I happened to stumble on this thread and have not read it through, sorry, am being way too lazy for that. 
Anyway, I’m not only a girl making games but old too and without any education worth mentioning so I’m definitely a unicorn of sort.
----- history and background, can be skipped -----
My first game was a 2D game released in 2000 (in Finnish and Finland only). 50% of it was made with borrowed computers. I learned what was needed as I went along and I did everything myself from graphics, audio to the spaghetti programming. The game and demo is still available (by demand) and is bought now and then. We have over the years sold a silly large amount of this game.
An interesting thing when we first went to see distributors in Finland and Sweden, 99% said the game needed more action and voices needed to be actors and one needed a huge box for it. There was also a negative attitude towards me because I was “old” already then and no one had heard of my business. I refused to comply and be put down by all that so I set up my own online store, decided to use a DVD box (we were actually the first on the market around here using DVD boxes for games), used our own family and friends as voices and so on.
Now I’m moving a huge 2D game (rendered 3D scenes) to convert to a 3D game in UE4. I’ve worked on the 2D game since 2002 and was 80% done. I’ve built most of the 3D models besides animals and humans, and programmed everything myself. Had to test and learn a couple of engines to find what I was looking for as I’ve now done with 3D engines for the last 6 months.
---- end of history and background ----
Here in Sweden the over all climate of making games is very positive also among girls. But many of the girls I have talked to about game developing are more interested in creating “caring” games and “free” games as in the game play not forcing you to do this and that before you can do what you really want to do. For example “give the horse a carrot before you can go riding”.
I don’t have a solution what need to be done but the market need more high graphic, realistic and non violent games with free game play. And definitely more animals, then I don’t mean pastel coloured “my little pony” kind of creatures, but real and furry creatures you can work with. If you look at what game engines offers when it comes to quadrupled creatures it is not much and it’s a struggle sometimes to make stuff work the way you want them to.
Just my 2 cent. 