International Women’s Day, and Women’s History Month, celebrates the significant achievements, successes and contributions of women throughout history, with over a century of progress towards better equality, representation and opportunities for women. It is no coincidence that over a century of furthering the representation and rights of women is also contiguous with over a century of significant strides in the advancements of technology and computing, from Ada Lovelace to Joy Buolamwini.
However, despite these significant strides, women in STEM fields - including technology - still face significant challenges, best highlighted by the downward trend of representation of women in tech and cybersecurity in the 2020s. In 2025, women hold only 27.6% of all tech-related roles, with a decrease in representation by 2.1% over the last few years, despite women making up 47.7% of the workforce in the United states, and 39% globally. The disparity in representation only widens further up the ladder, with only 31.7% of senior leadership roles being held by women worldwide, with just 10.4% of Fortune 500 CEO positions being held by women.
Organizations that falter in addressing the issues that hinder gender diversity and inclusion can encumber business operations with a smaller talent pool to draw from, and lead to a lack of diversity when it comes to problem solving, critical decision making, creativity and innovation.
Diverse hiring and representation policies allow organizations to expand their talent pool and bring broader skill sets and perspectives to the table, so when there is so much to gain, why is the representation of women still so low in the technology sector?
There are a number of factors contributing to the underrepresentation of women pursuing tech careers, but organizations can take a proactive approach to bridging the gender disparity through equal opportunity hiring policies, mentorship programs and comprehensive pay audits to address wage disparity.
Let’s take a critical look at the factors affecting diversity in tech as well as solutions that organizations are adopting to bridge the gap.
Why is the Tech Industry Seeing a Decrease in Employment of Women?
There are a range of problems currently affecting representation of women in tech, from employers hiring women at a lower rate than men, to women not pursuing careers in tech as often. Let’s assess employment first.
Unconscious bias in hiring practices is a pervasive challenge in all sectors, including the tech market. In 2024, around 83% of tech companies were utilizing anti-bias hiring and training practices, however the industry has seen some significant changes to this effort, with a number of the top tech companies rolling back their commitment to DEI compliance altogether, and AI becoming heavily utilized as a recruitment tool despite persisting concerns about harmful biases.
“Just by tackling the hiring process we can increase the numbers of women that actually come through.” – Jane Frankland, CEO of KnewStart and Founder of the INSecurity Movement
Women are also less motivated to pursue a career in the tech industry due to fewer opportunities being presented to them. Even when they cross the barrier and undertake senior roles, they are still being paid less than men in their industry, with CEOs that are women earning around 89c for every dollar male CEOs make. The lack of career progression opportunities and comparatively reduced pay is causing an increase of women walking away from tech and software development roles.
These challenges then create a snowball effect, contributing to a further lack of representation of women. Without clear representation of women working and thriving in senior roles, and especially with large tech companies being slow on the uptake of intersectional thinking to include underrepresented women, they are less likely to aspire to careers where they cannot see themselves represented.
GlobalSign was an excellent opportunity for me to be on the board of directors, to be in a C-Suite position. That benefited me and was super rewarding but what was more satisfying was that all the women in the company, and even my daughter and even my son for that matter; they saw a woman in a senior leadership position and that speaks volumes.” – Lila Kee, Chief Product Officer for GlobalSign.
Why the Tech Market Needs Women
However, despite the downtrend of women working in tech in recent years , the inclusion of women in tech was previously on a steady increase. Women have been making significant achievements in tech for decades and continue to contribute to the fields of AI, Quantum Computing, cybersecurity and software development today.
Without making a conscious effort to encourage women to join the tech workforce, tech companies are also depriving themselves of a richer job pool and of working with top talent. The DevSecOps market is a prime example of this, with only 25.1% of software engineers being women in 2024. This seems like a disappointing missed opportunity while the sector is experiencing its own skill shortage. It would be an oversimplification to imply that the broadening skill gap in DevSecOps, and cybersecurity as a whole, is purely down to the persistent gender gap in STEM disciplines. However, when this skill shortage is contributing to a growing strain on IT teams and causing problems for organizational security, it seems remiss to not solve two problems with one stone, as it were.
Women can bring a diverse approach to problem solving and decision making to their roles. Therefore, companies that have clear policies in place that address underrepresentation and demonstrate diverse hiring policies are more likely to attract top talent from a broader pool. While fears are increasing over misinformation in AI, in particular within the realm of perpetuating harmful biases and stereotypes, ensuring that companies have a diverse employment base can help combat these problems and generate a positive company reputation, and further attract the best candidates. This is also equally true for organizations from the perspective of customer experience – with a greater representation pool which includes women, customers are more likely to feel that they have experienced satisfactory customer service when they can speak to someone that they can identify with, and they feel identifies with them.
Making Ends Meet: Reducing the Gender Gap in Tech
So how can the tech market do better to address the problem of the gender gap? Tech companies should look to audit their current policies in addressing these pervasive issues and reflect on where they may be lacking, thereby taking a proactive approach to closing the gender gap.
Compulsory Diversity Training: Diversity and bias elimination training is a good start, but this should not just be limited to recruiters, as everyone in the company could benefit, with C-Suite professionals setting a positive example for the rest of the company. Training courses such as these also tend to be more successful when they are compulsory, as many who volunteer will likely already have an awareness of their personal biases.
Regular Pay Audits: Organizations should conduct regular pay audits to address gendered pay gaps. Gender pay disparity is a primary reason for women not joining or leaving the tech industry, and tends to impact disabled, black, Asian and Latin women disproportionately. Regular pay audits that are conducted annually at a minimum can help to ensure that women’s pay aligns with that of their male colleagues.
Outreach Programs: STEM outreach programs showcase organizational talent in underrepresented demographics in educational institutions, as well as encouraging new generations to join the workforce. Young women and girls who participate in some kind of outreach program are also more likely to find employment in that field after education.
Mentorship Programs: Mentorship programs demonstrate to women and underrepresented groups that career progression opportunities are available to them and prepare them for senior roles in the future. Women are more likely to stay in roles that they can see themselves progressing in – in addition, employing a more diverse talent pool in senior roles creates a strong company reputation which will inevitably attract more talent and further engages more diverse perspectives at senior levels, expanding decision making and problem solving skills in those positions.
“Where I think about the gender gap really hitting hardest is actually in the innovation and diversity of thought. That is so crucial for challenging today’s challenges.” – Jane Frankland, CEO of KnewStart and Founder of the INSecurity Movement
Flexible Working Policies: The 2020s has seen a significant growth in flexible working and remote opportunities, but this topic has remained controversial in tech - and big tech in particular - where many large enterprises have undertaken stricter office attendance policies. This can cause issues for hiring women in tech, and creating a more diverse worker base in general, as it can create commuting barriers for disabled women and women from lower economic backgrounds when many enterprises are more likely to operate from big cities. It also creates a problem for women with young families when organizing childcare arrangements during the day is not possible.
Even for organizations and businesses that would much rather prioritize office attendance over remote or hybrid working arrangements, do not have to rule it out completely. Before 2020, organizations globally were making arrangements for those who had accessibility issues for working from an office location, and even arranging office attendance on a part-time basis. Ensuring that work is accessible to everyone increases the talent pool further, creates a positive image for organizations and their career opportunities and ensures that women are better represented on the whole by removing barriers, so it’s a win-win-win situation.
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Conclusion
International Women’s Day is a celebration of the achievements of women in all areas of culture, business, the arts and science and tech industries – but more than this, it is a golden opportunity for reflection. Representation of women in tech has made incredible strides in the last century, improving the conditions for women in employment, but organizations can go further to ensure equality within the workplace.
Effecting and enacting policies to improve equal pay, unbiased and diverse hiring practices, career progression opportunities, and creating an encouraging, positive environment for current and future generations of women can all help to address the current decline in women in tech roles. But most importantly, organizations need to ensure that they are not just discussing problems and creating empty policies but following through with clear, committed and direct action.
Editor’s Note: This blog was originally published in March 2024 but has since been updated to reflect industry changes and new insights.
