Producer at BIG IMMERSIVE Pakistan.
The talk centered around how each one worked through bias and how Rioters can help break the bias in the gaming industry.
And More
The team in EMEA also highlighted the inspirational women in their life by recording quick videos and editing all of them into a celebratory mosaic of all the women who inspire Rioters each and every day.
RADG also put together a Spotify playlist featuring powerful female artists from a wide range of genres.
Beyond Women's History Month
Riot is always committed to bringing more women into gaming, esports and tech. We’ve been a proud supporter of Girls Who Code since 2017 and in 2019 we teamed up with them to host an annual summer immersion program to inspire young, passionate, female coders who will hopefully one day become future leaders in gaming. In esports, VALORANT’s Game Changers program, which is headed into its second year, announced last month that it's expanding to Japan. Over 33,000 viewers tuned in for last year’s inaugural Game Changers tournament, which was our first ever all-women esports event. This year’s global tournament will take place at the end of the year.
We will continue to make our games a better place for marginalized communities by fighting against harassment, increasing representation across our games, and uplifting more gender-diverse voices behind the scenes.
